some highlights:

- Racing through West Texas in the dead of night, trying to gain time (we were about 4-5 hours behind). This was fine until some drunks from the club car pulled the emergency brakes. Still wound up in LA with over an hour to spare before catching the transfer train.
I road coach, and I had two seats to myself the whole way.

- The absolutely breathtaking views of Northern California/Oregon/Washington. WOW.. WOW WOW WOW. I LOVED Dunsmuir, CA. And I still had two seats to myself all the way to Seattle. I chose to take an earlier bus across the border into Vancouver.

The trip back:

- Almost a fight happened just after boarding the Coast Starlight in Seattle. Two guys making racist statements to each other.

I think I was tired, because the trip to LA just wasn't any fun for me. We were running late the whole time. We made it to LA with about 45 minutes to switch trains--which is very easy.

The Sunset Limited was PACKED coming out of LA. Every seat in my car was filled. There was a couple with a screaming baby behind me, and several people came on carrying bags of Kentucky Fried Chicken which they proceeded to eat, smelling up the whole car.

I went to the club car which very quickly filled up with people desparate to get drinks before the club car closed for the night. People came out of there with four and five bottles of beer. It looked like it was going to be a loud and long night. I had heard of "upgrading" so I went to talk to the conductor about it. It turned out that I could get a sleeper from Palm Springs to Houston for just $91 so I snapped it up. I was VERY pleased with the room, services, quality, fellow passengers and didn't venture back out to the coach for the duration of the trip. I plan to use Amtrak again, and will try to upgrade to sleeper again.