Tag Archives: West Coast

Current Affairs, Food & Drink, Memories & History, Pleasures, Travel

The Coast Starlight is a cruise on rails, and the food’s pretty good | San Francisco Chronicle

By Carl Nolte, June 18, 2022, Updated: June 18, 2022 10:40 a.m.

The northbound Coast Starlight arrives at Santa Barbara for the travelers’ return trip to Emeryville. Carl Nolte / The Chronicle

The long vacation trip to Europe fell through. Too complicated. So now this season’s vacation plan calls for something different: short getaway trips around the West.

And the best so far has been a quick trip to Santa Barbara by train. Something different.

It was the Sailor Girl’s idea. She’s my companion and the navigator on small adventures. “We’ll go first class,” she said, “in one of those little rooms. It’ll be fun.” She didn’t have to say it twice. I’m a believer in the gospel according to Edna St. Vincent Millay: “There isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, no matter where it’s going.”

from article…

We rode Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, down to Santa Barbara on Friday and back again on Sunday. The Starlight is a long-distance train and runs 1,377 miles every day down the West Coast from Seattle to Los Angeles. So we just did a portion of the run, enough to get a good feel. It’s not our first time on the Starlight, and every trip is a bit different.

Source: The Coast Starlight is a cruise on rails, and the food’s pretty good

Current Affairs, Food & Drink, Memories & History, Pleasures, Travel

Coast Starlight: 24 hours on one of America’s most scenic train routes | CNN Travel

Jessie Yeung, CNN • Published 4th February 2022

From article…

(CNN) — Along the West Coast of the United States, 1,377 miles of railroad tracks run from Seattle to Los Angeles — a route often named as one of the most beautiful train journeys in America.

The route, called the Coast Starlight, takes 35 hours in total to wind through Washington state, cross Oregon and snake down the California coastline.

From article…

It’s billed on Amtrak’s website as “a grand west coast train adventure,” and a quick Google search turns up a number of travel blogs and YouTube videos boasting picturesque scenery along the way.

Source: Coast Starlight: 24 hours on one of America’s most scenic train routes | CNN Travel

Memories & History, Pleasures, Politics

The California Dream Is Dying – The Atlantic

The once-dynamic state is closing the door on economic opportunity.

By Conor Friedersdorf, July 21, 2021

About the author: Conor Friedersdorf is a California-based staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.

Emily Haasch

Behold California, colossus of the West Coast: the most populous American state; the world’s fifth-largest economy; and arguably the most culturally influential, exporting Google searches and Instagram feeds and iPhones and Teslas and Netflix Originals and kimchi quesadillas.

This place inspires awe.

If I close my eyes I can see silhouettes of Joshua trees against a desert sunrise; seals playing in La Jolla’s craggy coves of sun-spangled, emerald seawater; fog rolling over the rugged Sonoma County coast at sunset into primeval groves of redwoods that John Steinbeck called “ambassadors from another time.”

–from article

This landscape is bejeweled with engineering feats: the California Aqueduct; the Golden Gate Bridge; and the ribbon of Pacific Coast Highway that stretches south of Monterey, clings to the cliffs of Big Sur, and descends the kelp-strewn Central Coast, where William Hearst built his Xanadu on a hillside where his zebras still graze.

No dreamscape better inspires dreamers. Millions still immigrate to my beloved home to improve both their prospects and ours.

Yet I fear for California’s future. The generations that reaped the benefits of the postwar era in what was the most dynamic place in the world should be striving to ensure that future generations can pursue happiness as they did. Instead, they are poised to take the California Dream to their graves by betraying a promise the state has offered from the start.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: The California Dream Is Dying – The Atlantic