Planes, Trains and Automobiles -- Day 3 (MN - MT)

It wasn't exactly clear to us that first night how the roomette was to be converted to bunks so we had to wait until the train car attendant could prepare the cabin for us. (I realized the next day that there were instructions on the back of the tray table.) It was a relatively simple process. First, unlatch and fold down the top bunk. That top bunk already had a mattress on it that fit into a cutout in the bunk and it also contained the mattress to be used for the lower bunk and blankets for both. Pillows had been in the seats when we arrived. There was a lever at the bottom of the seats similar to a lever on a car seat to move the seat forward or back and when it was pushed and pressure applied to the seat, it folded flat and the two came together to be one bed. Just throw that mattress on it (which already had sheets on it), grab a blanket and pillow and you're good to go. Well, if you're on the bottom bunk, that is.

Life was a bit more complicated on the top bunk. You also had to connect a sort of cargo net made of seat belt type material to the ceiling so that one couldn't fall out of bed in the middle of the night. Um, yeah... To access the top bunk, you had to climb up the narrow stairs and then kind of slither around the corner on the top to get into place. And then figure out how to get the blanket over your bed when you can't sit up fully in bed and thus move down to straight it out (and it was too full of static electricity to just be flipped down).

Here's some footage from that first night up top as I tried to figure things out.

I survived the night, though my various fitness trackers claimed that I basically got no sleep -- likely because the constant rumbling and motion of the train probably made said trackers think I was the one moving around.  Party on all night long, Amtrak! (I'm now thinking of a dance party in the sightseer lounge and it makes me smile -- but we had enough young'uns on the train that it could have been a thing. Or maybe it WAS a thing that I slept through?)

I woke up early and headed to the sightseer lounge car to watch the sun rise. It was quite pretty. Even though one could argue that the plains all look alike, I beg to differ. Perhaps it is the latent farm girl in me. But I loved looking at the different styles of farms and, of course, all of the animals. Mom joined me just in time for breakfast in the diner car (first come, first served) which was less fancy than the night before, though the omelette I had was quite tasty. Not long after breakfast, we stopped for a little bit in Minot, ND and I recorded a few more observations.

The rest of the day was similar to the previous day. We had breakfast and lunch in the diner car and watched the scenery go by. There were a few places where we had some time to get outside and my favorite was in Shelby, Montana. The signage for one of the bars and the ambient 80s music from a car parked in the area were something, well, special. Hope this video captures at least part of the ambiance.

(Factoid brought to you by my friend Deanna -- the Port of Shelby is a rail port and is, according to its website, the "northernmost inland port authority serving the U.S., Mexico and Canada." Who knew?)

Our train car attendant, Danny

One of the high points of the experience was our sleeping car attendant, Danny Starr. While apparently a lot of the Amtrak employees are dedicated to a particular route and know it inside out, he is apparently a sort of floater, stepping into whatever position was required on whatever route. He was AMAZING. Such a wonderful personality and sense of humor and adventure and really added to the overall experience.

There were a few other stops, but it was mostly just endless wheat fields and pastures with cows and a few horses. And what appeared to be attempts at graffiti. Not surprisingly, because they were taken through the train window as we were racing along, they are not particularly crisp and have some reflections, but you'll get the idea. I am also having challenges with formatting in this blog format, so please forgive the odd layout of the pics below.

One of many sunflower fields

This was a long train....

Unclear what this was. Lime? Salt?

One of many seemingly endless wheat fields

Graffiti on the Great Plains

Because, cows....

The diner car attendant came by again but quite late in the day. I'm not sure if it was because we were literally the last sleeper car room in the entire train or not, but he had only two options left when he got to us. Would we like to have dinner in the dining car at 9 PM or have a sort of take out/room service in our car before then (which time could not be precisely guaranteed). Given that we were on schedule for our final destination and disembarkation at 5:25 AM, we chose room service. And it was just fine (though I missed the fresh flowers).

In-roomette dining

Around this time, we were nearing the Glacier National Park, so I headed to the sightseer lounge car to watch the sun set and to see the view through the mountains. It was quite pretty. And I ended up having some interesting conversations with younger passengers next to me. There was a young woman who would just say "Ooooh" or "Wow" as we went through the mountains, but she didn't lift a cell phone or camera to take a picture of what she was seeing. I finally asked her why. Answer? She'd dunked her phone in water (unintentionally) and then just put the SIM card into an old (non-smart) phone that she had. And she found that it was all she really needed. So she had fallen out of the habit of taking photos even though she now had a new phone. Interesting.

The other interesting conversation was from a young man from the Seattle area. He'd been visiting family in Minnesota. He was struggling to find a good construction job in Seattle because of the union requirements and some timing issues. But he found that he could get a job easily in Minnesota and not having to go through a long period of apprenticeship and could start making good money in less time and with a lower cost of living. So he was heading back home to Seattle to pack up and move to the midwest. I particularly enjoyed that he had a heavy duty water bottle from a drywall manufacturer.

I finally shuffled back down the narrow corridor to our roomette where Mom was fast asleep and attempted to settle myself for another sleepless night, wondering when/whether the time zone would change and how I should set my alarm to wake me/us in time to exit at 5:25 AM in Pasco just in case the train car attendant didn't do so.

In case you'd wondered about the bathrooms....