Sierra adventure, part 1: To the mountains!

On Friday, Dev and I headed for the hills. We took the train to meet Katy (from Reno) in Truckee, then drove from there to Sierraville, home of Sierra Hot Springs.

Dev was pretty excited to be going on a trip, especially one that called for a suitcase.


The train was about an hour late, but we're used to entertaining ourselves at the train station. We visited the piano bird:





 Met up with Jennifer (a historian friend):

Sat in the shade and watched trains (Dev) and did language lessons (me):




Finally, our train arrived and we were off to the mountains.

The uphill part took a while, starting as we did in the flat middle of the middle flat part of the state.






Eventually the landscape started to get a tiny bit of contour:



And then we were in foothills and life became more casual immediately.


It was all uphill from there:


The view was, I have to admit, mostly not all that interesting. A lot of the time I was looking out at trees or rocks or an embankment.





Fortunately, it did open up now and then...


...sometimes on views that were downright lovely:










After almost 5 hours (for what would be a two hour drive) we arrived in Truckee, where Dev immediately admired another train:



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