Rails and Roads — Phoenix Forties

Dec 8

Dec 8 Rails and Roads

The long awaited train ride happened today and it was fabulous!! We took a little tourist train trip through the Redwoods on a little narrow gauge railway that just happening to be very steep. (Dad - there was one section that had an 8.5% grade and another that had a 12% grade!!). The track was so steep and slick in places that the little engine had a lever that distributed sand on the tracks just in front of the wheels for extra traction. Aside from being on a train through the ancient Redwoods, the track also did a full horseshoe bend on itself that was one of the tightest rail curve I’ve ever seen. An hour and half of being on a train through an ancient forest truly filled my cup for the day! Other highlights: we learned what poison oak looks like, we saw a fairy circle and we saw a granary tree where the woodpeckers store their winter supplies.

In other things, my navigational skills are what might be described as sub-optimal and I don’t think I’ve managed to navigate anywhere in 40 plus years without some kind of wrong turn. So it was unfortunate that today was my turn to be navigator for the day and it was a sad tally of navigational challenges that tested us all. Five wrong turns and an extra half hour to get to Roaring Camp Railroad, a complete miss of the Moss Beach Tide Pools and three slight issues getting into San Francisco. Given our proximity to San Jose, is a classic Burt Baccarach Hal David number sung by both Dionne Warwick and Karen Carpenter: Do You Know the Way to San Jose. Fun fact: it was one of Dionne’s biggest hits even though she thought it was a “dumb song”

Even poor navigational skills couldn’t miss Devils Slide however which is the last of the astonishing scenery before entering San Francisco which is so named because its a cliffside road that spent alot of time closed due to rock slides and was eventually replaced with tunnels in 2013. It’s now a scenic walk along the coast that has a number of WW2 sentry posts and forts. For Tash - this is part of a 1200 mile coastal trail that runs from Oregon to Mexico….

So another fabulous day of touristing with 70 miles driven and 9671 steps taken