{"id":9553,"date":"2015-03-23T02:58:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T07:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeanschara.com\/randr\/?p=9553"},"modified":"2025-04-20T13:28:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T18:28:40","slug":"a-to-z-challenge-theme-reveal-grand-tour-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/a-to-z-challenge-theme-reveal-grand-tour-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"A to Z Challenge Theme Reveal: Grand Tour 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m excited to be participating in the 2015 Blogging A-Z Challenge. I always have fun writing posts and seeing what posts others have written. My theme this year is travel, specifically, people and places we visited on our <strong>Grand Tour 2015<\/strong> Amtrak trip.<\/p>\n<p>My husband and I love traveling on Amtrak, and this year&#8217;s trip saw us through the remaining Western routes we hadn&#8217;t traveled until now.\u00a0 The California Zephyr, the Southwest Chief, and the City of New Orleans (technically, an Eastern route). To accomplish this, we also rode some old favorites, the Texas Eagle, the Coast Starlight, and the Sunset Limited.<\/p>\n<p>As you read this, we&#8217;re taking a one day break from the California Zephyr in Reno, Nevada. The postings, to meet the alphabetical requirement, will be out of order, so to help you follow, here&#8217;s how the trip was organized:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Begin in San Antonio<\/li>\n<li>Ride the Texas Eagle to Chicago<\/li>\n<li>Visit friends and family in Wisconsin<\/li>\n<li>Ride the California Zephyr to Reno<\/li>\n<li>Visit friends and some sights<\/li>\n<li>Ride the California Zephyr to Sacramento<\/li>\n<li>Visit friends and some sights<\/li>\n<li>Ride the Coast Starlight to LA<\/li>\n<li>Visit Paramount Studios, some other sights<\/li>\n<li>Ride the Southwest Chief to Chicago<\/li>\n<li>Meet a friend at the station<\/li>\n<li>Ride the City of New Orleans to New Orleans<\/li>\n<li>Do some antiquing and celebrate my husband&#8217;s birthday<\/li>\n<li>Ride the Sunset Limited to San Antonio<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As an A-Z Challenge veteran of several years, I know how difficult (if not plain impossible) it is to find my way back to a blog I liked to follow it. To make it easier for you, I&#8217;m offering an easy blog subscription sign up. This will bring you not only A-Z Challenge blog posts but other blog posts as well.\u00a0 This blog averages four posts per week outside the A-Z Challenge. Just enter a valid email address in the box below, then check your inbox (maybe the spam folder) for a validation email &#8212; that protects you from having a &#8220;friend&#8221; sign you up for something without you being aware, and tells me you were the one asking to subscribe. I don&#8217;t want to put anything in your inbox you don&#8217;t want, but I do hope you want to stay current on my blog posts. If you decide you want to receive my bi-monthly newsletter about my fiction, please sign up in the sidebar box. If you&#8217;re visiting for the A-Z Challenge, please leave a comment and link your participating A-Z Challenge blog. I&#8217;ll make sure I pay you a visit. Thank you for stopping in, and I look forward to seeing you throughout the challenge.<\/p>\n<div class=\"AW-Form-1457006892\">\n<\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\n(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = \"\/\/forms.aweber.com\/form\/92\/1457006892.js\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, \"script\", \"aweber-wjs-gr2iu1h7l\"));\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m excited to be participating in the 2015 Blogging A-Z Challenge. I always have fun writing posts and seeing what posts others have written. My theme this year is travel, specifically, people and places we visited on our Grand Tour 2015 Amtrak trip. My husband and I love traveling on <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/a-to-z-challenge-theme-reveal-grand-tour-2015\/\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28,35,6],"tags":[250,253],"class_list":["post-9553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-z-challenge","category-photography","category-travel","tag-amtrak","tag-grand-tour-2015"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/2012-01-21-09.49.03-e1459440865230.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9553"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16316,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553\/revisions\/16316"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}