Shannon Dell rode Amtrak’s California Zephyr, a breathtaking route from Chicago to San Francisco that runs through Colorado mountains, Nevada’s gold and red desert boulders and beautiful Salt Lake City. Her only regret is that the train hurtled through Utah at night so she missed the snow topped Wasatch mountains.For More Info
For more information on Amtrak and the Amtrak Writer’s Residency experience, visit blog.Amtrak.com or follow #Amtrak Residency.
Almost all writers eventually collide with money worries and the loneliness of writer’s block. Residencies are the oasis in the lonely desert, a place where writers can be nourished by the beautiful landscape around them and inspired by new experiences. Residencies can range from a year in a castle in Tuscany to a week in Key West using an office where Hemingway’s typewriter still sits.
Chattanooga native Shannon Dell, 24, was one of 24 writers chosen recently for Amtrak’s very unusual residency. She won’t spend her time in one spot; she will write as she travels one of Amtrak’s 15 long-distance rail routes across America. In exchange, she will write brief stories about her journeys that Amtrak posts on its blog.
“I haven’t gotten the details from Amtrak yet, but I hope they let me ride the Pacific Northwest route,” says Dell, eager to see the route’s postcard-pretty views of Seattle, Portland and Klamath Falls.
“The longest train trip I’ve ever been on lasted 37 hours and went from Chicago to Denver and San Francisco to Seattle – all over the U.S.,” says Dell, a staff writer and social media manager for the online Matador Network and a freelancer for BBC Travel and Business Insider. “There were times I woke up at 3 a.m. and wondered what in the name of God had I done. But mostly I enjoyed it. Nevada was particularly beautiful from the rails. I was sitting in a coach seat the whole time because I was too cheap to buy a ticket for a sleeper.”