It's already Wednesday. How did that happen?

We have been having so much fun that I have forgotten to sit and write a blog.

Sunday we spent the day in San Rafael with my high school girlfriend and her husband.  On Monday while Evey and Eric were both at work, we exchanged our rental car because it had no front tag and the registration was expired.  Now we have a Nissan Versa, much easier to drive than a Dodge Charger and all legal.  We also tried to get a battery for my iPhone, but it had to be ordered.  We shopped and made dinner.  A busy and productive day.  Yesterday we hung out with Evey all day, took a walk with Kiwi, watched some TV, and had a delicious dinner that Mark and Evey prepared together.

Today we are hanging out at home until after lunch.  Then we plan to drive to the art museum on the campus of Stanford University then meet up with Eric in Mountain View for dinner before going to see the new Spiderman movie.  Every day is a blast here!

More pictures from the train plus some of Laverne and some of Kiwi on a walk.

Denver is also a Union Station.  We had a two hour wait here because they had to replace the engine.  We made up that time somehow and still arrived in Emeryville exactly on time.

A Trails and Rails volunteer guide from the National Park Service boarded in Denver and spoke for the next eight hours until Grand Junction, CO.  It was very interesting.

Wonderful observation car with one of many curves where we could see the front of our train.

We followed the Fraser river for awhile and then it merged with the Colorado River.  We followed the Colorado for 237 miles.

Lunch in the dining car.

We loved watching the topography change from swamps and palm trees in Florida through farmland in the heartland to mountains in the west.

We went through 27 tunnels on Thursday.  This is a car tunnel next to the railroad one.

We passed many, many white water rafters today.

Ron was our sleeping car attendant.  

Hoodoo pillars, a geologic formation most often seen in Bryce  Canyon, Utah.  We are not in that canyon, but we are seeing them along the train ride!

On our last day we had different speakers on the train from Reno through Sacramento as we went over the Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Donner Lake

Finally in the Golden State of CA.

Safe and sound five days later in Emeryville where we rented a car and drove down to San Jose.

On Saturday Evey became the Curly Baker.

Eric took Kiwi out for a bike ride.

The Curly Baker made four pans of brownies and two chocolate chip banana breads for an Apple meeting next week.

Mother and daughter enjoying some Reisling and brownies.

Evey and Eric made dinner for everyone Saturday night.

Mark and Kiwi enjoying some bonding time.

Sunday at the restaurant in San Rafael.

Laverne and me, friends since seventh grade.

After lunch we went to see the Dominican University campus where she used to work.

Mark is trying to get the dog statue to speak.  Hm.....

We drove back to San Jose via the Golden Gate Bridge, fun and scenic but full of traffic on a Sunday afternoon.

View of San Francisco from the bridge.

Watching TV with us on the couch at night.

Mark relaxing in Evey's kitchen.

Tuesday we walked to a nearby park with Kiwi.

Back in front of Evey and Eric's beautiful home that they refer to as The Gaertner Estate.

With Evey and Eric

The train travel was a lot of fun!  I posted pictures every day on Facebook, and then I created an album of over 400 pictures that I have shared with the kids and the couple who drove us to the train station.  I'll post a few here today.

I weighed myself this morning on Evey's scale.  Every scale is different, of course, and I weighed at 9:30 after breakfast, which means a pound or two more than at 7 a.m. before breakfast.  The scale said 288.7, which would be 2.5 pounds gained since I posted it last Sunday.  It's not great, but it's not terrible either.  I can only keep trying my best.

In about fifteen minutes we are driving up to San Rafael, maybe 90-120 minutes north of here, to meet up with my high school girlfriend and her husband for lunch at a place called Terrapin Crosswinds.  That should be fun.  We always try to get together at least once when we are in California, although she lives in Sonoma, way north of here.  Her birthday is this week, so I have a little gift for her.

We have been having a lot of fun playing with Evey's dog, Kiwi.  She is such a little cutie-pie.  Last night Eric and Evey made us a fabulous dinner of halibut, twice baked potatoes, and steamed broccoli.  It was a healthy and nutritious dinner.  Then I ate her homemade brownies and Ben and Jerry's ice cream for dessert.  LOL

Here's a few pictures from the train trip. This is last Monday when we boarded the train up through leaving Chicago Wednesday afternoon.  I'll post the rest of the trip tomorrow.

Mark is waiting for the Silver Meteor.  It was about half hour late.

I really enjoy how spacious the train seats are compared to airplanes.

Enjoying a whiskey at dinner in the dining car the first night.

Tuesday morning we pulled in to D.C.

We had about a seven hour lay-over, so most of the time we took turns sitting and reading and guarding stuff while the other one walked around and explored or just got some exercise.

The great hall of Union Station.

I walked around outside for awhile.  We thought about going to the Capitol or the Smithsonian, but it was just too hot and humid.  We decided to kill the time mostly in the station.  We ate lunch in the station and picked up food from Subway to take onboard for dinner the second night.

We settled in to our coach seats on the Capitol Limited to head to Chicago.

Harper's Ferry, WV is a beautiful stop.

That night we sat in the cafe car to watch a movie on Mark's iPad.  It was cold, so we wrapped our blankets around ourselves.

The next morning we were in Chicago's Union Station where we got to kill six hours in the Metro Lounge because we will be boarding a sleeper car next.

The lounge is huge with comfy couches and lots of electric sockets and USB ports.

Unlimited, free hot and cold drinks plus snacks were provided all day.

This station also has a great hall, so we both took a turn to walk around there.

The best thing in the Metro Lounge was the big, beautiful, clean shower with shower gel, shampoo, and conditioner provided.

After two nights in coach, we were each thrilled to take a long, hot shower!

Then it was time to board our roomette.  

We are literally the last room at the end of the last car.  That's the door at the end of our corridor looking out at the track inside the station as we pulled out of Chicago.

Getting ready to go

Yesterday we packed our big suitcases as well as the back pack we will each carry on to the train for our four nights.  This morning we are driving over to the train station to have our big suitcases shipped to CA a day earlier than us just in case they might miss their connection along the way.  This worked very well for us back in 2010 when we went from Washington, DC to Anaheim, CA.  This time it's Kissimmee, FL to Emeryville, CA, sort of between Berkley and Oakland.  We leave tomorrow and will arrive Friday. A rental car will be waiting across the street from the train station for us to drive south to San Jose for ten glorious days with Evey, Eric, and Kiwi. YAY!  I'm getting quite excited.

Meanwhile, there will be no blogs until next Saturday at the earliest because I won't be able to have internet on the train.  They claim to have Wi-Fi on the train from here to DC and then the train from DC to Chicago, but there is nothing from Chicago to Emeryville.  When we were on the auto train, there was Wi-Fi, but it was not very robust, so I'm not even going to try to do a blog.  I can easily write from Evey's house on her wi-fi on Saturday.

After we drop off the suitcases, we are going to the Cove because our Dermatologist will be there. He periodically volunteers a few hours of his time on a Sunday afternoon to look folks all over for suspicious things.  He found three suspicious moles on Mark last year and removed all three of them a few months later. Only one turned out to be something that might have turned in to something worse, but it's better to get anything suspicious removed.  Mark is actually going to schedule a full body scan at the office after we get back, but today the doctor can look his body all over and get a heads up on what might be there.  The doctor didn't find anything on me last year, but I did have a little scaly thing removed from my face that turned out to be nothing.  A different skin doctor took something off my back a few years ago that also was nothing.  Better safe than sorry, right?

I won't be writing tomorrow morning, so I'm going to log in my weight this morning for a record to see how the trip goes when I return.  I'm not packing the scale.  This morning I was 286.2.

Enjoy your week.  Talk to you on this blog on Saturday.