Our Reno hosts were my High School friend Rikki and her partner Matt, a Reno native. We were able to enjoy the best of the town that kept us off the tourist strip of casinos and hotels. Many drinks (we were introduced to and became well acquainted with the traditional Basque drink the “Picon”), much food, and one obligatory visit to the Reno Art Museum later, I left with few photos to share but very thankful for good friends who live in beautiful places.

We reboarded the Zephyr with a short stint in Coach before moving to a roomette. The seats were far bigger than those on the East Coast trains, and would be have been comfortable for the full day. The day before our scheduled trip the train had been delayed for over five hours during the snowstorm, so we had opted to upgrade two of our seats to still have the privacy of a room just in case.

The train stops in Emeryville, so the last leg to San Francisco requires a charter bus ride. We were somewhat unceremoniously (considering the epic nature of the train ride) dropped off at a random building in the middle of San Francisco as our final stop.