Travel between Colorado and Utah in a glass-domed train

Train company Rocky Mountaineer is introducing a new Colorado to Utah route to its luxury train journeys, and it has already extended this year's season to accommodate more travelers.

The "Rockies to the Red Rocks" route will be a two-day rail journey between Denver and Moab, with an overnight stay in Glenwood Springs. Between Denver and Glenwood Springs, the trains will journey alongside the Colorado River and through a series of canyons with steep, rugged rock walls. The route between Glenwood Springs and Moab offers a variety of scenery, including mountain vistas, desert cliffs and rock formations. The route will be in operation from 15 August to November 18, 2021, an expansion of its originally scheduled season due to demand.

Guests on the new multi-day, daytime route will enjoy onboard storytelling, regional cuisine and beautiful scenery in the trains' glass-dome coaches. The company is working with local tourism organizations, hotels and tour operators to curate custom vacation packages that feature tours, activities and stays in Denver and Moab, so guests can experience even more of the region. This new route will be in addition to its three rail routes that run in Canada, between Vancouver and the Canadian Rockies towns of Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper.

“The work to find a new route has been underway for several years as we needed to find a special location with many of the same features we have in western Canada – incredible scenery, iconic destinations and the option for an all daytime, multi-day journey that is best experienced by train," says Steve Sammut, president and chief executive officer of Rocky Mountaineer. "Rockies to the Red Rocks will have all of this and more, and is an opportunity to bring our award-winning Rocky Mountaineer experience to showcase the epic scenery of the southwest United States.”

Rocky Mountaineer won the Sustainable Train Journey award in Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2021, because as well as providing sustainable travel through the Canadian Rockies, it supports efforts to preserve the environment throughout Canada. For further information on the Rockies to Red Rocks route, please see the website here.

This article was originally published on November 23, 2020 and updated on April 7, 2021.

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