The Summer Solstice is upon us, the longest day of the year. There’s nothing like a June morning with the Sun blazing into the bathroom window at five o’clock. Who can stay in bed on a day like that? Rita the dog agrees. She knows the drill: coffee, breakfast (hers), then out to patrol the neighborhood before six. Sometimes we encounter homeless people in the park, and on occasion we run into friends, both canine and human. There aren’t many cars on the streets at that hour,

I was two days and two time zones from my home in Maine. On a Wednesday morning in March, I had walked out my front door and up the street to catch the Bangor Community Connector bus to the Concord Coach station in time for the 7 o’clock bus to Boston. Now it was Friday morning, and I had an hour in Denver to find breakfast.

Writer Hank Garfield shares tales from his cross-countrytrain travel journey from Bangor, Maine to California.