What’s the Most Scenic Train Ride in the USA? A Freelancer’s Journey to Find Stillness Through the Window
I didn’t expect to slow down this way.
Not with a train ticket.
But after years of rushing through airports and checking places off digital maps, I booked three long-distance train rides across the US—and something shifted.
It wasn’t about going somewhere. It was about sitting still while the world moved outside the window.
Trains Feel Different When You’re Not in a Hurry
The Coast Starlight took me from Los Angeles up to Seattle. The route hugs the Pacific for hours, then lifts into pine forests and finally breaks into snowy ranges near Oregon.
I watched as the ocean turned into fog, then fog into trees. Somewhere north of San Luis Obispo, the sun was setting, and the entire observation car fell quiet. The kind of silence that doesn’t ask for explanation.
People say train travel is nostalgic, but for me it wasn’t about the past.
It was about presence.
The Window Became a Daily Ritual
On the California Zephyr, I traveled from Chicago toward the West Coast. That train doesn’t rush. It drifts through Midwest fields, up the Rockies, into canyons and river valleys.
Somewhere in Colorado, the tracks curve into Glenwood Canyon and the windows turn gold with reflected water. A woman near me whispered, “It looks like a painting,” and everyone nodded.
I didn’t open my laptop. I didn’t listen to music. I didn’t post.
I just looked.
Packing Light Made Space for More
I traveled with one lightweight waterproof backpack. Inside: a notebook, snacks, a windbreaker, a scarf I ended up using as a pillow, and a camera I barely touched.
The backpack sat next to me the whole time—on station benches, by my feet in the dining car, and slung over one shoulder on short layovers.
It never got in the way. That, to me, is the best kind of gear: the kind you forget about until it does exactly what you need it to.
The Best Part Was the In-Between
No one tells you how much you can feel just by sitting.
By watching a mountain fade into desert, or a city skyline appear after hours of nothingness.
By seeing light change in real time.
There’s a kind of trust you build with the land when you see it stretch out uninterrupted. And there’s a kind of clarity that arrives when you don’t force it.
I didn’t take the trains to escape anything.
I took them to remember what movement feels like when it’s not rushed.
And I arrived somewhere better—without ever needing to get there fast.
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