Train Trip 2008, Days 3-5

Monday, 14 April 2008
I woke up feeling pretty good after my first night on a train. I wouldn’t say I slept well, exactly: between the rocking motion of the train, the cramped quarters that kept making me shift positions, the intermittent snoring of someone nearby, the loud conversation of the elderly gentlemen in front of me (who must also have required a midnight snack or two, as even through my earplugs I kept hearing the brisk crackling of a bag of chips), I don’t think I slept more than an hour or two between interruptions. Still, I did doze off more than I’d feared. I was glad of my extra blanket, too, as the car seemed quite chilly when I woke up during the night. It was good to have a blanket long enough I could tuck my feet beneath it.

I awoke unaided at 6:30 a.m. and watched the snowy pre-dawn outside. We were winding our way among ever-grander snowcapped peaks, along swift rivers with ice still solid along their banks. Spring hadn’t travelled this far north nor this high up yet; between the evergreens, the other branches were bare.



The coach car on the Canadian had two restrooms, one at either end. I pulled clean clothes out of my suitcase and took a few minutes to tiptoe quietly to the larger restroom and freshen up. I was sick of them by the end of three weeks, but moist towelettes were handy and useful in the absence of any shower facilities in coach class.

Back at my seat, I jotted down a few notes and ate some bread and dried peaches for breakfast. As the rest of the car began to stir, I walked to the Dome car, one car back from mine. A popular way to take in the scenery, the Dome car’s seating is up a short flight of stairs to put passengers above the level of the train. The top of the car is enclosed in a long dome of glass; you look out over the tops of the other cars at the passing sights. On the lower level of the same car are several train attendants’ sleeping quarters, the “snack car” (it turned out to be just a tiny cubicle with an attendant inside to dispense candy bars and microwaved food), and, further back, an entertainment area with more tables. At night they showed movies and played Bingo games in that area.

I filled my travel mug with coffee from the snack booth and spent some time in the Dome car watching our progress through the mountains. Late in the morning we wound our way past Mount Robson, the highest point in the Canadian Rockies, and through Yellowhead Pass toward Jasper, Alberta--our first scheduled daytime stop since departing Vancouver over 18 hours before. That was an aspect of Canadian train travel that was totally different from Amtrak travel in the U.S.: the infrequency of scheduled stops. The train schedule marked several dozen smaller towns at which it could stop, but noted that the train would only actually stop there if someone had prearranged to be picked up or dropped off there. Otherwise, there were only about 7 or 8 stops (some of them in the middle of the night) between Vancouver and Toronto. The smokers were undoubtedly miserable.

Our late-morning Jasper stop lasted almost an hour. I think just about veryone piled out of the train to stroll down the main street through town, buying mementos or food. I did a little of both, tossing off a quick postcard to my grandma and visiting a tiny supermarket to supplement my limited food stores with some crackers and sesame snacks. I even had time to walk over to the post office and mail my postcards before our departure.

When we pulled out of Jasper, just past noon, the conductor made an announcement (in English and again in French, of course; I overheard a couple of my new Canadian acquaintances in coach gently poking fun at his French) that we should keep an eye out for wildlife in this area. Sure enough, just a few minutes later he came back on the intercom for a hasty announcement: “Look for the bighorn sheep on the left side of the train!” I stood up and craned my neck in time to glimpse two of them; not five minutes later came another announcement. “Moose on the left!” That one I didn’t see, unfortunately, so I’ve still never seen a moose in the wild. I did spot a beaver on my own later in the trip, though. Plus plenty of Canada geese, which amused me greatly. Something about seeing Canada geese in Canada, after seeing them in Oregon and Washington all my life, struck me as unaccountably funny.

After Jasper the landscape quickly began to change. We traded snowy cliffs and imposing mountains for more boggy marshes and grassy hummocks. Instead of evergreens, we saw mostly barren deciduous trees and red-tinged underbrush. The few evergreens that remained were smaller and scrubbier, too. The terrain kept flattening until we were on the tabletop plains heading toward Edmonton, the horizon level all around. After the evergreens and icy blues of the mountains, the flat plains seemed drab and brown; however, I overheard an Edmontonian passenger remarking to her daughter, "It's certainly gotten a lot more green here while we were gone!"

Edmonton was another smoke stop, and we lingered there half an hour or so while the train took on more water. The station itself is outside of Edmonton proper, alone on the plain away from town. One of the train attendants said the train used to stop right in downtown Edmonton, but that a local university purchased the original station some years ago and the passenger stop had to relocate. It was a fairly drab stop, with not so much as a vending machine or a postcard rack inside the station--a wide opportunity for some local entrepreneur, I'd think. (Train passengers do get tired of the same packaged snack fare after a day or so.)

I splurged on dinner in the dining car that night: halibut baked with wasabi crumb crust, butternut squash soup, vegetables, and a chocolate torte for dessert. It would prove to be the most delicious train meal of the entire trip. The dining car was all snazzy and ornate, too; it really felt a bit like we'd stepped back into the golden era of train travel.

Picture from wikipedia:


Tuesday, 15 April 2008
My second night in coach, I felt like I was starting to get the hang of it. I awoke quite chipper and had another cheerful morning, enlivened by our hour-long stop in Winnipeg that allowed for a stroll over to the Forks Market where I had half a sandwich and a smoothie for lunch. The train conductor announced that Winnipeg is known as the "Chicago of the North;" now, granted, I hadn't yet been to Chicago, but even so, I thought that comparison might be a bit of a stretch.

Once we were on our way again, I decided that afternoons are the hardest part of a 3-day train trip: the scenery gets monotonous, my snacks unappetizing, all my distractions boring. I had anticipated that this leg of the journey would be the least exciting; although it wasn't as bad as I'd feared, the sitting was still starting to wear a bit thin, exacerbated when I started to get an itchy rash on my chest where my underwire rubbed me wrong.

On the other hand, it was nice to have made the acquaintance of a few fellow passengers to chat with during the long afternoons. The gentleman behind me was on his way from Vancouver to Montreal for a job interview that he was deliberately vague about. He talked about the history of Canada to me sometimes as we passed through towns. The woman across from him had done reflexology for a long time and was on her way to see her daughter near Toronto. Of course the two men in the row in front of me kept up their railfan patter, pointing out to each other incomprehensible-to-me data about the train markings and other cars and our own progress. The man across from me never said a word that I could hear, just read and napped.

Tuesday was the day I kept being surprised by the ice and snow in Ontario--especially the ice, floating on rivers and locking up lakes. We passed from flat fields of dark stubbled earth in the morning, to endless icy lakes throughout the afternoon and evening. The pale white branches of the birches (?) clustered among the evergreens really did look ghostly in the flat, cloudy light--more so, somehow, when they were the only thing visible, without hills or anything else visible in the distance to put them into perspective.



Wednesday, 16 April 2008
I awoke at dawn on the final day of my cross-Canada trip (easier to do when you start to nod off at 9 p.m. the night before). later that morning I knew I'd successfully made the transition to a more relaxed, vacationy perception of time when I thought happily to myself, "Wow, only 12 hours to Toronto!"

I treated myself to a second & final dining car meal for breakfast, where I sat with a delightful elderly couple from Virginia who were also in the middle of a North American Rail Pass trip--and bless their hearts, they too were traveling in coach, quite cheerfully. They confessed to being originally from Seattle, and then we discovered that Beverly and I were fellow SPU grads, although she had graduated back when it was still Seattle Pacific College. They were a treat, very interested to hear about my itinerary and happy to share stories from their own journey.

We arrived in Toronto Wednesday night right on time--actually a bit early, just before 8:00 p.m. I marched off confidently on foot to my hostel, the Canadiana Backpackers Inn, and managed to only get slightly lost in the process. The first thing I did after checking in and happily throwing my bags down on a single bed in the 7-woman dorm room I'd selected (for the bargain price of $25) was to rush down the hallway and enjoy a blessed hot shower. I'd suspected that I was starting to smell a bit unpleasant despite my judicious use of wet wipes every day...and it was nice to have clean hair again.

The hostel was shabby but clean and well-run, in the way of the best and most convivial hostels, and 2 of my 3 roommates were already sleeping when I came back in (the 3rd would very quietly and politely slip in around 11). After using up my complimentary 20-minute internet credit to send a quick email out to family and friends, I lay in bed reading for awhile before falling asleep. I still felt the illusion of rocking gently as I lay there, and my second-to-last thought before sleeping was to wonder how long it would take that sensation to wear off after I finished the entire trip.

(My very last thought before sleeping was, "It's so nice to have clean hair again.")

Train Trip 2008, Day 2: Sunday, 13 April 2008

Seven years ago, my then-roommate E. and I, being fairly broke after 4 years of college followed by a year of Americorps service, occasionally entertained ourselves by watching free videos she’d check out from the library. I have a vivid memory of the two of us sitting on the floor in her bedroom (the other roommates didn’t want the TV in the living room), watching on her 13-inch TV a documentary program about the cross-Canada rail journey, both of us dreaming of trips we couldn't begin to afford.

When I started planning this train trip in earnest early this year, I wanted to take that cross-Canada journey myself at last--partly out of nostalgia for that post-college year, and partly because it just sounded so epic. I went back and forth about actually doing it, with my limited number of available vacation days: the Canadian train from Vancouver to Toronto only departs three days each week, so getting off the train for sightseeing would require at least a two-night commitment to the place. Still, the North America Rail Pass requires passengers to take at least one trip in Canada and the U.S., so I chose to head eastward on a nonstop trip through Canada. In some ways it felt like my train journey would truly start when that train departed Vancouver at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, beginning my travels into areas of the continent I’d never seen.

I woke up on my own Sunday morning in Vancouver just before 7:00 a.m., thanking my lucky stars for the earplugs that allowed me to sleep soundly despite the pedestrian and vehicle noise outside. (After one night I was already pretty sure those were going to be one of the smartest investments of the trip. Foreshadowing!) I dawdled around and took a leisurely shower before carrying out my plan to breakfast at Granville Island Public Market. It had rained during the night, but the clouds were rolling away as I meandered down the hill.

Browsing through the marketplace was so much fun. I bought this beautiful blueberry scone and a bowl of fresh fruit, and took them outside onto the docklike patio to eat in the sun while savoring the views of the mountains and the water. Every time I visit Vancouver I’m struck anew by how close the mountains seem to the city, how they loom up imposingly just behind the skyscrapers. This scone put those dry bricks from Starbucks to shame. It was crispy on the outside, light and moist on the inside, loaded with plump blueberries that burst sweetly with every nibble. While I sat there lingering over my delicious breakfast, I had the funniest sort of reverse-deja-vu moment. I thought, I am going to look back on this morning--on these very minutes--for the rest of my life. It's going to be one of those experiences I carry joyfully in my heart forever: this perfect scone, these juicy strawberries, the magnificent sensation of freedom and power as I begin a trip I’ve been dreaming of for nearly my entire adult life.

It was good.

Breakfast gone, moment over, I headed back into the market to stock up for the three-day cross-Canada trip ahead of me. Two big apples, a demi-loaf of multi-grain bread still warm from the oven, a small package of creamy Havarti cheese, dried peaches, and small crunchy dried apple bits. I thought it would be nice to have such wholesome treats to munch on for the next few days; I didn’t plan (and couldn't afford) to eat every meal in the dining car, and the “snack car,” at least on the Amtrak trains I was familiar with, were mostly overpriced convenience-store kinds of foods. Believe me, I love me some convenience-store foods, but I didn't want to have nothing else for three days. What can I say: stocking up on bread, cheese, and fruit? Yes, I’m a peasant at heart.



Reluctantly I tore myself away from the market and walked back up to the apartment so I could keep the cheese refrigerated as long as possible before my evening departure. While I walked, I dithered about what to do with the rest of the day. I considered taking a bus out to the Capilano suspension bridge, which I’ve never done; however, I didn’t quite trust my skills and the Vancouver bus system to get me there and back successfully, on a Sunday, in the allotted time. Instead I took the 98 express bus back downtown, figuring I could walk around in Stanley Park at least. Increasingly nervous about the looming fact that I was about to spend three days and nights mostly sitting down during the train trip across the continent, I wanted to try to exhaust myself beforehand as much as possible.

I walked across downtown all the way to Stanley Park before it occurred to me that I could rent a bike and ride the whole loop around the park. Luckily, my handy tourist map led me straight to the Spokes bike rental shop, and for $10 I was soon riding back to the park on a big old hybrid/city bike. It was way heavier and more upright than my bike at home, but its large, springy seat was certainly comfy! I made no effort to hurry, enjoying the views, the stiff ocean breeze, and the warm sun. I also enjoyed the intelligent design of the pathways, with the section for bikes & rollerblades almost always divided by an actual curb or elevation change from the lane for folks on foot. It seemed to flow more smoothly and with less aggravating cross-lane drifting than a place like Greenlake.



Even at my leisurely pace, with a couple of stops for pictures, I was still around the loop in an hour. That was the most enjoyable $10 I spent in Vancouver, for sure. I walked all the way back up to Burrard Street and took the express bus back to my friends' apartment one last time. I showered again, gratefully, well aware that I wouldn’t get another chance until Toronto on Wednesday night at the earliest. I cleaned up, packed up, and trundled myself back out on a different express bus line (bless them!) to connect with the SkyTrain to the train station. As usual, I’d been far more cautious about my timing than necessary, and was an hour and a half early. I wrote some postcards to friends and nieces, used my cheap phone card to check in with Rob, and had a snack.

Still anxious about how unpleasant three nights in coach might be, I asked a ticket agent (a young man whose close-cropped curly hair and toothy smile reminded me of my brother) about the cost to upgrade to a sleeping compartment. With no available discounts (he did try to find me one: “Are you under 25? Are you a student? No? Well, um...are you over 60?”), it would cost $431 to upgrade--significantly lower than the price I’d originally been quoted by phone three months ago, but still too high for my budget. He said it would cost $275 to upgrade for just the final night, which was mightily tempting--all meals are included for the sleeping car passenger. I decided not to do it, though, as he assured me I could always opt to do it later on, if I was having an unbearable time in coach.

By about 4:30 other coach passengers were beginning to line up, so I joined them. I was only about the third person in line; the man in front of me was on his way to Montreal for a job interview, and clued me in that VIA Rail didn’t hand out seat assignments the way Amtrak had-- “It’s just a free-for-all to the train once they start boarding,” he said. This made me twitchy to contemplate, but when they loosed us at 5:00, it ended up being much tamer than his description. They pointed us to different cars, depending on our final destinations, and there were so few of us going all the way to Toronto that the car attendant sorted us out to each have a two-seat row to spread out in. Peter, the man from the line, was sitting behind me; two elderly gentleman had both sides of the row in front of me. They were clearly rail fans who had traveled this route many times; I quickly learned to brazenly eavesdrop on their conversations for tidbits of information about the towns we were passing through.

We began inching our way out of Vancouver at 5:30 p.m., right on time. The train crossed over the Frasier River several times as we headed east, clacking through some lovely little hamlets in flat valleys ringed by mountains. For half an hour or so we took turns passing and being passed by a freight train running on a parallel track, which the two railfans in front of me enjoyed immensely. “Now it’s our turn!” they would crow when our train pulled ahead. "We're winning!"

As the sun set and the light dimmed, I peered out into the gloaming as long as I could at the lovely landscape--small towns tucked at the base of rugged, snowy mountains. Mr. Thel would like this, I kept thinking.

Bedtime wasn’t much of a problem. Our car attendant, Jeanine, came through the car in the evening and distributed not only small airline-style pillows, but also generously-sized blankets, earplugs, and eyeshades. I’d come prepared with all those things, but I still accepted the free supplemental pillow and blanket. The main lights in the car were turned off around 9:00. After visiting the restroom at the end of the car to change into pajamas and brush my teeth, I put my two seats back all the way, pulled up the footrests to make a sort of platform, pulled on my eyeshade and put in the earplugs, and curled up with my blankets in my little nest. Next stop: Jasper, Alberta, tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. Mountain Time.

Train Trip 2008, Day 1: Saturday, 12 April 2008

The day of my departure was Seattle’s sunniest day of the year so far. Mr. Thel drove me to Seattle’s King Street Station (a moody, wintry photo of which had graced the cover of the Amtrak timetable I’d been poring through for the last six months). He sat with me until the train began to board around 7:30 a.m. I found myself getting anxious: not panicky, just suddenly emotional about being apart from my husband for three weeks. We haven’t been apart for that long since we first got together six years ago, after all.

Despite my anxiety, I felt as excited as a little girl on the first day of school as I lined up and shuffled out to the boarding platform. As I exited the station, I looked back to exchange one last cheery wave and blow kisses with Mr. Thel, and set out toward Amtrak’s Cascades train. I had deliberately packed everything into a set of two bags, a suitcase and a backpack which could be combined into one hefty article, so that I would never have to check any baggage and could hop on and off the train without delay. The Cascades is a one-level commuter-type train; I slid my suitcase into a luggage rack at the end of the car and found my assigned window seat on the east side of the train.

We smoothly glided away from the station at 7:40 a.m., exactly on time. As we slid through Seattle and up along the water, I kept wanting to narrate to anyone listening about what we were passing. I was well aware that these would be my last moments of familiarity for three weeks: the Magnolia Bridge, Kiwanis Ravine, the Ballard Locks. Pulling out of the city along the water on that gorgeous morning made me preemptively homesick. Joggers swarmed in Myrtle Edwards Park and Golden Gardens, the Olympic Mountains gleaming brightly across Puget Sound. The hazy gradation of blues westward made me wish I’d postponed the trip a day to enjoy it: the dark, bright water below the hazy blue of the trees on the islands; then the faraway blue of the Olympics and the pale blue of the morning sky. The lovely views of the morning made me speculate a bit smugly to myself that this particular route would be hard to top for beauty.

The train crossed the Canadian border at 10:20, just over two and a half hours from Seattle. The Canadian town of White Rock, barely north of the border, has an adorable waterfront street next to the train tracks, with shops and restaurants and parks, full of people already out picnicking in the sunshine. I spotted a bald eagle just south of town; I’d already seen a blue heron near Everett earlier that morning.

It was about another hour and a half before we arrived in Vancouver, B.C. I got through customs after being asked extensive questions about my itinerary by the female Canadian customs agent. She even wanted to see my reservation for my single night in Toronto later in the week. It was a very short walk from the station across the street to the SkyTrain, which took me into downtown Vancouver for an exchange to a bus to the South Granville neighborhood. A friend’s family keeps an apartment there; they were out of town for the weekend, but they had set me up with a key to stay for Saturday night.

I was truly impressed by the 98 express bus from downtown to their neighborhood. I don’t know if it’s what they’re calling “Bus Rapid Transit” in Seattle, but it was a route with fairly limited stops, and a bus came along at least every 15 minutes throughout the day. It made getting around much less stressful and troublesome. In Vancouver you can also use a credit card to purchase a bus ticket at certain stations, which was very convenient as well.

After finding the apartment and unloading my bags with a sense of accomplishment at having successfully navigated the first of several new-to-me public transportation systems, I went right back downtown to enjoy the afternoon. My friend had given me a pass to the Vancouver Art Gallery, so I went there and spent some time in their exhibit on trees in art. There was one piece, a film loop, displayed alone in a dark room--trees rotating around the viewer with a mix of natural and industrial noise as the soundtrack. I watched it all the way through once or twice. A woman who had just entered turned around and came right back out behind me as I moved on. Unprompted, as we exited she said, “Trees scare me!”

A headache made me head back to the apartment for a nap, after first having some disappointing Chinese food from the restaurant on the corner. There was an extremely inebriated man at the restaurant hassling the waiter. First he was appalled that he was too early to order something for delivery, and tried to convince the waiter that the time was an hour later than it was. Then he got belligerent: “Do you know how to cook?” he demanded. When the waiter affirmed that he could cook, the man persisted, “But do you really know how, or do you just think you do?”

Refreshed and pain-free after a nap at the apartment, I embarked on a walk down to Granville Island and up above the wall along False Creek out to Vanier park. The brisk salt air and the bright setting sun made it a lovely long stroll. Plenty of people were out enjoying the evening along the water on foot and by bicycle, but as I looped back uphill toward the apartment, I was more or less on my own through some quiet neighborhoods. Realizing that sunset was imminent, and not really wanting to end up wandering alone in the dark in unfamiliar areas, I increased my pace, arriving “home” just as the dusk began to deepen, around 8 p.m. I stopped at the corner store just long enough to buy some chocolate milk, went back to the apartment, watched part of a movie on TV, and went to bed.

Happy "June," y'all!

Contrary to the impression given by this blog for the last two months, I did successfully complete my long-anticipated train trip and survived, without so much as a keychain pepper spray for defense. Three weeks, ten thousand miles, 8 nights in coach, and seven cities later, I still think it was one of the best ideas I've ever had. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

In the meantime, I'm going to do some belated posting of how it all went, expanding on the notes I took throughout the journey. With gas prices climbing daily, I can't help thinking that train travel will begin to seem a more and more appealing alternative to road tripping--and I believe people who do try the train are almost certainly in for a pleasant surprise.

Itinerary

Train: 510 Cascades
Departure: Seattle (Amtrak), Washington
Saturday April 12, 2008 7:40AM
Arrival: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Saturday April 12, 2008 11:35AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

[I don't have an email confirmation for this leg, since it's on VIA Canada Rail, but the next bit goes like this:
Depart: Vancouver, BC
Sunday April 13, 2008 5:30 PM
Arrive: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday April 16, 2008 (7 PM, I think)]

Train: 7097 Maple Leaf
Departure: Toronto, Ontario
Thursday April 17, 2008 8:30AM
Arrival: Canadian Border New York
Thursday April 17, 2008 11:08AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat


Train: 64 Maple Leaf
Departure: Canadian Border New York
Thursday April 17, 2008 11:12AM
Arrival: New York (Penn Station), New York
Thursday April 17, 2008 9:35PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 160 Regional Service
Departure: New York (Penn Station), New York
Sunday April 20, 2008 9:00AM
Arrival: Boston (South Station), Massachusetts
Sunday April 20, 2008 1:07PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Bus: 8257 Thruway Bus
Departure: Boston (South Station), Massachusetts
Sunday April 20, 2008 2:15PM
Arrival: Portland, Maine
Sunday April 20, 2008 4:10PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Thruway Seat

Bus: 8256 Thruway Bus
Departure: Portland, Maine
Tuesday April 22, 2008 5:30PM
Arrival: Boston (South Station), Massachusetts
Tuesday April 22, 2008 7:25PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Thruway Seat

Train: 67 Regional Service
Departure: Boston (South Station), Massachusetts
Tuesday April 22, 2008 9:45PM
Arrival: New York (Penn Station), New York
Wednesday April 23, 2008 2:01AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 51 Cardinal
Departure: New York (Penn Station), New York
Wednesday April 23, 2008 6:45AM
Arrival: Chicago (Union Station), Illinois
Thursday April 24, 2008 10:35AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 59 Cty Of New Orleans
Departure: Chicago (Union Station), Illinois
Thursday April 24, 2008 8:00PM
Arrival: Memphis, Tennessee
Friday April 25, 2008 6:27AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 58 Cty Of New Orleans
Departure: Memphis, Tennessee
Monday April 28, 2008 10:40PM
Arrival: Chicago (Union Station), Illinois
Tuesday April 29, 2008 9:00AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 3 Southwest Chief
Departure: Chicago (Union Station), Illinois
Tuesday April 29, 2008 3:15PM
Arrival: Lamy, New Mexico
Wednesday April 30, 2008 2:20PM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 3 Southwest Chief
Departure: Lamy, New Mexico
Thursday May 1, 2008 2:24PM
Arrival: Los Angeles, California
Friday May 2, 2008 8:15AM
Accommodation: 1 Reserved Coach Seat

Train: 14 Coast Starlight
Departure: Los Angeles, California
Friday May 2, 2008 10:15AM
Arrival: Seattle (Amtrak), Washington
Saturday May 3, 2008 8:45PM
Accommodation: Superliner Roomette

Yes, that's a roomette on that last leg, there. It was under $200 to upgrade to a room for that final day and a half--and all meals are included. I know my tendency to start moping at the end of a vacation, so I thought it worthwhile to give myself a little something to be excited about for the final leg of this amazing journey.

I'm only able to take three weeks for this trip instead of the full four weeks, unfortunately. But I still get to see some amazing sights, stay with some of my favorite people, meet some new people, and (I hope) exhaust my facial muscles from grinning with joy at all the random fun I will have.

Ten days to departure!

Ominous portent, or minor frustration?

This afternoon I noticed that my tax refund had been deposited into my checking account.

I immediately called Amtrak to start the process of purchasing the rail pass for my long-anticipated month-long trip this spring. The cheerful customer service representative told me I needed to set my itinerary at the time of purchasing the pass. This was not a problem, since I had already spent hours and hours poring over the Amtrak timetables and setting various itineraries; however, my spreadsheet was at home and I was at work. Could I call back later?

"Sure," she said. "We're here 24 hours a day for your convenience."

"That is convenient!" I agreed.

I came home, pulled out my itinerary spreadsheet, tinkered with my dream trip one last time, and called Amtrak back.

The customer service representative told me that the department I needed is only open 8:30-4:30, Monday through Friday.

Sigh.

It's that kind of confusion and misinformation that could really derail (metaphorically, I hope) a train trip like this. On the other hand, if that's the biggest screw-up I encounter, I'll be thanking my lucky stars. Here's hoping.

Crisscrossing a continent

On Friday the mailman brought me the Amtrak book of timetables that I had requested online. I pored through the book greedily, slowly accepting that one month is not long enough to experience every single route that Amtrak offers, even if I never spend any time exploring along the way. And what kind of trip would it be if I didn't spend some time lollygagging and sightseeing along the way?

Yesterday afternoon I sat down with the book and set up a tentative itinerary:

Seattle to Vancouver, B.C.
Vancouver to Toronto (!)
One night in Toronto
Toronto to New York
Three nights in New York (I've never been!)
New York to...somewhere in Vermont. Or Portland, Maine. Somewhere up east.
Two nights in whichever place--including my birthday.
Vermont or Maine to Washington, D.C.
One night in D.C.
D.C. to Chicago via one route
Chicago to Charlottesville, VA via another route
One night in Charlottesville
Charlottesville to New Orleans
Two nights in New Orleans
New Orleans to Memphis
Three nights in or near Memphis
Memphis to Chicago
Chicago to St. Louis
Two nights in St. Louis
St. Louis to Kansas City
Kansas City to Chicago
Two nights in Chicago
Chicago to Seattle

Believe it or not, this itinerary actually leaves a couple of days of wiggle room in case I decide I need more time to explore somewhere, or get sick, or miss a train and have to linger for a day...

This itinerary is bound to change, but putting it together made me feel for the first time like this trip is really going to happen. Here's hoping!