This is about as easy as it gets man, don't be fucking around with utah, that's a massive detour for no good reason. Go trot out to Roseville, bag yourself the Hinkle train. Lots of empty lumber, lots of empty canadian grainers, pretty hard to miss. Usually pulls out a little after midnight. It'll end up hauling all the way into canada via hinkle and spokane, so get off in portland. Hopping to seattle from pdx is easy as hell, or, take the extremely cheap CAP bus to olympia and hitch from there. That's what I do anyways.
and I'm fairly sure there's a straight shot to seattle, but it comes out of the port of oakland and only on sunday evenings, so time that shit. I've caught it before out of oakland, but jumped off in roseville to continue east.