(Out side Lamar Colorado.) The one thing that you will take away from a train trip across the USA is just how massive the country really is. And for all the yelling and screaming about the big cities there is a lot of land that is used for agriculture. In the foothills of the Rockies it is all farming. ( and there are a lot of Green and Yellow tractors in the fields!) Where the earth was black and rich in Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska, it is more reddish and there is a lot of above ground irrigation sprayers in the fields. Right now as I write this, the train is under a slow order because of a signal problem along the tracks.
One thing about a rail trip, you get to see a lot of America’s back yards and we are a messy lot! We have been throwing stuff away for a long time and it’s piling up especially along the right-of -way of the Railroads. Along with the mess there is a game that could be played if one was wont to called what the heck do they make in that place with all that stuff? It is a good game to because when you go past a building with a yard full of stuff it give you pause just to figure out what “The Jones Manufacturing Company” actually makes.
There are stories out here in the foothills too, empty buildings, old farmsteads long abandoned, animals standing alone in the fields, a lone car body with out window glass, tires or for that matter a motor out in the middle of nowhere.
The land is now begining to change, there are more rock outcroppings, more layered deposits of rock, deeply cut stream beds with out much water in them. Pretty soon the route of the train will swing south towards New Mexico, where the tracks will cross the old Santa Fe trail. 
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