Amtrak’s California Zephyr travels through seven states: California, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Nebraska, Ohio, and Illinois.

It cuts through mountains, including the lush Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Rockies, and the fabulous red and orange Wasatch Mountain Range in Utah.

It winds past rivers, such as the Truckee, the Sacramento, and the Colorado.

It stops at quaint little towns like Truckee and big cities like Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Chicago.

From our Superliner Roomette, my mom and I watched all of these sights go by. Neither of us had to keep our eyes on the road. Neither of us cared if the other chose to read, or doze off, or stare thoughtfully out the window. In short, no bitter bunnies.

Our fare included three meals a day in the dining car, where we sat side-by-side at a booth and shared breakfast, lunch and dinner with various other travelers. Among them, two brothers, originally from Pakistan, who had gone to California for the wedding of one of the men’s daughters. A saucy, ballad-singing Irishman who was circumnavigating the globe “before he got too old to do it.” A former government employee who had worked abroad in Japan, Germany, and Qatar for 23 years. A couple visiting their grandchild for the first time. We’d expected most of the travelers to fear flying. In actuality, most were very well-traveled and had simply added the train to their traveling repertoire.

In order to have fun on the train, you have to:

1). Be social. You have to talk to people at every meal. And if you learn to listen, you can really hear some fascinating stories.

2). Be zen. Calm down, already. There will be delays. See the train ride as the trip and stop tripping.

3). Be an old-world traveler. Enjoy the sights. Talk to people. Try to discover everything about the land you’re crossing. Step out of your insular bubble and experience life. The airplane is impersonal, predictably boring, sterile, increasingly stingy, and hectic. The train is intensely personal and fabulously unpredictable. At one point during the night, our conductor had to go to the dining car and personally escort a unruly passenger off the train. According to the saucy Irishman, the ousted passenger was drunk, high, or both.