Denver

Good Morning America! At last I have had a good night's sleep and we don't have to rush about as much this morning. Even had chance to wash my hair!  We have to have the cases outside the room for  half 7, go to breakfast and be in the lobby for 9.50 am. Which is a lot easier than 6.30 or 7 am. Today is the fabulous Thursday 13th September 2012.  We are still at the Hampton Inn, Grand Junction (1 night stay) and we get complimentary breakfast. How good is life? Life is good as most of the tellys say here when you put them on. Today we will be taken forward on our journey, yes  folks we are on a journey, from Grand Junction Railway Station to Denver. It will take most of the day but the views as we cross the Rockies are supposed to be spectacular. Cameras are at the ready! I will eventually work out how to put photos on here. 
The train journey on the California Zephyr proved to be as awesome as Pauline expected,  (Alan).  The climb over North America's continental divide follows the Colorado and Fraser rivers and starts gently enough.  At Glenwood Springs, however, the mainly single track line enters an extraordinary gorge cut by the river as it found a westward escape from the Rocky Mountains. As the line rises through a succession of ever narrower canyons it becomes perched upon a tiny rock shelf high above the fast flowing water and twisting around every curve, with towering fractured rock walls on both sides. Where side valleys join astonishing vistas of other worlds open up, and every few miles a parallel loop line is provided to permit a train coming in the opposite direction to pass (or be passed). For mile after mile there is little evidence of human habitation, but suddenly a cluster of cabin like dwellings will signify an old mining or farming community. One of the biggest is at Bond where a freight only line from Craig in the north trails in and huge coal trains can be seen in sidings awaiting a path to some distant power plant or steel works.  The scale of the scenery blows an observers mind, and building this route in the 19th century must have been a titanic effort. Nowadays a modern (often stacked eastbound over westbound) highway uses the same path, but on the other side of the river, and the cost of this must have been enormous!  The railway passes through the ski resort towns of 
Granby and Fraser on gradients of increasing severity until the west-east continental water-shed is 
reached at a summit marked by the six mile long Moffat tunnel. After that the line drops on an 
astonishingly steep helter-smelter of tunnels and reverse loops until it bottoms out on the broad 
agricultural plain around the city of Denver. Not a trip to be easily forgotten!
Just arrived (train station 7 pm) at the Warwick Hotel, Denver but nearly 8.30 pm by the time we got to the room.  Alan and Nick,  the tour manager, arranged for a group of the men (10) to go to the Forney Museum to see the Big Boy engine tomorrow. I suggested the women come with me down the 16th Street Mall, where we can veer off to see the old original houses of Latimar Square and the historically famous Brown Palace Hotel. Then we can all meet up at the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. 
My legs are swollen and I have tiny fat feet; all this sitting on coaches and trains. I have been walking about as much as possible just  hope I don't get thrombosis.