Monday, September 18th - On the train from Seattle to Los Angeles.

As it turned out, our wake-up call came at 4:00 a.m. sharp, which gave us plenty of time to get dressed, eat some leftovers for breakfast, check out, and catch a taxi to the Canadian Pacific train station. Our bus arrived shortly thereafter and we had a relaxing drive down to Seattle, stopping only briefly at U.S. Customs and Immigration at the border.

Despite some morning rush hour traffic in Seattle, we arrived at the station by 9 o'clock and were on the train by 9:30. The Coast Starlight pulled out at 9:45 a.m. sharp and we had a nice day rolling southward along the west coast. In the northern part of Washington, the tracks hugged the eastern shore of Puget Sound, giving us beautiful views of the calm waters and low-lying, wooded islands in the sound.

We also saw a four-lane suspension bridge under construction, which crossed a narrow straight from the eastern shore of the sound onto one of the larger islands. One two-lane span had already been completed but the second span was just being started. That span had the towers and cables completed but only the middle section of roadway was in place. Apparently the idea was to construct the roadway from the middle out to either end of the bridge, and that surprised me because you would have to be very certain that it fit properly on both sides.

Since low-lying clouds obscured Mt. Saint Helens, the next scenic high point was our crossing of the Columbia River. There we saw the same raft of houseboats on the river that we had puzzled over when doing a Volksmarch in Portland during Wanderung 6. The Columbia River was still as wide and majestic as I remembered it, and the bridges just as graceful.

Continuing south from Portland, Oregon, we stopped briefly at Salem, Oregon, where we had also walked a Volksmarch on Wanderung 8. I remembered Salem as a very pretty city filled with flowers, gardens, and a nice capitol building with a golden statue on top. But from the railroad tracks we saw more the commercial side of the city and mostly the machinery, backyards and trash bins appertaining thereto, which was not nearly so pretty.

At Eugene, Oregon, our route deviated to the east to travel for a while on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains. I expect that the scenery was absolutely magnificent, but by this time it was dark and all the sights were invisible. We read for a while and then had the porter put our beds down and turned in for the night. Fortunately the rail bed was not too rough, so I managed to get at least a modicum of sleep during the night. I slept really well while the train was stopped at a siding due to an derailment on the track ahead of us, but by the same token that meant that the next morning we were four hours behind schedule.