April 11, Going to New Orleans
“…becomes humid during summer and like Florida it has the occasional hurricane.”- USA by Rail, 6th ed., 2005
Perhaps THE understatement of the book, in light of Katrina. I am looking forward to the city though my stop will be brief.
Sunset Limited is a great route as it covers a vast area of the southern half of the U.S. Post-2005, the line east of New Orleans has been suspended due to the devastation to the Gulf Coast so one could not ride from New Orleans all the way to Orlando as of now. Nevertheless, from Los Angeles traveling eastward, I got to see the landscape outside my window transform from the Wild West to Bayou Country. The desert sunset and sunrise in Arizona. The rare green vegetation, such as that in front of the Tucson station, was always a refreshing change after a long day of delays in the desert. Then there was the seemingly endless of prairie in Texas accentuated by the patches of wild flowers here and there. After Houston, we entered the Bayou country, and the scenery became more varied. The nature beauty of rice paddies, crawfish farms, cypress forest, and swamp land has to compete with the eccentricities of back country homes, general stores, churches, lumber yards and auto shops. The land shifts from one color to the next. It was the cracking yellow of the arid desert. It was the beckoning orange of a Texas sunrise. It was the crispy green of a new spring. It was rusty red of the backyard tool shed. All of them were pitted against the back drop of the bluest sky I can remember. It was all so damn distractingly mesmerizing. Doing my best, but my photographs are hopeless trying to catch one tenth of the live show. Like the Amtrak’s brochure, “it is the best scenery you ever slept through.”
posted by hedgehog @ 3:38 PM
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