Cuyahoga Railroad... Life is the train, not the station

 

"Our life is a constant journey, from birth to death. The landscape changes, the people change, our needs change, but the train keeps moving. Life is the train, not the station."  - Paulo Coelho

As we travel from sit to sit across the country, we always research for interesting stops along the way.  In this case, while headed to Buffalo we stopped and explored the only National Park in Ohio, The Cuyahoga Valley National Park located in northeast Ohio (between Cleveland & Akron).

Cuyahoga did not become a national park until 2000, and because of this, it's been called an "urban oasis" more than a traditional park because of the crisscrossing roads and small towns/villages that fall within it's boundaries. And speaking of falls, besides the endless trails and bike paths, there are about 100 waterfalls in the Cuyahoga Valley, with the most popular being the 65-foot (20 m) tall Brandywine Falls - which we visited  (88 cliff hanging steps down, 88 steps back up!).  

And... (we rarely use the term "but" unless we're sitting on it!) the most memorable part of our visit was a ride on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad out of the Peninsula Station located in the center on the Park.  The rail line runs north and south thru the Park and was originally part of a more extensive line called The Valley Railway, founded in the late 1860s by entrepreneurs from Cleveland, Akron, and Canton. Their goal was to establish a railway that would transport the rich mineral, natural, and agricultural resources of Ohio to the industries and lake port of Cleveland.  

The line changed hands over the decades until the section running thru the park was decommissioned in the 1970's and the touring line began in 1975 - completely run by volunteers!

We  reserved two seats in the Silver Solarium Lounge car built for  the California Zephyr in 1948.  We have experienced that people who travel or ride on trains usually have a slower, more encompassing perspective regarding getting from point A to B. They are often more interested in the journey that the destination and usually have a more friendly and open approach to others with the same ticket. 

And so it happened that we started a conversation with the trainman who had been volunteering on on the Cuyahoga Railroad for over 15 years. Gary was reserved at first, respecting our space but as we made conversation he opened up about the history of the park and the various cars on the line.  We have always been captivated by others who are passionate about what they do.  He almost whispered at one point and leaned over informing us about the former railroad president's private railcar that was in their barn and the ornate bar artwork that they discovered under the laminate (similar to what was in our car - just much grander!).

While the ride was only two hours long, we got lost in the rich history of the rolling lounge car and imagined what it must have been like to ride the California Zephyr back in it's day.  As an Akron Ohio newspaper article summarized,  "the California Zephyr cars exemplify the glamour of cross-country travel from the 1940s to the 1960s as the train made the run between San Francisco and Chicago."  

Now approaching two years on the road as digital nomads, we can even more appreciate the beauty of our country and the variety of ways to tour it's diversity and unique perspectives. 

Robert Hughes, in his book, The Shock of the New described the new age of trains when they first made their way across the country... “For the machine meant the conquest of horizontal space. It also meant a sense of that space which few people had experienced before – the succession and superimposition of views, the unfolding of landscape in flickering surfaces as one was carried swiftly past it, and an exaggerated feeling of relative motion (the poplars nearby seeming to move faster than the church spire across the field) due to parallax. The view from the train was not the view from the horse. It compressed more motifs into the same time. Conversely, it left less time in which to dwell on any one thing.”  

And... more time to dwell on life as one evolving line of tracks/treks!