Riding with Aunt Rhodie

After our visits in Portland, Oakland and Fairfield, Arminta and I jumped on California Zephyr Train 6 in Sacramento and headed for our next adventure. What a fantastic trip filled with unexpected adventures. After boarding Train 6 at about 11:30 a.m., Ralph Shipp, our Car Attendant, told us we should head off right away to the Dining Car for lunch. Since there is limited seating on the dining car it is customary for riders to be grouped in fours at each dining table. Arminta and I were fortunate enough to be seated with Pat and Marjorie. Both had boarded the train earlier in Emeryville. It did not take more than a minute for us to realize that our adventure was about to begin with Marjorie Brandon on board. What a delightful and accomplished woman with a Larry and Arminta sense of humor. It did not take long for the party to begin. The frivolity was so robust that the Conductor stopped calling "All Aboard" after each stop! In fact the train crew went without sleep trying to figure out some scheme to throw us all "Over Board"!

From that first lunch together it was like we were old college room-mates getting back together again after a forty year hiatus. Good thing we did not have a term paper due, as we spent more time laughing than anything else.

Turns out Marjorie, who we now call Aunt Rhodie, has had her "college days"! When she was VERY young she founded Brandon College in San Francisco. That was to be only the beginning of a Trump like journey of entrepreneurship.

We highly recommend the Amtrak trip. The rooms were comfortable, train crew accommodating and the food was much better than expected. On almost every part of the route we had beautiful mountains, or plains to view.


We would take this trip again in a minute. In fact our next trip will be Denver to Glenwood Springs on Train 5 with a layover in Glenwood Springs. After several days in the Glenwood area we will jump back on Train 6 and head back to Denver.


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