Amtrak California Zephyr 3 Days on the Most Scenic Route In America!

[Music] hey guys guess what it's time for another epic journey with amtrak we are in chicago's union station getting ready to hop on the california zephyr come on with us [Music] in today's video we bring you along as we traverse the country via the most scenic and iconic train route in america the california's effort this ride takes us from illinois through iowa nebraska colorado utah nevada and into california we'll ride through some of the most scenic sites in the country through the gorges and canyons of the rockies the famous moffett tunnel as well as through the sierra nevadas with an incredible view of donner pass and donner lake join us as we start at the iconic chicago union station union station is a destination on its own the beautiful architecture of this building will inspire you we begin our journey in the metropolitan lounge where we had the privilege of meeting up with several of the subscribers here on the channel say hi to us in the comments if we met you on this day so after a short delay we are given the go-ahead to board the train we walk through the station and down the platform as we meet our room attendant for the next few days and we find our room so let's give you a quick tour of the train we're starting out in the dining car as you can see they are all ready for dinner which will be our first meal on the train today next up we're going to take a look at the sightseer lounge this is also known as the observation car this car is a great place to go and relax for a change of pace and scenery meet up with other passengers both sleeper car passengers as well as coach passengers can use this car you'll find us down here several times throughout the ride now keep in mind that this does fill up quickly for the views they often rotate people in and out of this car when we get to the most scenic part of this trip in colorado all right we have boarded the california zephyr in chicago and we are just about to take off we are upstairs this is a super lander train and we are in room two now we've already done a little looking we think the train is heading that way and so we are gonna be on looking out the right side which will be the north side that is not the ideal side so uh when we get to colorado we may have to go to the observation car or the dining car we'll see how that works out but we're excited to be up high in room two and ready to go [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay this is our very first fresh air break we are in galesburg illinois um just a few hours from having left chicago on the california zephyr we also before we got off the train we ordered our dinner because we're going to eat in our train car tonight in our room so i'm excited about that looking forward to dinner we'll share that with you guys in just a few minutes okay we are ready for dinner here and um as i mentioned earlier we're gonna have it here in our room and just enjoy the evening from here other meals we'll have in the dining in the dining car and that's the nice thing is you can always make a choice as to where you want to eat your food if you want to enjoy it in your room you don't feel like going to the dining car you don't have to go or if you want to go then you can so here is what we have i'm having the lobster crab cake and i've had this before and i will not lie to you it is quite delicious for my main meal i'm having the salmon with some rice and some veggies and that looks really good too i've had that one before it's been a little while since i've had it so i'm super excited about that and then my absolute favorite is carrot cake and amtrak's carrot cake meets and exceeds my expectations of what a carrot cake should be like so i'm having that now rob this may come as a huge surprise is having meat and potatoes so this is the signature flat iron steak and he's got some green beans and carrots which i'm pretty sure he'll share most of with me and then he's got a baked potato with his for his dessert i did this in backwards order he's getting the green chili tamale and then for dessert he's got the chocolate tort this is actually his first time actually eating the chocolate tort as uh we have tried to get it numerous times and have not succeeded and we finally got it so yay he's gonna be excited to eat that and then we've got our drinks you do get one alcoholic beverage per person per ride so it's not every single day and you do have to consume it or get it at dinner you can't get it at breakfast or lunch um so there's that and then of course you can have water and any any other soft drinks that you like so we're going to dig in here i'm going to dig into this lobster crab cake because i'm super excited about it and i'm excited about everything i got but the other cool thing is we are about to cross mississippi which we're going to be eating while we go over the river and that is going to be really cool as well [Music] i've got the infamous flourless chocolate torte here and it's infamous because i've been on probably eight amtrak rides that were supposed to have this and none of them have had it so i have not had this yet and i'm about to have right now and i'm gonna find out right now how good it is here we go oh it's very rich it looks like kind of like a brownie no it's richer than a brownie richer than a brownie yeah that is very good take a look at that it's very rich so it's not a huge piece and you'll be thankful because that's very rich very good it was worth the almost two year wait to get this because i've been on so many trains and they had run out of and they had like a replacement which was really good but this was what i was wanting and it was worth the wait we are coming up on burlington iowa right now and the cool thing about this station is it is right across the mississippi river so in just a few minutes the train will be going over the mississippi and we should have a pretty good view from this side of the train [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] ottumwa iowa that is where we are stopped here there's a crew change i just like to say a tumwa we always get off here the last time we the last time we rode this train and we stopped here some boys ordered a pizza or like a bunch of pizzas it was kind of funny ordered some pizzas and they picked them up here at this met the delivery driver here at the station and had some pizzas so that was kind of funny but this is a nice quick a nice break you get because there is a full crew change and you got a few minutes to walk up and down the platform here which is nice stretch your legs get some fresh air uh before we head to nebraska it's about 11 30 at night and end of day one is here ellie is already asleep but i'm about to go to bed i think everyone in our car is asleep don't hear any noise but tomorrow is the big day so everyone's sleeping because we get to denver at 7 7am tomorrow once we leave there at about eight o'clock uh that's when the beautiful scenery starts we go through all the canyons of colorado so i'm about to go to sleep so i can be up for that so lights out and good night well we went to sleep in somewhere in the middle of nebraska woke up here in denver we're at denver union station we have about a half hour fresh air smoke break here so i'm gonna walk around the platform a little bit and then i think we're gonna go inside and grab some breakfast so guys when you have a little bit longer breaks like this i know you're super tempted to go off and do something but always stay close to the platform because you never know when you're going to hear that train horn and the all aboard and they you literally have to be on board in just a few seconds so make sure that you stay close to the platform or you will get left behind this is a completely full train today this is the most popular route on amtrak and we are getting into high season here so it's completely full uh so we're gonna go try to get breakfast now but it may be too crowded and we may have to get put on the waiting list of course fresh hot delicious already on my fourth pot of coffee this morning it's very busy this morning i'm also serving my entire lounge car menu my next announcement i'll be heading to breakfast right now i'm opening certainly we're in the water level ladies and gentlemen that's what's coming from the diner uh a bay wise man once told me all good things must come to an end so i'm gonna do a one two three last call for breakfast in the diner last call for breakfast mine is we do not charge at this point proceed in the lounge car however uh there are only 66 seats in that car and walking through a few minutes ago it's pretty full in there you guys have done a good good job using all the seeds so we're glad about that um however we have a lot of other people who are asking to sit in the lounge and they deserve a turn as well so this is how we do it try not to make a big deal about it but just ask you to be kind to your fellow travelers for those of you who are already in the lounge car enjoy this beautiful ride all the way up south boulder creek south golden canyon but once we get to frasier colorado that's what we're going to ask you to return to your seats and your private accommodations and we're going to give some other folks a chance to sit in the lounge car they will also get a two-hour turn and after that we open the lounge card to whoever wants to sit in there uh after that it pretty much is open and you can always find a seat so if you're in there now appraise your colorado we're going to ask you to return to your seats if the lounge doesn't fill up after we give the next folks a turn to make that announcement so that you can come back but for now sit back and enjoy and we'll remind you at frasier thank you oh goodness so we're about to enter the canyons and as you can see out the window here we are in a driving snowstorm we've done this ride multiple times and this is the first time we've had this much snow coming down um it's actually starting to stick to the ground up here so we're gonna stay here and kind of enjoy this it's gonna be a little bit different view for us this time around [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] my yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] all right folks we're about 10 minutes out from the world famous mafia tunnel just some information on the tunnel for you the tunnel was built between the years 1923 and 1928. the first train to traverse the tunnel was a nine-car lumber train from frasier to denver and uh that was on february 24th 1928. the tunnel is 6.2 miles long and it does take 10 minutes to traverse folks so please help us out and do us a favor folks if you can to help keep those smelly diesel fumes in the tunnel and outside the train we do ask that inside the tunnel everyone remain inside the same car once again folks uh inside the tunnel we do ask that everyone remain in the same car to help keep those smelly diesel fumes out of the train mama tunnels coming up here in about 10 minutes [Music] do [Music] so [Music] this is frasier winter park which i think is the highest elevation station of all the amtrak stations and it is cold it is uh snowy and i unfortunately still have my flip-flops on because it was warmer when we left so it's been a while since we've had snow so i'm gonna see if hallie still remembers how to throw a snowball i'm not sure she does she's from florida so i'm gonna let her throw one at the camera and see if she can hit it let's see how she does here hold this one i'll make you a snowball okay oh that's good packing ooh that's a good one okay that that's actually probably like that's like ice ball so all right see if you can hit the cam oh hold on my football camera okay see if you can hit the camera with it all right she she did hit it that was pretty good don't get in a snowball fight with her i guess i had good aim yeah ish she did pretty well so uh we got about 10 minutes here i think beautiful scenery here it looks just amazing it's definitely not it's cold but it's not as cold as i thought it was going to be and next up we're getting ready to head into the canyon so it's going to be even more amazing we never imagined we'd have snow on this trip when we left new york so there we go i think we still have yeah okay now i think we got it clean for the rest of the trip time to get back on and alex [Music] i tell you there's so many beautiful sights we have exhausted the batteries on our phones and on our cameras so we've got multiple things charging here but thank goodness for this guy because in a super liner you only get this one outlet here and so not only is this amazing because you can plug this in and plug in something here but there are four usb ports at the top so you can actually charge five things at once we've never had a problem with it before um i was charging stuff a little while ago and used my my hair dryer on here no problem whatsoever never had a problem with it anywhere we don't leave home without this because this is my best bud because we always have so many usb things that we charge so i'm going to put a link down in the description for this if you want to grab one of these you will once you get one and you've used it while you travel you will not want to leave home without it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] hey guys uh you know i love to give room tours and today we are on the california zephyr um as you've heard and we are riding um in a super liner room at and i want to show you a little bit around here this is a nice setup that they've got going for us so we've got the river right outside us right there take a look at that before we hop in okay so here's the setup if you've got two seats facing each other so there's this seat here and then right across you've got this seat here and then in between them you've got this nice little table folds out and it has flaps that fold out as well so it's perfect for sitting there getting some work done if you want to do that or just sit and enjoy the view or sit and enjoy the view and enjoy a meal while you're at it so that's really nice and i do enjoy that and then let's take a look at what comes with each seat so one of the downfalls of the super liner room at is there only one outlet how do we resolve that situation because as you can see we got quite the party going on here so this is my favorite uh thing that we travel with it's an adapter um we use it in every country never had a problem with it it's got four usbs up here and you can still plug something in here so you can charge five things at one time with this so it is perfect for us might be perfect for you as well and then here is a temperature control it's cooler on one side warmer on the other and then in the middle just says normal so normal would be whatever the temperature is kind of out in the hall if you want it to be cooler you can turn it if you want to be warmer turn it that way it's not going to change the temperature a ton but it will change it a little bit you will be able to tell the difference and then right here is a reading light turn that right on with the little white button and turn it right back off so that's nice right there i'll let you enjoy the view as we switch sides and i'll show you what's on this side on this side you've got the push to call attendant button right here is this is the only control for turning the lights on and off in the room including the night light which again is not my favorite because there's only one way to turn everything on and off so you can have the ceiling lights off on in the middle it's everything's off and to the right is the night light is on here is your music control except it's not music there's no music it is for the pa announcements if you want to hear those in your room you can control the volume or turn it all the way off and not hear them in your room at all and then up here is another reading light like the other side turn that on or off and you've got access right there you've got these curtains that shut on both sides you can pull them shut now if you want to keep them open like totally out of the way we usually put them in between the cushion like that the way you see right there and then they're kind of out of the way now right here you've got a step here two steps here and here and that takes you up to the upper bunk where rob sleeps he'll show you that in just a minute and then you have a mirror here for when you're getting ready in the morning brush your hair and all that kind of good stuff and you'll be able to see there now i'm storing this backpack here during the day but at night i put it in the corner of my bed so it's out of the way because um at night it's hard to see it's a black bag and rob could step on it and miss the step and fall down in the night and then on this side we do have a little trash can right here and then we also have a closet here and there's some washcloths and hand towels and then there's a hook there and you can hang a couple of jackets and you can see that rob's got his jacket out here on this hook there's also another coat hook just outside the closet there as well so that's the downstairs i'm going to pass this up to rub and he's going to show you what the upstairs looks like all right time to talk upper bunk and this is my bunk bed here it is a great place to be you kind of have a lot of privacy up here you don't have any windows though over here on the side and that's kind of a bummer because i do like to look out at night you only get those in the viewliner you won't get any windows on a super liner which is the routes that are west of chicago so i do also have this uh little nut here and in the net i keep some snacks my headphones some water any medication i might need in the night and that's good they do also give you a blanket up here and the pillow i've brought my trusty travel pillow with me as well that's a good thing to have now one other thing i have up here is a light right here because it is kind of hard to reach the controls downstairs you'd have to come down and do that so i don't usually want to do it at night i just leave use that night and to get up and down the best thing to do is to go in head first and go back out feet first because you've got these steps right here that you can step on and they're pretty easy to go down backwards so this is i wouldn't call this the biggest area to sleep in but it is nice and it is comfortable the bed is plenty long for most people and i really like it [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] so we've made a stop here in glenwood springs after all the pretty stuff um unloading and loading some people here so we came out here it's another fresh air break and it's always good to enjoy however um i'm wearing this cardigan should have worn my jacket it's a little bit cool out here but it is nice to get the fresh air while we're here in glenwood springs wanted to update you on what the price of this trip was that's a big question people always have and we paid 563 dollars for this three day two night uh trip on in a room at and the way we got that price was we booked really really early at least six months ahead of time and we had a companion coupon that we had previously so that knocked the price down a little bit further and so that's what we paid 563 that's about as good as you're gonna get i don't think i've ever seen this cheaper even during the buy one get one sale so uh yeah my advice to you if you want to get a good price this book as early as possible [Music] interesting side note has occurred today we are traveling on a side track now because with the main track is right there which is to the right of us and there were some large rocks on that track that they can't get cleared in time so we're on the side track and we're following a freight train but it is going to go very slow they said so it is going to severely delay our arrival into grand junction right now but hopefully we'll make up some time later tonight [Music] all right we're here in grand junction we've got a crew change going on all kinds of fun activities there is a little store over here over my shoulder where you can buy snacks sandwiches salads sundry items anything like that this is a good stop for that little stretch of your legs and nice time to get off the train and when you do stop here if you don't need to go to the store you can check out this old train station behind us here grand union what's it say grand union depot yeah yeah look at that it is it's cool it'd be amazing if they restored that that's a beautiful building yeah it's really cool to check out so that's something to look at if you don't need to shop all right dinner in utah started off really well i had the now i'm tamales a flat iron steak i got it cooked medium tonight which is under all that sauce you really can't see let's see how it is very i'm glad that everyone at my table got the same thing i did so they won't try to take any of mine tonight okay so rob got the flatiron's tape with the baked potato i got it with the polenta because i always like to be different than wrap so let's try it out oh my goodness the polenta is so creamy and i think it's got cheese in it it might it might be like cheddar polenta or something but ooh that is good [Music] yum yum yum okay so i did not get two desserts but rob is letting me try a bite of his chocolate tort so let's try this out he did say this is super rich so let's see i'm going to take a tiny bite because i'm scared it's like eating pure chocolate it is so good it's like the richest brownie you'll ever eat now my all-time favorite the carrot cake [Music] definitely the carrot cake [Music] good morning day three and we are going through nevada which is very pretty to wake up to there's like some salt flats out there and i just love this landscape so we ordered our breakfast to have in the room this morning and i got the scrambled eggs and bacon and potatoes now i've never had scrambled eggs for breakfast here but i'm wondering if they're like real scrambled eggs or like powdered ones you can tell pretty easily what they are so i'm going to try to eat some here and see what these are like those are good i'm pretty sure those are real you would be able to tell if it was like you know camp bags when you're a kid those are not good so this isn't the real deal i like these recommended and uh i just felt like there's no run-on one today so that's what i got so it's our last morning here on the california zephyr and we have such beautiful views here from our room that we thought why not have breakfast in our room so we've ordered breakfast here and i have ordered the three egg omelet and i ordered it with cheese cheddar cheese as you can see in all the veggies i love all the veggies so got all of those and then it comes with potatoes and i got you can choose from the chicken sausage pork sausage or bacon or you don't have to have any of them i got the chicken sausage so i'm gonna try that out you also get a croissant which is huge it's way too much food but you know it is what it is so let's try this chicken sausage i've had it before this one looks a little bit different than the one i've had before so let's see how that is it's really good it's got kind of a little sweet taste to it so it's not spicy it's got a nice little sweet taste to it so i'm gonna continue to eat my breakfast here as i enjoy the view the views here of northern nevada just finishing up our breakfast here and just wanted to point out that there is no charge for the meals if you're in the supercars they are included with your ticket and so there's no price or anything like that uh and if you're in the coaches they're not available to you at this time but there is a cafe available and you can get breakfast lunch or dinner there and that does come with a fee and they're pretty reasonable actually not like going to a movie theater or something like that it's pretty reasonable just like any restaurant would be so that's the deal with the prices of the food and it's pretty good price and pretty good food for the money okay we woke up here last day arrival day we are in reno nevado for a fresh air break walking around the platform here for just a few minutes we'll get back on continue to enjoy the views through nevada and into we'll be going over donner pass today as well so there's still good views today to look at so make sure to stay here because i've got some great views of donner pass coming up soon [Music] so [Music] all right i've got the savory chili in a baked potato you can just do it in a bowl so you don't if you don't want to eat a potato you don't have to you can do it just in a bowl and they have various toppings they have sour cream scallions and cheese that you can get on top of that the sour cream is in a little separate container here um and we can just put that on top i set it inside of rob's cover because we're eating in our room and when the attendant brought it over some of it leaked out so it's kind of a mess so i put it in here so that it leak all over the place so i'm going to finish dressing my potato here and dig in i've had this before and it is really quite tasty so if you like chili this is actually a really good version of chili so i would highly recommend for you to grab that i like that nice crispy taste of the scallions in there now um good thing to note is that this chili does have beans in it so if you don't like beans in your chili i know that's super controversial in our family rob does not like beans in his chili and i like beans in my chili so we used to do two pots at our house i don't know about you guys if you like beans in your chili or not but this chili has beans in it over here today is just a really bad day we were so close to getting in on time and as you heard we've been blocked by freight trains just a few hours outside of emeryville we were actually scheduled to get in 42 minutes early but now there is a freight train ahead of us that has the the crew of it can no longer work so they're waiting on a new crew to arrive so we're gonna actually go and reverse to the last station get on some different tracks and then try to go forward so we have switched seats ali is now in my seat over there so she will be facing forwards as we go backwards well we had a little bit of a delay as you heard rob telling you but we did make it to sacramento we got just a couple minutes here so we're gonna do a quick lap around the platform jump back up on the train and we'll be ready to roll into emeryville in about an hour-ish i think [Music] all right that's it we are here at emeryville california made it all the way from chicago came through snowy colorado and we are here although it is sunny it is a smidge cool but not enough that i need a jacket we enjoyed our trip we hope you enjoyed coming along with you guys don't forget to subscribe to the channel give us a like we'll see you on the rails

Channel: Grounded Life Travel

Views: 60,663

Keywords: california zephyr, amtrak, amtrak california zephyr, california zephyr amtrak, first class amtrak, amtrak roomette, roomette amtrak, amtrak first class, amtrak sleeper car, amtrak sleeper, amtrak scenic route, amtrak food, amtrak dining, amtrak traditional dining, amtrak vacation, amtrak vacations, amtrak vlog, amtrak tips, amtrak superliner, superliner roomette, amtrak superliner roomette, amtrak observation car, amtrak train, amtrak routes, amtrak travel, amtrak help

Id: JRIRxz1mgO4

Length: 68min 46sec (4126 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 29 2022