Dear folks:

I’m riding on a train thru the desert just a little over the border of Arizona into California.  I can imagine what you went thru when you drove.  This morning stopped for 15 minutes in Needles.  On either side are towering points of rock but here in bed there is nothing but a few bushes.  It must be all of ninety-five or a hundred now.  Yesterday crossed the highest point on any railroad in the United States, Canada, or Mexico.  It took three engines to take us over the top (7,621 feet).  At the top was a long tunnel.  Something a little ironical is that yesterday in passing over the point we were in a furious snowstorm and today the sun is scorching us.  Our train is made up of nine cars carrying three hundred and fifty men.  Ahead of us is another carrying about the same number.  Most of the time have been occupying my time playing bridge but read quite a little too.  We have a Pullman but don’t have enough covers.  We eat on our mess kits and a crew of men from the dining car bring the food thru in buckets and they dish it out.  In the afternoon we get a little fruit and at night a box of cookies.

Close tab is kept on anyone getting sick.  At several places we got out and marched thru the town and got most of the village out.

Yesterday in New Mexico passed thru several small Mexican villages parked in the pine covered foothills, that reminded me of a newsreel of a foreign country.  Such squalor and decrepit looking shacks and boys looking wide-eyed from their unsaddled ponies.  It was all very interesting and in many places the fall coloring of the hills was really beautiful.  Recalled past days at Greeley.

We left Leavenworth at 6:30 last Monday nite and expect to arrive at [Camp] Roberts nine o’clock Thursday afternoon.  I believe we will lay over about 2 hours in Los Angeles.  By the way, this morning at Needles saw my first palm tree.

This is just a line to let you know how I’m getting on but will write more later.

Lots of love,