Here's a photo I took with the Pano application for iPhone. This clever little program takes up to four separate images from the iPhone camera and stitches together a panorama. The building is the Tower of Memories at Crown Hill Cemetery in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.

I'm hoping to take some panoramas on the way back, but they'll need to be done when the train is at rest, since alignment is crucial to pulling off the stitchery. Not sure how many more photo opportunities there'll be, since even though the train leaves Denver at 8:15 tomorrow night (or supposedly does; we were an hour late arriving from Chicago), most of Colorado and much of Nebraska will be in darkness.

At the very least, perhaps I'll encounter more eccentrics.

NOTE: Unless I'm favored with some unexpected 3G network connections, I won't be posting anything here until I return to Chicago. Look for photo updates on my Flickr pages.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

This Saturday at 2 p.m., I'll be boarding Amtrak's California Zephyr and taking it to Denver. I'm pretty excited about this trip -- and am hoping to post text and photo updates from the train on Thrillarama, Chicagoscope's companion website.

I had hoped that TypePad's iPhone application would do the trick, but although it posts text just fine, photos are handled badly and appear fuzzy and pixelated. I've discovered a couple of possible workarounds that use either CellSpin.net or Flickr.com.

Amtrak wasn't my first choice for transportation. I had originally wanted to take a Greyhound bus from Chicago to Denver, changing in Omaha midpoint so that I'd see a nice range of rural America, albeit from the interstates. Although a couple of people suggested I might get decapitated, I decided on Amtrak because Greyhound didn't ultimately seem as if it would have been a particularly relaxing experience.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.