Date: October 31, 2024
After my trip from the San Francisco Bay Area to Chicago, I somehow wasn’t saturated on train travel, so I bought the California Rail Pass.
You get 7 days of travel within a 21-day period for $159. I used them on three trips, in each case departing from Emeryville, the staffed station most accessible from SF/Berkeley:
The pass is valid on the Capitol Corridor, Coast Starlight (within California), Pacific Surfliner, and San Joaquins trains, as well as connecting buses. That means you can travel north from the Bay to Dunsmuir (near Mt. Shasta), south to San Diego or Bakersfield, or northeast to Auburn. If you’re willing to spend some additional hours on a bus, you can get to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Reno, or Las Vegas. The only stations within California you can’t get to on the rail pass are those served exclusively by the Zephyr, Southwest Chief, or Sunset Limited/Texas Eagle.
Overall this is something I would endorse buying. California has more geographic diversity than any other state, and more Amtrak stations. The California Rail Pass is the best way to see the extent of the state if you don’t like really long road trips.
I’d previously visited Sacramento and Davis on the Capitol Corridor and found them enjoyable to walk around in. Particularly Davis: the train station is in the midst of a beautiful downtown not marred by the freeway ramps near Sacramento Station.
Roseville is a different matter. I only went there to visit a friend, and my impression after 15 minutes was “if I lived here, I’d be depressed”. The city receives less than half an inch of rain over the entire summer, so features like trees and grass are conspicuously absent. Also, it was incredibly car-centric, with suburban neighborhoods like those photos on /r/fuckcars. I now realize that this is probably a more representative picture of California than the perfect climate and walkability of Berkeley and SF.
This seaside city is prototypical Southern California. We walked on perfect beaches replete with surfers.
There’s a ferry to Santa Cruz Island, the largest of the Channel Islands. It hosts gorgeous hikes and several species found nowhere else on Earth.
Getting here required transferring from the Starlight to the Surfliner, but since the two overlap between San Luis Obispo and LA there were a few places to make the transfer. We chose SLO and Santa Barbara. If you visit the latter, check out the historic courthouse and the view from the clock tower.
Dunsmuir was beautiful! It’s the northernmost Amtrak station in California, and the closest I’ve gotten to the Pacific Northwest. I spent my first day and night in Castle Crags State Park, hiking up to the Castle Dome. The next day, I explored the town, whose dual industries are rail and spring water. In the center are numerous water fountains and a sign proclaiming “Home of the Best Water on Earth”; I can’t say I disagree with this.
However, the Dunsmuir stop is in the middle of the night going both directions. You won’t get to see the terrain go by, so this trip is more about the destination than the journey.
Because this is not a program that makes Amtrak a lot of money, the process for buying the California Rail Pass is stuck 20 years in the past. You can’t buy or use a rail pass online. The station agents don’t see a lot of rail pass users, so they may be unfamiliar with the protocols for issue and use of the pass. I was wrongly told that segments were sold out and that the pass served as my ticket.