Inside America's MOST SCENIC Train (Was It Worth It-)

This is the California Zephyr and it's considered to be the most scenic train in America. So we wanted to put that to the test and take the train from Chicago all the way to San Francisco. We've been on a lot of trains and seen America in some of the most unique ways, which means we're not easily impressed. So here's the plan. We'll rate each stretch, share the best moments, and by the end, you'll know if this train is worth planning a whole trip around. Let's go. Let's do it. Nothing like that cold Chicago air. Top of the stairs. All right. Welcome aboard as always. Thank you for choosing Amtrak Casual Motor Transportation. Here we go. Getting in here is a bit tricky with all this luggage. Welcome to our new home. So to truly test if this is America's most scenic train route, we're breaking the 52-hour journey into six stretches. This first stretch is from Chicago to Omaha, Nebraska. We'll be rating each stretch based on three things, wow factor, range of views, and screen verse reality. Does it look like what you see in the pictures? We have a jam-packed next few days going east to west across the United States. A lot of states Cole and I have never been to. I'm super excited about that. So to give you a little bit of context, we just got off a 52-hour train traveling from Miami to Chicago. By the end of this trip, we'll have spent close to 100 hours on trains. I'll give you a room tour in just a little bit, but this train has an observation car. We've never been on a train with an observation car before, so I feel like sitting in her room, we're kind of missing out on all the views. Here we go. How's it going? Good, how are you? What's up, boo? Better now. This building is so cool. Wow, look at this. Oh my goodness, look at this solar farm. Oh yeah. Look at the windmills in the distance. It's awesome. I'm going to live in here for the next three days of my life. I'm kind of freaking out right now to be honest. It's like stimulation overload. I can't take it all in fast enough. I mean, it's gone. We left Florida a few days ago for Chicago, and the landscape has changed so dramatically. That's what I love about our country, the diversity of it. You can cross in on a train and watch the whole landscape transform at 50 miles an hour. So as the sun is setting behind us over here, it just made me think about it. We've got three days, two nights, and my goal for this train trip is to see every sunrise and every sunset sitting from this observation car. I'm really fighting the urge to sit here until it gets dark just to see everything that I can see. But at the same time, I know that you want to see a tour of the train. So let's do a quick tour of the train. The California Zephyr has 10 cars in total. Two engines, a luggage car, three sleeper cars, a dining car, an observation car, which you've already seen, and finally two coach cars. So we came downstairs in one of the coach cars. And just to show you what's going on down here, we actually have the main restrooms for the coach guests. Nothing special by any means. And then you also have a luggage rack here for all of your big luggage that you don't want to be at your seat. This is the dining car where we'll have all of our meals. I'm excited because it's community seating. So hopefully we'll make some friends. And you already know, I'll talk to a sign if he'll talk back. Oh, so this is just the cafe. Yeah. So these are the Superliner roomettes. And they're actually smaller than what we saw on the previous train, the Floridian. They do not have a bathroom inside here. So it is set up for two people to sit down. And then there is this lays out into a bed. And then, of course, the bunk bed folds down above. The sleeper cars are actually split in half. The back half are roomettes. And then the front half of the sleeper car are all bedrooms. So on this one, there are one, two, three, four, five bedrooms in a line here. Come on into our bedroom. We're in room C. This is a bedroom on the train. It's going to look oddly familiar to what you saw on our last train video when we rode the Floridian. So we do have a bed here. It's a couch during the day. It folds out into a bed at night. We have this one, which pulls down and makes a bunk bed. This spot up here will be my bed for obvious reasons. There's not a lot of headroom. And we have a sink where we wash our hands, get ready in the morning. We've got the Beekman 1802 fresh air lotion with goat milk. So fancy on track. Let's see. So we have another place to sit right here, which I really like this seat. I don't particularly love riding backwards, but it's not horrible. This here folds out. So if you wanted to have a meal or get some work done here in the room. As for the storage space in this room, there are a couple of places. This one up top being the best. There's one underneath the seat here. And then we've been able to manage to squeeze a little bit under the couch bed. That's what I'm going to call it. I'm going to call it the couch bed. You do want to pack light. One other thing I do want to mention for storage is this closet. We do have this little closet here, which we are hanging our coat up in. With the bedroom, we do have our own private toilet and shower. We've got, it's basically a wet head style. So when you take a shower, it gets all wet in here. So we've got to make sure we cover up the toilet paper. No one wants soggy teepee. Super, super gross when that happens. And I think that just about covers it. All right. It may not be from the observation car, but we did catch our first sunset of the trip. So you're probably wondering why are you guys riding this Zephyr now? You see, our friends, Greg and Jen, who we met four years ago when we first started this channel and who were actually our first patrons ever, came and joined us for one of our group travel trips down in the Southern Caribbean. And during that time, I bought Greg a handmade hat out of palm fronds, which he actually left behind. Well, Greg, not only are we coming to visit you in California riding this train, but guess what I have with me? That's right. I'm bringing you your hat back. I can't wait to see his face when I come out off of this train and they pick us up in San Francisco wearing this hat. I'm going to tuck it away up here in this corner in hopes that this keeps it nice and safe. 5.30 dinner reservations. Your table's now ready. 5.30. Where do you want us? All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Well, we are having the same menu as the last few days on the Floridian, but this time the appetizer is a little bit different. We actually had some coconut shrimp, which was really good. And we just went over the Mississippi River, which was majority of the frozen, but that was really cold. And we also have a freight train next to us right now. So getting to see some of our views at the same time, which is really cool. Now it's time to test the shower. And hopefully, I'm praying that the water will be hot. That is my worst nightmare. Update. The shower is hot. It is great. Actually, it was phenomenal. I'm really happy. So this is the sleeping situation. My bed's up there. Looks like I got to be careful. I'm going to bonk my head. It looks pretty tight up there. All right. I'm going to make my journey to my... You could sit here. I really can't. We tried this already. I know. Oh. Whoa. Make sure you put your seatbelt up. Whoa. Oh. A lot of headroom. If there's turbulence, I shouldn't fall out of the bed. All righty. You want to turn the lights off? I love you. I love you, baby. While we try and get some sleep, let's review our ratings for the first stretch. Today, we passed mainly farmlands throughout Illinois, and I could tell Cole's inner child was full of joy. So he'd probably give the wow factor a five out of five. He sure loves some farms. For range of views, we'll give it a three out of five. And screen versus reality, it sure looked like farmland to me. Good morning to everyone, except for these three pimples that decided to show up on my forehead. It is 6.32, I think. My watch says one thing, my phone says another, but the sun is starting to come up on the horizon behind us. So we're about to get dressed really quick and head to the observation car. I gotta say, I slept really, really well last night. How did you sleep? I slept good. I slept really good. We just went through the food car on the way to the observation car, and it smells so good. There's a lot of people in there already eating breakfast, but we wanted to come in here first so we could catch the sunrise. Our goal for today is to literally capture as many views as humanly possible in this observation car as we can, because this is just going to be incredible. I just know it already. Wow, we're seeing our first glimpse of mountains. Rocky mountains are over here with snow top on them. So beautiful. It's so crazy. Now that we got to see the sunrise, it's time for some breakfast. You enjoying the trip so far? You guys ate already. Yeah? What's the downs? The sleep. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we can understand that for sure. Oh, look at the mountains. That is what's so cool. The Rockies are just absolutely gorgeous. Our first glimpse. Thank you so much. That looks amazing. Yum. Did you get the quesadilla too? I did. So our new friends from across the way, they just rode the Zephyr a few days ago to Chicago, and now they're taking it back to California. I think it's so cool that you're doing it twice. Oh, my God. That is our bucket list. And then we... This is bucket list, number one. Welcome to Denver. For those of you going beyond Denver, we are on the mountain time. It is currently 747. Welcome to Denver. We just had a yummy breakfast, and now we are in Denver. Good morning, Simon. How are you? This is our longest stop on the trip and the end of stretch two. So with an hour in Denver, we think it's time for some coffee. You know, one thing I've really started to appreciate at these stops are when you can get out and stretch your legs. Union Station. Travel by train. Yeah. This is beautiful. While we get some coffee, why don't we give you the ratings for stretch number two? Unfortunately, we couldn't see much going through Nebraska, but honestly, this morning, the sunrise made up for that. So we're giving a four out of five to the wow factor, a two out of five to the range of views, considering we couldn't see anything last night. And we'll give it a five out of five to screen verse reality, because I mean, did you see that sunrise? Going in and coming. Straight to the observation car to get our best spot. And just like that, we are leaving Denver. All right, so I made some new friends. Your names were Lauren and Nathaniel. What are you guys looking forward to the most on this trip? The views. What part of the train are you more excited about? Pretty much excited for everything. Yeah, we're probably like 45 minutes outside of Denver. Scenery starting to change a little bit. Getting into the foothills. How are you feeling right now? I'm so excited. Have I said I'm excited yet? I'm super excited. So excited. Super excited. So we're sitting here talking to our neighbors. And next thing you know, I look down and I see a whole herd of elk just laying right here alongside of the railroad. We almost missed them. But next thing you know, as soon as I saw them, the entire train song, everyone just turned. Whiplash. Yeah, whiplash is right. But I'm actually really glad that I brought this little cheap set of binoculars because you get to like, really, I'm looking up into the hill. Oh, look at this tunnel. Are we going to go up in this tunnel? Yeah. Look at the tunnel right there. Look at the tunnel. We are. We're about to go around. All right. We're getting ready to go through the tunnel right here. Here it is. All right. That was a short one. Our first tunnel. That was good. This is insane. We do. I literally don't want to blink. My eyes are getting drier by the minute. I'm not kidding. I don't want to miss anything. Look at that. Look at those rocks. That's really cool. Another tunnel. Is that three? Is that four? Three or four, yeah. It's so cool. We are literally getting ready to go into the Moffat Tunnel. As we speak. So this is the highest point of elevation that the train will reach on the entire trip. 10,000 feet. And I think this is seven miles long is what I heard. Six or seven miles, yeah. Yeah. So we're literally going under the continental divide. Not much to see here. So since we're in the tunnel for such a long time, they actually pressurize the train cars. So you can't walk about the train. You can't go to different cars. They lock the doors. And we're kind of locked in here for the next seven miles in darkness. So I think we should ask our friends what they think about Greg's hat. What do you think? All right, let's do it. So I want to know, what do you think about Greg's palm frond hat? I mean, it's different. I don't know. It's different, yeah. It is cool. It's cool? I think it's cool. Would you say nice hat, Greg, for us? Nice hat, Greg. All right, there we go. All right, Greg. I do want to tell you this hat must be high quality because that's a lot of miles and it's held up really, really good. It has, right? That's a nice purchase there. Nice hat, Greg. Will you please leave a comment and say nice hat, Greg? I mean, look at this thing. Isn't it flattering? We just made it through. We made it. Yeah. Wow, and look at all the snow. It's so bright. That is the ski area behind us. Oh, wow. What do you think of the view so far? It's been amazing. It's really, really cool. We just came back to our room. It is almost lunchtime and we're going to enjoy lunch in the privacy of our room, which has me cleaning things up a little bit and thinking about the packing situation. Now, when you live on a train for multiple days at a time, you really start to think differently about how you pack. You need things that are easy to grab, organize, and doesn't turn into chaos every time you change seats or move between different cars. And that's why I love Nomad Lane's Bento Bag and the Tamodachi Sling. The Bento Bag is basically our mobile base. Camera batteries, computer, hard drive chargers, headphones, snacks. Literally everything has a place, which is huge on a train where space is tight and things are constantly shifting. What's awesome about the Bento Bag, it's small enough to fit underneath the train seat and also under airplane seats. So it's your perfect weekend or getaway bag. And then the Tamodachi Sling is what I keep on me when we're walking through the cars or heading to the observation lounge. Even hopping off the train for a quick stop. It's small, but it holds more than you expect and it keeps my hands free, which matters way more than you think when you're on a moving train. When you're traveling like this, you don't need more stuff. You just need the right stuff packed well. These bags have made train life way easier for us. If you're curious about either of these, you can check out the QR code here. I'll also put a link to Nomad Lane down in the description below. So as we're sitting here eating our lunch and looking out the window here, we're talking about something that we didn't realize this train trip would be for us. And that's almost like a scouting route. We are seeing all these little like towns and areas through the mountains here that we would love to come back and actually spend some time in. What's really sad is that we don't have service right now. So I can't even like pull up a map to see exactly where we are within the mountain range. So I'm going to have to go back later on Google Earth or Google Maps and really kind of like follow the train tracks to figure out, oh, this is where we saw that, you know, one building or that one place that we want to go look at, which is really cool. I'm getting extremely fatigued. All of these views are just so peaceful and calming. And I'm just watching them go by. My eyelids are getting heavy. But I'm afraid if I close my eyes, I will miss something important. So the battle ensues to take a nap or to not take a nap. I am so mad at myself right now. I literally just jumped up. I got excited about what I saw out the window and I just sat on Greg's hat. It's broken. Come on. Are you kidding me? It made it all these miles only for you to sit on. Look, there's cows over here. Look, look, there's a pivot. This is insane. We're about to go through the Glenwood Canyon and we're about 30 minutes from our next stop of Glenwood Springs. How many times have you had your semi on that road? 12 times a year since 1994. Wow. Well, is it a different view from here looking at it? Actually, we're talking about that. You can see caves and stuff. And yeah, it's completely different seeing that road from over here. What made you want to come on this train? Being that you've already gone on that road. You've never seen that side. It's like you've always looked down the hallway there but you're always wondering what's on the other side. Yeah. This is why. Because like those semis, you only see this way. You never see the other way. That is amazing up there. Look at that. To see how beautiful that is. But in a cab of that semi, you don't look up and see all that. That's why I want to do it. All right, we have made it to Glenwood Springs. We have an opportunity to get off the train for about 15, 10, 15 minutes. So we're going to take that to stretch our legs and enjoy the beautiful day it is outside. All right, it is time to rate. Our stretch three rating. I'm so excited. We are rating based on wow factor, range of views, and screen burst reality. I just feel like I need to be dramatic. All right, for the first one, the wow factor. Ready? One, two, three, five. Oh, that was kind of like obvious. I think I said wow only like a hundred times. So the next one is the range of views. On the count of three. Are you scared they're going to leave us? Yeah, I am. Sorry. We have 15 minutes. Well, but we didn't get off right away. So we're getting pretty close. All right. So the next one is the range of views on the count of three. One, two, three, five. Because every time I thought the mountain range was over, it like changed on us, which was incredible. And then the last one, screen versus reality. On the count of three. One, two, three, five. Yeah, so I think we got to get back on our train because I see people loading up and it's making me a little bit nervous. Every time we get off the train, it makes me a little bit nervous. Why do we do this every time? They're not leaving yet, are they? No. Okay, I saw people getting back on and I got so scared. We met these guys at breakfast and I think it's so cool. You just rode the train to Chicago just a few days ago. Yes. Last week. We want to have both sides, see both sides of the beauty of this train. Yeah. And in wintertime, it's not good to fly. Yeah. Because plane will be delayed or something. Sure. And it's totally different experience. Sure. Because the crowd was, I mean, sorry, not crowd, the people working. Yeah. They were different. Yeah. And now it's totally different. Some other smiley faces. So happy. Yeah. Is it as good the second time as it was the first time? Yeah. I am a hat connoisseur. This is Mr. Darryl. He's the one feeding us on this train trip. Make sure Cole and Emily eat very well on the California subway. That's right. Greg, this is a nice hat. Yes, yes. Nice hat, Greg. Greg, how you wanna wear it? But it is a nice hat and it's different. Great. Show him that. Show Greg that video. Yes, Greg's gonna see it. So the longer we're on this train, the harder it is to keep up with the passing of time and the concept of time. I feel like reality right now has kind of worked. It's hard to believe that yesterday afternoon we were in Chicago and now we're in Colorado. But we're not going to be in Colorado much longer because we're going to be in Utah. And by tomorrow, we're going to be in California. I think what Emily's trying to say is that train travel is very different from driving. On a train, you can get up, walk around, eat, talk to people. But when you're driving, you're more focused on traffic, the lanes, and the speed limit. So time feels like it's moving a lot slower. The view outside our window right now literally reminds me of the Cars movie. This is so crazy. Like, where are you, Lightning McQueen? I'm just waiting to see him drive by any moment. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. As we made our way to Salt Lake City, Jake, who's our new conductor, joined us at the Grand Junction stop and shared a little bit about his story. So we told him about our mission to return Greg's hat. Nice hat, Greg. There we go. See, Greg? We're telling you, I can't believe you left this behind. Look out. So we started here in the observation deck this morning with sunrise, and we just saw the sunset. How are you feeling? Really thankful for the day that we didn't have delays and we got to see all that we wanted to see. You know the best thing about tomorrow? We have a whole nother mountain to climb or mountain range to climb, I should say. So exciting, yeah. I'm definitely looking forward to the views tomorrow. Just got to the room and I just realized I forgot Greg's hat, so I've got to go get it. I'm so upset. I hope no one grabbed it. Oh, man. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot my hat down here. No worries, thank you. I can't believe I almost forgot Greg's hat. I almost lost it. Excuse me, I'm sorry. It's cold. There it is. You haven't heard the story about the hat yet? Oh, man, I got to tell you the story about the hat. The whole reason why we are on this train is because we're delivering this hat to its rightful owner. His name's Greg, all right? He left it in Grenada with us, all right? Nice hat, Greg. All right. I knew it was made out of palm leaves. See, Greg, I'm telling you, everyone likes this hat. You've been missing out for over a year now by not having possession of it. And I'm just so thankful I get to bring it back to you, buddy. Fine. All right, we are at dinner with our friends. We actually met at breakfast across the way from Mr. and Miss Sting. This is their second time riding this ever. This week, they rode it from California to Chicago and now doing it back the other way. So we wanted to grab dinner with them because we just bonded this morning about this. Yeah, we had some good conversations. Yeah, so we're excited to have dinner together. So while we're having dinner, why don't we go ahead and rate stretch number four, since we'll probably call it an early night. This stretch took us through some insane canyons that you can pretty much only see by train. So that would make the wow factor a five out of a five. Next is range of views, and these were beautiful, but they weren't as diverse as the ones from stretch three. So that's a four out of five. And finally, screen versus reality. And well, if you've ever seen the Pixar movie Cars, that one speaks for itself. I'm so tired. Where are we? In the Wasatch Mountains. We are in the Wasatch National Forest, and we'll be in Salt Lake City in just a couple of hours. I really hope I'm sleeping. Look at that. There's mountains. It's just after six o'clock this morning. I think we slept pretty good. How did you sleep? Yeah, but I will tell you, this is the first time I've ever sat and brushed my teeth on my bed. It would help to think that there could have been possibly a better design whenever the bed is down, that you not only can walk through a little bit easier, but also you're not having to sit at the sink to brush your teeth. Well, it is 645 and we've made it to the observation car for our second morning of sunrise. Mission accomplished. It is absolutely beautiful already. We have stopped briefly for a freight train to pass us, but we are looking out over a mountain range that is dusted with snow. We're almost to Reno, Nevada, and it is just gorgeous out. It's going to be a great day. I can't wait to share it with you, too. Breakfast time again. This morning, I'm ordering the scrambled eggs with croissants. I actually went a little bit rogue. I ordered the omelet all the way, but with a side of grits, which doesn't typically come with that. So she kind of looked at me side-eyed and then like, okay, I can do that. All right, just finished up our breakfast and now we are in Reno, Nevada. This is a new state for me. All right, so stretch five of the journey is officially over Salt Lake City to Reno. And unfortunately, we passed through most of that at nighttime. Yeah, we were sleeping. So when we woke up this morning, we were like two hours outside of Reno. And if I had to describe the landscape, it would be desert, flat with mountains in the background. It was really cool. So I think we should do a rating now. Yeah, rating based on wow factor, range of views and screen versus reality. So first up, wow factor. One, two, three, four. I mean, it was really cool, but it wasn't like yesterday. Like yesterday is going to be really hard to top. Range of views. One, two, three, four. Oh, OK. Yeah, that I could see that. There wasn't as much range yesterday. The sun coming up over the desert mountainous landscape was really beautiful. Yeah. Screen versus reality. One, two, three, four. All right. We're on the same page. Do you want to talk about why? Yeah, so I think that whenever we were coming across the desert mountain, I would call it, I guess, high mountain or I'm sorry, high desert. It was just really pretty. Like it definitely could have been a backdrop to our screensaver. On the computer. Oh, yeah. Just like that, stretch six is beginning. Our final stretch of the trip, Reno, Nevada to San Francisco, California, more specifically Emeryville. Can't wait to see Jen and Greg. Most specifically, I can't wait to see Greg's reaction that we brought his nice hat back. That's going to be fun. You know, this hat has probably traveled close to 10,000 miles with us over the course of the last year. So we got it down in Grenada. We sailed all the way back to Florida with it before we sold our boat. We've traveled all over Florida with this thing, boarded in Miami and gone to Chicago and now Chicago to Nevada. It's pretty incredible. I mean, for what it's worth, I got to say the quality of this hat is great. You ever had an office? Never had an office this pretty. This is pretty great. Pretty great. Our neighbor in the observation car, Paul, who you met earlier, told us we just crossed over into California. So we are officially on the home stretch. We've reached seven of seven states on this entire journey. Pretty cool. Really? That's cool. We could live like an almond farmer. Yeah. All right. We are about 30 minutes from our final stop at Emeryville, California. So here's our rating for our sixth and final stretch. On wow factor, we would give Reno to San Francisco a four out of five. On range of views, it would have to be five out of five. From farmland to marshes and mountains, this stretch had it all. Finally, screen versus reality, five out of five. But honestly, photos don't do it justice. We just saw our first glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge. And if you like transportation, cool ways to explore things, you're going to like next week's video, because tomorrow we're going underneath that bridge in a very unique way. We made it to Emeryville, California. And now for the burning question, is this the most scenic train in America? So far, I think it is. Because we saw things you just can't see any other way. Not from the highway, not from 30,000 feet, only by committing to the track and letting the world come to you. But here's the thing. This train isn't faster. It's not cheaper. And honestly, that's kind of the point. It's choosing the long way on purpose, slowing down enough to actually notice where you are and enjoy getting there. We had the best time. So if you were to ask us, this is definitely a train worth booking. And we've got one last thing to do. Find Greg and give him his hat back. Good to see you, man. Is this what I think it is? What? What is this? You forgot your hat. Could you see it underneath my jacket? Oh, come on. I was trying so hard. Hi. Good to see you. I can't. It's missing my bird. Yeah, the bird fell off. All right. It's a little different color. I can't believe you guys called this. How many thousands of miles? I hope you enjoyed this video across the country with us. If you did, watch this video next so we can hang out a little bit longer and we will see you on the next adventure.