Pit stop

After 48 hours on board the California Zephyr we traded the snow of the Sierra Nevadas for sun and palm trees. My aunt, all of my California cousins and their families came to meet us and we filled up the tiny Davis train station. One of my cousins lives only a few blocks from the train station , so we all returned to her house. As you can imagine families of eight don't get a whole lot of dinner invitations, so I am especially grateful to Mary and Sean for taking us in, all grubby and disheveled after two days on the train!












It was so wonderful to be together even if only for few hours. I had last seen my aunt and cousins at a family reunion 5 years ago. Since that time there had been one wedding and 6 new babies among all of us, so there was a lot of catching up to do. Everyone got fed and showered and we took advantage of a wonderful park to exercise all the kids.

Our next train, the CoastStarlight wasn't due until 11:30 pm, so the kids all collapsed onto couches and beds especially since we were still on Central time. At last the time came to head back to the train station. We lugged the kids there in various states of consciousness. Sean and Mary helped us into the train station, but when the train arrived we still needed to get the kids and carryon bags aboard. Bute5, sound asleep on the bench in the waiting room could not be roused enough to walk to the train with his backpack, necessitating a last minute shuffle so he and his bag could be carried. Once out in the cool air of the platform, he woke up enough to begin howling about how tired he was. This caused the other boarding passengers to nervously check their tickets and hope they were not on our car. In the end though we got everyone boarded and back to sleep with minimal disruption


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Location:Davis, CA