Planet of the Apes

Yesterday we watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes from 2011 in the morning and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes from 2014 in the evening.  Both were excellent.  We did that because this afternoon we are going to see the third movie in the trilogy, War of the Planet of the Apes.  We both got an offer from Red Robin that if we bought a $25 gift card, we would get a voucher for a free movie ticket to that movie.  So we are heading out around 2 p.m. to see the movie at Disney Springs followed by dinner at Red Robin with our gift cards.  Should be fun, although heavy rain is predicted for the whole day. Except for driving in the rain, what better way is there to spend a rainy, summer afternoon in Florida than in a movie?

Just because I ate three meals at home that were far lower in sodium than eating train food for the last five days, I am down two and a half pounds this morning to 286.  I admit that I was pretty excited to see that.  I'm hoping to make good choices at Red Robin today.  The veggie burger can come in a lettuce wrap instead of a bun.  That's what Mark always chooses to keep the carbs down.  I hope I am smart enough and in control enough at that point to say the same thing.

Here are some pictures from our return train trip.

We traveled out of Emeryville in a roomette for the first two nights. 

Missing Evey and Eric and Kiwi, but happy to be heading home.  This was a selfie I took to  send to Evey.

The beauty of the scenery going over the Sierra Nevada mountains is hard to capture with my camera.

Donner Lake again.

Truckee is such a cute little town.  Both going out and coming back I really wished we had had the time to get out and explore.

Going through Utah there are some spectacular rock formations.

Both the Truckee and Colorado rivers were very muddy on the return trip.  There had been a lot of rain.  In fact, it rained  most of the time that we were on this train trip.  It even hailed very hard for about 20 minutes!

We passed a herd of Elk!

Reading and doing puzzles is how we occupied ourselves on the train some of the time.  Watching the scenery and watching movies on the laptop helped, too.  Somehow the days go by very fast.

Napping is another thing we did a lot on the train!  LOL

Red Rock Canyon

As soon as you come out of one of the many, many tunnels cutting through the Rockies, you see this vast high plain in front of you with Denver in the misty distance.  Wow.

Before you know it, we are in Chicago, although we did arrive four and a half hours late.  That still left us about an hour and a half to pick up some subs for dinner before boarding the Chicago Limited to D.C.

We left Chicago two and a half hours late because we were waiting for another train to come in late and send us 150 passengers.  Because of that, it was daylight when we went through Pittsburgh.  I really enjoyed that!  Here is the view of Pittsburgh out the back door of the last train car, which was where we were in coach for this leg of the trip.

Mark is adjusting some things on the overhead storage rack as we pull out of Pittsburgh.

We lost more time and arrived in D.C. four and a half hours late.  Our dinner at Pizzeria Uno with Farlee got cancelled, but she still met us at the train station!  We got Subway subs to take on board again, so she hung out and talked with us in the Club Acela first class area until we were called to our train.  How fun that was!

Mark enjoying conversation with Farlee in the lounge.

This final leg of the trip we had a roomette on a Viewliner car, which included our own private toilet and sink.  This is the toilet with the sink folded up.

Here's the sink folded down.  The room also included pump soap, bar soap, wash rags, and hand towels.  The car had a shower with bath towels, too.  We actually thought this little roomette was more spacious and comfortable than the usual ones in the Superliner cars.

Stepping out in Jacksonville to enjoy being back in Florida.  We arrived in Kissimmee about  an hour or so late, but our friends Ed and Barb were waiting for us.