In this era of continuing COVID, I began to get restless. It was clear that planning a vacation to Europe was not a good idea quite yet, but I was getting restless. And then I saw an article about roomettes on Amtrak and the tumblers of my mind began to turn with possibilities.
I finally came up with both a plan and an accomplice -- I mean, a traveling companion. Or two. In a nutshell, I would fly to Chicago, pick up my Mom and, together, board the Empire Builder train to Washington State. Once there, we would more or less go our separate ways. I would drive her to meet a childhood friend of hers and my wife would join me to spend time with a good friend in the tri-cities of eastern Washington.
While I have taken a long distance train before between southern California and Chicago via two different routes, it was quite a while ago. I was a student at the time and was most assuredly not in a sleeping car and didn't think I had enough money to go to even the cafe car for a bite, let alone the dining car. So I had used the remainder of the balance on my card at the cafeteria at college to stock up on crackers, granola bars, juice boxes and the like, packed them into my backpack and probably looked a bit like a vagrant as I munched away.
The long haul trains are also much different than either the allegedly "high speed" Acela (nothing like real high speed trains in Europe and Japan, my other points of reference) or the regional trains. For example, the Acela has relatively comfortable seats that make working on one's laptop convenient, especially as there is free (albeit sometimes spotty) WiFi. The regional trains, on the other hand (based on trips to DC, Boston and Vermont using them) are pretty down-at-the heels, not nearly as comfortable (even in business class), though they do offer WiFi at times.
Anyway, enough people were curious about the train and sleeping car situation, that I thought I'd craft a few blog entries to cover the trip and embed some videos as it's hard to explain it all in a quick conversation.
The map below may be helpful to understand the train portion of the journey. Two trains leave from Chicago and split into two in Spokane. We were the lower branch.
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| Source: Road and Rail Pictures |
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