Another fantastic day! We started out the morning in the mountains and canyon and are now 25 miles from the coast. We wound our way down the canyon and crossed the Sonoman desert in a long day's travel, 12 hours of almost continuous movement.
Today was testament to the engineering marvel this railroad really is. It took 100 years to complete but is still a magnificent feat. We passed through the last of the 82 tunnels today including one 3/4 of a mile long that makes a 180 degree turn underground and another that is over a mile long. If you look closely you can see three levels of track in the photo.
We started on the upper level, used the horseshoe tunnel to reach the second, and circled on the trestle to finally reach the canyon floor and the way out of the canyon. We started the day at almost 7,000 feet above sea level and ended up 25' MSL.The Memorial to this engineering accomplishment is on a hillside above this valley and if you look closely you can make out the real locomotive sticking out from the mountain.
After leaving the canyon we traveled several hours across the rest of the State of Chihuahua and into Sinaloa much of which was covered with beautiful flowering shrubs and trees and several varieties of Cacti. later in the afternoon the landscape changed again into extremely large irrigated farming areas growing corn, marigolds, and winter vegetables.
We pulled into Los Mochias and sat long enough to jump off the train and socialize for an hour or so until the yard engineer showed up to switch us to the unloading docks. We will spend the night here and unload early in the morning and head down the coast to Guasave for three days.
Fantastic week!
