This is Bubbles here, I am feeling a little sad. I had decided to do a play by play as we climbed up, up, up the mountain range. MaryAlice was enjoying the views so very much, and I was too. I thought that I was going to talk about all of the animals that I have seen since we got on the train. There have been some exotic ones: Ostrich, Llamas, even a Yak. There have been lots of cows and cattle most of them out in big big stretches of lands, but some were in feeding lots, there were even a really big herd of bison in a feeding lot. There were some brand new babies with the Mom's I mean really brand new babies. While I was thinking and remembering the animals that I saw and did not see, we began doing a very slow very winding climb up the mountains. We kept climbing up, farther and farther up, and around and we kept going through lots of little tunnels. I forgot about writing about the animals and began sharing what I was seeing, kind of like a play by play in a sports game. I was having lots of fun, but something happened and all of my words went away, so here I am trying again.
There was one very long tunnel, it might be one of the longest ones ever, it is 6.2 miles and it took 10 minutes to get through the tunnel. The conductor came on twice and told us we all had to stay in our cars while going through the tunnel so we didn't get diesel fumes all inside of us here. We went pretty fast through the tunnel and when we got out it was so bright. MaryAlice sneezed and blinked and looked away for a minute. After that I saw a prairie dog and I even saw 6 swans in a small pond of water. The best was watching an eagle slowly circling around.
On this train, our roomettes are on the second floor, we have a really good view. MaryAlice went to the observation car really early this morning so she could watch the sun come up, she said it was really really pretty. These are big mountains, and big sky, and lots of wide open spaces when you are not in the mountains.
The rocks and stone are all different colors, the formations are all so very different, you can see all kinds of shapes and recognize faces and forms even though you know that they are not real stone carvings, some of them sure look like that...it is so fun to see MaryAlice just smiling, she just keeps smiling and it is not boring at all. I also saw people fly fishing, and some people were wading and splashing in the water. It is hot here. It is not hot in Patten, Maine it was snowing there this morning, it is cold. Not here. There were a few times when MaryAlice had to be careful looking down because it was a big big big drop off, and she gets vertigo, she only got a little woozy but it didn't last and we seem for now to be out of the drop offs.
We are in mountain time, so we are 2 hours behind Maine. We are still a little behind, it was about a half-hour but then at the last stop just as the train was starting to roll away from the station a man was running through the car yelling "Ronny" "Ronny" and he got on the train but his wife, Ronny, did not! The train stopped, people were yelling that they saw a woman waving her hands. Ronny and her husband were reunited. The conductor was really good to stop. Then Mary, Mary is our porter, Mary is a great porter. Mary tells it like it is....she gives us clear directions, and I would not like to get on Mary's bad side. This is her first trip after being off for a month, she does this route regularly and she knows a lot about where we are, people who live along the route wave to Mary. I can see why, but Mary got on and she was stern in her announcement - she made it CLEAR that we were supposed to LISTEN to ALL announcements, and we need to pay attention. It is a bad thing when people are not back on the train once they hear the whistle blow. Life on the train. I am glad that MaryAlice knows when she should be a good listener! Well I tried to write some of what I lost, and then I just had to do a little more. Life on the train, tomorrow at this time we will have been off the train for at least a couple of hours. I think that it will feel as good to get off the train as it has been to be on the train. We have one more night, and I am going to enjoy it all. The sky is so blue, it is so big, and I sure do like that I am on this train. Mary came by and said I was sure tying alot, I told her to watch out I was going to write some stories and her, she laughed. Life on the train.
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