Pop! go the mountains
Roaring through 30 tunnels in 50-mile stretch highlights Zephyr ride in Colorado
GRAND LAKE, Colo. -- Nearly 30 tunnels dot the Amtrak train route between Denver, Colo., and Fraser Valley, some 50 miles west.
As you pop out of each bore through the front range of the Rockies, you're treated to one stunning mountain view after another. Some of the tunnels are shorties, a mere 70 feet long. Others, such as the Moffat Tunnel, stretch more than six miles.
(Courtesy)
TAKING THE TRAIN: For schedules and information on Amtrak's California Zephyr train running between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area, go to amtrak.com or call (800) 872-7245. Rates from Chicago to Fraser, Colo., range from $108 to $212 a person for a one-way coach seat. Family sleeper cars cost between $334 and $827. Children ages 1 and under ride free, and kids 2-15 are charged half-fare.
My kids loved them all. (I confess: So did I.)
"Cool," said my daughter, Maddie, 8, as we rumbled along in the observation car with snowy peaks towering above us.
"Spooky, but fun," chimed in my son Anders, 6, who snuggled up next to his mother during one dark stretch.
The mountain vistas and tunnels were reason enough to take Amtrak's California Zephyr, which we'd boarded a day earlier in Illinois as part of a 10-day trip to visit two Colorado dude ranches and Rocky Mountain National Park.
But we also were lucky enough to have Wilma and Mark Reever on board the Zephyr to narrate the trip west of Denver. Volunteers with the National Park Service's Trails and Rails program, they gave a running commentary as we chugged up and up into the hills. (For their honeymoon, the couple traveled on the famed narrow-gauge train from Durango to Silverton, Colo. It's been running for more than 125 years.)
"Here comes another tunnel. Are you keeping track of the numbers?" asked Wilma, a third-generation Coloradan. She and Mark are retired educators who live south of Grand Junction.
The children in the packed observation car responded with a variety of numerals.
"Close," she said. "But if you look above the entryway to the tunnels, you can see exactly which number it is."
"Whew, then we don't have to keep track," Anders said.
Then everything went dark. It wasn't long before the light returned and we were staring down at the gurgling South Boulder Creek out the left side of our train. The tunnel the children loved best was the Moffat, which took about 12 minutes to get through.
The scenery wasn't quite as jaw-dropping when we began our trip on a recent Thursday in Princeton, Ill., where we were greeted by a friendly porter who guided us to our family sleeper room. Soon we were exploring the train and quickly found the double-decker observation car with curved windows on the top.
In no time, we made friends with a couple who was traveling by train all the way from Cincinnati to the San Francisco Bay area. They planned to spend a day seeing the sites and then (yikes!) turn around and make the two-day journey back. Down in the concession area, a group of train buffs discussed construction styles of antique dining cars.
As we neared Mississippi two hours later, our stomachs were starting to rumble. We were seated for dinner as we rolled across the mighty river and the kids pressed their noses against the windows for a better view.
We dallied over our salmon dinners (hot dogs and chicken fingers for the kids) as the train rolled on through eastern Iowa. New York-style cheesecake and ice cream topped off the meal before we headed back to the viewing car for a game of cards.
By 9 p.m., we were tucked into our bunks in the family sleeper room.
Morning found us pulling into Denver's historic Union Station. Once a pioneer neighborhood filled with scores of saloons and brothels, it's now a budding transportation hub with condos, retail shops, galleries and Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies baseball team.
Around 10:30 a.m., we were zipping by Denver's western suburbs and snow-clad peaks were on the horizon. To the north we could see the city of Boulder's Flatirons, part of the Front Range escarpment that pushes up from the high plains.
For a moment, I was nostalgic for my salad days in Boulder at the University of Colorado, where I graduated in 1975. Then my son spilled his chocolate milk on me. Ah, family travel ...
As we began to climb into the mountains in big swooping turns that the Reevers said railroaders called "Big 10s and Little 10s," we looked out over broad expanses of green foothills -- thanks to abundant rains in early June.
Mark, a lifelong rail buff who grew up in Chicago's Norwood Park, told us of a hotel built deep in a valley near what is now the Gross Reservoir. Visitors were required to hike a considerable distance to reach the hostelry. It perished, he said, in a mysterious fire.
A short distance from the Moffat Tunnel at Toland, we passed a siding that once led up and over 11,671-foot Rollins Pass. Dubbed "Hell's Hill," it was replaced in the 1920s by tunnels drilled more than 2,400 feet below the top of the pass.
Then we were enveloped in Moffat's darkness. We got a slight whiff of diesel fumes from the big engines pulling the train, but the odor wasn't too bad, thanks to an order by Mark to keep the doors between the cars closed.
Back in the sunlight again, it wasn't long before we at our destination in Fraser.
As we unloaded our gear and said goodbye to our porter, I made a mental note to one day continue on the Zephyr all the way to the Bay Area.
After all, Mark and Wilma told me, there were more cool and spooky tunnels -- not to mention stunning canyons and rumbling waters -- out West.
Brian E. Clark is a Madison, Wis.-based free-lance writer.