Michigan Exposures: A Continuation of the Coast Starlight

Last year I took a trip on the Coast Starlight from Seattle to Emeryville and it was pretty nice. Since I decided this year that I wanted to take the Southwest Chief back home, it meant that I would be taking the rest of the Coast Starlight down to Los Angeles from Emeryville. This would seem to be the portion of the route that gets the "Coast" part of the name as there were some parts that we were almost on the beach. I thought it was pretty cool.

Another day, another train. This would be the train that would take me from Emeryville to Los Angeles.

As we were pulling out of the station, we passed by a BNSF train heading north.

There are ton of shipyards in Oakland. This was one of them. It is hard to imagine how much stuff each of these containers can hold.

I think we were just outside of Oakland as I took this picture. I like to take pictures of factories but I thought this one was beautiful in the way it reflected in the water.

A shot of the mountains as we headed towards San Jose for a bit.

This is pretty representative of the terrain south of San Francisco but north of San Jose. Lots of hills like this and farmland.

I don't remember what town this was.

One of my favorite shots from the train...that of the train. I kind of liked this shot a little more because there was some interesting terrain around it. Based on the time of the shot, somewhere between San Jose and Salinas.

One of the barns somewhere on the trip. I kind of wish I would have brought my GPS so that I could tell where I was.

Passing by a Union Pacific Railyard.

More farm fields.

A school house. It's amazing how similar different parts of the country are yet there is such diversity.

Another set of mountains and another field.

We even passed by oil fields. I want to say that these were the fields that inspired "There Will Be Blood" but I also want to say that I'm wrong.

This was kind of a neat field. Some sort of orchard, I think.

Some happy cows (because they come from California...:) Damn commercials).

One thing I like about heading out west by the train is the diversity of the terrain we pass through.

Another shot of that hill.

I think this is US-101.

Another shot of the train.

Another barn.

A bridge that we would be passing over in about 10 minutes or so. Another thing about the mountains is that the best path is not always a straight line.

Another mountain.

I think this is the San Luis Obispo Station.

I think of most of my shots, this is probably my favorite. It is almost an abstract train.

Some more fields and mountains.

I kind of liked this shot because of the trees in the foreground.

And finally, we get to the coast portion of the trip.

Another shot of the coast. This was something else I never realized, just how varied the coastal terrain of California is. Another nice thing about the train is that it goes through some pretty distant areas and in some cases, the train is the only disturbing thing.

More Coastal Shots.

As you can see, we were almost right along the beach.

I was kind of surprised to find out that the train passed almost right by Vandenberg Air Force Base. Sadly, there were no launches.

Vandenberg was established in 1941 as the Army's Camp Cooke and was named after a cavalry officer who served during the Mexican-American War. It was transferred to the Air Force in 1957 and used as a rocket facility. In 1958, it was renamed after Hoyt S. Vandenberg who as Chief of the Air Force was an advocate of the space program. At one point it was considered as a shuttle launching facility but that never happened. It is used to launch the Air Force rockets and for missile tests.