In Tacoma

The train was an hour and a half late getting into Glenwood on Sunday. My parents and I sat in the station and worked on a crossword puzzle before walking outside to see it pull up. I pulled my pack up to coach and my parents stood on the hill outside and waved, and I waved back, through tinted glass.
We followed the river for a while, up through the pale red canyons, the water thick with runoff, and as we crossed into Utah the windows filled with sagebrush hills, instead.
West. Into Nevada in the night, my chair leaned back and my foot-rest sprung up. The pack in the seat next to me. And across into California the next day. Up into the Sierra Nevadas, still thick with snow, and through the blasted tunnels of Donner pass, then down and down, still west, until Sacremento. The six hour layover passed quickly in the balm of the evening. I lugged around downtown, checked out the mall and the library, and headed back to the station to read until the next train arrived.
At midnight we boarded and pulled out heading north, the second of my four tickets torn. I slept most of the way through until morning, and Klamath Falls, where we switched to bus for the next stretch, all the way up to Eugene. Through the mountains we hit alternating rain and snow and sleet and the trees were white in the cold. It didn't make me anxious to get going, watching the windshield wipers beat back and forth, furiously, trying to stay up with the fevered pace of the sky.
Back on the train, though, the weather brightened, and the last seven hour stretch, up into Washinton and through to Tacoma, was mostly lit with sun. The thick forests shone damp, and the Columbia swirled brightly. Up through Salem, and Portland, and Olympia, and into the station here in Tacoma.
Judy is....a second cousin? I think that's right, but I'm not sure. She recognized me, though, as I pulled my pack off the train, and tonight I'm at her house. Tomorrow she's going to show me around town, walk me down the bay and such, and then Thursday I'll head out to the actual coast.
To officially begin.