Train from Provo to Denver, January 2011

Back in 2005, when I first came to Seoul to teach, I met Eddy Berry, a professor at Utah State University.  She told me about taking Amtrak from Salt Lake City to Denver and I decided if I ever got the chance I was going to take the trip too.

Since the annual American Economics Association Meeting were in Denver this last January, I decided that Yeongmi and I would get there by train.  The trip was a lot longer than driving, but the scenery was fantastic.

View from the Train Trip to Denver

We left Provo very early in the morning on Thursday - around 4:00 a.m., if I remember correctly.  Since it was mid-Winter we didn't see the sun come up for quite a while and we were already over the mountains and near Price before we could see anything through the windows.  We missed all of Spanish Fork Canyon and Price Canyon, but the canyons later in the day in Colorado made up for that.

The trip took 14 or 15 hours, but we went through country that was so scenic it was worth the trip.  Much of this was through places where it would be impossible to get to in a car.  Even in the parts that could be seen by car, sitting in the train and not driving made it so much easier to enjoy the scenery.

Take a look at the video below to see some of what we saw.

LINKS

Google Earth viewable .kmz file of tracks and places on the trip.