off on vacation!

Dear Dear Readers,

I’ve been remiss the last couple of days in updating the blog, but I’ve been ABSORBED in my Trip! I am now in Chicago, and will be proceeding on to Omaha tomorrow, but let me tell you what has happened so far:

The train was a tad – but just a tad – late leaving Seattle: It comes in from Chicago in the morning, gets serviced, and turn right around and goes out. Since it was a bit late getting into Seattle, it was a little late leaving Seattle.

The colonel saw me off (the Greek was on the road), and before you know it, we were electroluxing up Puget Sound. This train, the Empire Builder, was recently upgraded by Amtrak, and the renovated cars are very nice – new carpets, upholstery, bathrooms, the whole nine yards. A glass of Champagne was offered and accepted, and I felt pretty smug about myself.

I had bought some Xmas lights and a little tree along with me, and proceeded to festoon the room, and became the talk of the train. Evidentially, not everyone does that!

Having had a nice lunch, I opted to skip dinner, and settled in with Jimmy Carter’s new book “Our Endangered Values” (which is excellent, btw) and I was asleep by the time we got to the Cascades Tunnel.

During the night we went to Spokane (where the Portland section of the train - with its cocktail car! - joined us) and I didn’t notice a thing until I woke up the next morning in Whitefish, Montana.

Whitefish is one of those cutesy towns that just get cutesier at Christmas. The old Great Northern Railroad Station is lovingly preserved, and people there wear cowboy hats without irony.

As the morning progressed, we proceeded through the Rocky Mountains, eventually bringing us into the high plains. Around 2pm, we hit Shelby, Montana, which is a service stop, which means we were there for about 30 minutes. I ran across the street to the lowly bar/casino, so I could snap a picture of J. James Hill (founder and president of the Great Northern Railroad, who the Empire Builder is named for)

Funny thing about the train – and this is true of almost every train I’ve ever been on – you see these small towns all along the line, and they all have small town bars, which look cozy as hell from the windows of the train.

By evening, we were into North Dakota, and passed through it while asleep (which is really the best way to go through North Dakota)

This morning I awoke in Minneapolis, where they were adding another coach to go to Chicago. We were running about 1.5 hours late, but that’s no biggie. The plan was that we would spend the morning and early afternoon running alongside the lovely Mississippi River before crossing over into Wisconsin, across to Milwaukee, and on into Chicago. Fate, however, was not into that.

At 11:30pm, the train got stopped due to a bad axle on one of the locomotives, and they had to set that locomotive out, which would leave us with only one locomotive (the second locomotive is for the mountains) It took three hours to swap that out, so we started running quite late. It was too bad, but sometimes that happens on Amtrak. And, as I have said time and again (and almost believe ;-) I would rather be stuck on a train than stuck on a tarmac. Actually, I do believe that. Tarmacs suck.

We arrived at Chicago Union Station at 7:09pm – three hours late, but not bad all things considered, and I proceeded to the Burnham Hotel. The Burnham is located right in the thick of things in the loop, and I will be hitting the neighborhood heavily. First to Marshall Fields (for the last time before it becomes a stupid tacky Macy’s) and onto the Palmer House for a nostalgic visit to Trader Vics before it closes.

Train 1 of 5 down. Not a bad trip so far. Off to Omaha tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.