A Trip From San Francisco to New York

4.9

The USA is a country of great differences. There are high mountains and flat prairies in it, tropical heat and arctic cold.

If you want to go from San Francisco to New York by train, you must ride more than three thousand miles. It takes three days and nights. In California, where you begin your trip, the climate is usually mild all year. In the south of the country is the famous fruit-growing area. California oranges, grapefruit and lemons, as well as many other fruits and vegetables, are sent all over the United States and to other parts of the world.

Soon the train leaves those green plains and goes up into the Sierra Nevada mountains covered with snow. Here and there you can see clear mountain lakes. As the train goes east you cross the Salt Lake desert.

For miles and miles you will see nothing but salt and salt. Flat plains covered with short dry grass go for miles and miles. This is sheep and cattle country, the land of the cowboys. As you cross it, you may want to know where the people of America are. From time to time you may see a few cattle on the plain or the wagon of a cowboy, but most of the country is empty.

As the train crosses Nebraska, you leave the empty country and enter the rich farming region of America. Nebraska has many golden wheat fields. In Iowa wheat and corn are important products. After two days, the train arrives in Chicago, the second largest city in the United States.

Then you cross Pennsylvania and New Jersey — the richest industrial states of the country and at last arrive in New York, the largest city in the USA. The trip will not show you all of America, of course. Each region has its own characteristics. There are many large and modern cities, but a great territory of the country are large plains with farm-houses and small towns. The usual town in any part of the United States has its “main street” with the same types of shops and market selling the same products. So many American towns have the same look.