TRAVELS WITH THE WNP

America by Rail
By Trish Milburn

The train depot in the tiny West Tennessee town of Newbern doesn't operate anymore. No ticket agents sit in the window and take money in exchange for Amtrak tickets. In fact, with the exception of a bar or two, downtown Newbern is one of those quaint, middle-American communities that rolls up the streets at sundown. So I half expected to be the only passenger sitting in my car waiting for my train in the middle of the night. But on this July night, I guess there were several people with the same idea. They began to trickle into the parking lot as midnight approached. Some might have been from the surrounding rural areas. Others, like me, had driven several hours to catch the train since Newbern is one of only two stops Amtrak makes in Tennessee, the other being Memphis. Wherever our homes, we all were about to embark on a journey many Americans forget even exists anymore - passenger train travel.

The City of New Orleans, the train that then ran from Chicago to New Orleans but now has a shortened route in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, was running about an hour late that night. So, it was after 1 a.m. when I took my first step on what I like to call my Great Western Trek. My sister lives in the Pacific Northwest, and Romance Writers of America's National Conference was being held in Reno, Nevada - both locations serviced by Amtrak. Although I'd driven out West before, this time I decided to take the train for a different travel experience.

Once on board, I found a spot, spread out across two seats and tried to get some sleep. For the first leg of the trip, from Newbern to Chicago, I wouldn't have been able to see any new sights even if it hadn't been the middle of the night. Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois passed, along with the remaining hours of the night. It wasn't until we pulled into Union Station in Chicago the next morning that the newness of the experience really hit. I'd never been to downtown Chicago, and Union Station has the grand feeling of the echoing marble buildings of yesteryear.

Chicago's Union Station, a main hub for Amtrak

The afternoon brought the second leg of the journey, a two-day trip across the top of the United States to Seattle. For this part of the trip, I'd reserved a sleeper car aboard the Empire Builder. When I first saw it, I stared, unable to believe how small it was. It didn't look that small in the pictures on the Amtrak Web site. But as I got settled in, the fact that I had privacy, could stretch out more and it was quieter than coach made the space feel not quite so small. I could read, watch the landscape rolling by outside the window or listen to my MP3 player as I kicked back and relaxed. And I'd be arriving at my destination in half the time it'd take me to drive it. Yes, I know most sane people fly, but there are two problems with that option: 1) Flying scares me spitless, and 2) You can't see all the varied landscapes of the country from 30,000 feet in the air.

Before night fell, plunging the world outside into blackness, we passed through the upper part of Illinois, across Wisconsin and into Minnesota, a new state for me. Fortunately, I was able to see a bit of Minnesota as I had dinner in the dining car. As we headed toward Red Wing, we paralleled the Mississippi River along a lovely, meandering route that sparkled as the sun set. The dining car experience was a mixed bag. While it wasn't exactly 4-star dining, it was way better than airplane snacks or the fast food I would undoubtedly have eaten if driving cross-country solo. Some of the dinner options included salmon, baked chicken and pasta. The toss-up part of traveling solo by train is meals in the dining car are community seating, meaning you sit where they place you. If you are seated with interesting people, as I mostly was on the Empire Builder, it can be fun getting to know something about your fellow passengers. But it can be uncomfortable if you're seated with a group of people who already know each other and just talk among themselves or if you're seated with a solo male traveler who is a little too chatty. I never once felt threatened, but I was glad to return to the privacy of my room a couple of times.

I woke up the next morning in North Dakota, and the day was spent crossing the high plains of North Dakota and Montana. I think North Dakota sometimes gets a bum rap. I've been across it twice, and I really like the wide-open feel you experience as you watch the tall grass waving in the breeze and the ducks gliding across the dozens of little ponds we passed on the train. At our stop in Minot, it was noticeably cooler, requiring a jacket on my part.

As the sun went down on Day Two, we edged around the southern part of Glacier National Park, a place I want to visit more thoroughly someday.

I slept through the rest of Montana, Idaho and part of Eastern Washington. Evidently, we even split the train in the middle of the night in Spokane and I never woke up. One of the two engines took a portion of the train toward Portland, Oregon, while our engine kept on across Washington. When I woke and looked outside, I knew from the rugged landscape and the slow rate at which we were traveling that we were descending into the Columbia River Gorge. Once in the gorge, we followed the river for a number of miles before crossing over at Wenatchee. Even though I'd driven across Washington a few years before, the prior route had been south of the train route. Thus, I got to see some new slices of Washington, including a different part of the Cascade Mountains and the Skykomish River below the impressive Mt. Index.

As we made the southerly turn toward Seattle, I was able to see the USS Abraham Lincoln, a large Navy aircraft carrier, which was in port, and the waters of Puget Sound.

If you take the Empire Builder to Seattle, be sure to schedule several days to see the area's sights. Mt. Rainier National Park is a must. You can see the imposing snow-capped height from nearly everywhere in the city, but a visit to the park itself is awe-inspiring. Whether you're marveling at the height of the mountain or admiring the wildflowers along its trails, a trip to this dormant volcano should top your list of excursions if you're in the area. Other fun activities are a trip to the famous Pike's Place Fish Market in downtown Seattle, a drive along the Olympic Peninsula, Olympic National Park and perhaps even a ferry ride over to Victoria, British Columbia. And if you're a coffee lover, you will think you've died and gone to heaven. Not only is this the birthplace of Starbucks, but there is a little coffee shop or stand on almost every corner.

In addition to Seattle's many offerings, you might want to check out the impressive Washington State History Museum and Point Defiance Park in nearby Tacoma. Port Defiance has a lovely rose garden in warmer weather; a beach with picnic tables on Commencement Bay; a zoo and aquarium, home to a wide variety of animals including the local celebrity walrus, E.T.; and Fort Nisqually Living History Museum, a reconstruction of an 1833 Hudson's Bay Company outpost.

After several days of visiting with family and seeing the sights, I boarded the Coast Starlight bound for Sacramento, California. This route offers a brief glimpse of Mt. St. Helens in the distance as it heads toward Portland, Oregon. I'd never been to Oregon, but unfortunately most of it passed by in the dark. This and an earlier segment of the trip in North Dakota were the bumpiest parts of the trip. That's something you should go into train travel also knowing - it is often jerky. That's because the tracks are not owned by Amtrak. They are owned, and therefore maintained, by freight companies. You also will experience some delays because the train has to pull onto side tracks to allow the passage of Amtrak trains going in the opposite direction and of freight trains, which have the right of way.

A new day dawned to reveal northern California, another new state for me. After a change of trains in Sacramento, I was off to Reno, Nevada aboard the California Zephyr. That's another positive thing about train travel - cool train names, much cooler than Flight 203 or some such.

This is a beautiful trip. As you slowly climb through the Sierra Nevada mountains and approach the town of Truckee, you can look down and see the beautiful expanse of Donner Lake near the area where the Donner Party spent the brutal winter of 1846-1847. The lake is in a state park that chronicles the party's desperate fight for survival during the worst winter the High Sierras had seen in a century. A stay in Truckee is worthwhile to explore the history and beauty of Donner Memorial State Park, the ski area at Squaw Valley and the awesome spectacle of nearby Lake Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe's Emerald Bay

The next stop, where I stayed for a week to attend the writing conference, was Reno. I had never been to Nevada. Even if you don't like to gamble, Reno is worth a day's stay because you can take a trip up to Virginia City, an old, gold-mining town that's on the National Register of Historic Places. Mark Twain spent time here as a reporter.

Virginia City's Silver Queen Saloon

Following the conference, I once again boarded the California Zephyr for my two-day trek across the middle of the country back to Chicago. We lumbered across the vast emptiness of Nevada and into Utah. Though I'd never been to Utah, I unfortunately missed Salt Lake City as we passed through in the middle of the night. I woke the next morning between Provo and Helper. That day, I saw the edge of Arches National Park in the distance, a park known for more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches.

We entered Colorado, the last new state I'd rack up on this trip. We followed the Colorado River through canyons for much of the day and arrived in Denver late in the afternoon.

The Colorado River

After the newness of Colorado wore off, I was ready to get home. That is not to say there aren't interesting things to see along the rest of the route, but I'd traveled those by car on earlier trips. For instance, the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument in Kearney, Nebraska, is a museum that documents the pioneers' westward migration through Nebraska. It's impossible to miss if you were traveling along Interstate 80 by car because it's built across the interstate. If you arrive in the area by train, you'd need to detrain at Holdredge and arrange for other transportation to Kearney. And though not right on the train's route, a side trip in central Iowa would bring you to the famous covered bridges of Madison County.

There are far too many sights of interest in Chicago to include in this story. We'll save that for a feature of its own. After a few hours of layover in Chicago, I board the City of New Orleans for the last leg of my two-and-a-half-week journey. Even though I was bone-deep weary as I stepped off the train in Newbern before daybreak and slipped into the driver's seat of my car for the long drive home, I was glad I'd taken the train trip. It wasn't the fastest means of travel nor always the smoothest, but it's an experience like no other. And there could come a day when passenger train travel is no longer an option in the United States. If that comes to pass, I'll be very glad indeed that I took my Great Western Trek.

Tips for train travel:

* If at all possible, take your own pillow and blanket. It can get pretty chilly on the train, particularly at night. Your own pillow will be more comfortable than the tiny airline-type pillow they hand out at night.
* Don't be in a rush. Trains are often running behind schedule, but if you have plenty of books to read or tunes on your MP3 or CD player, the delays won't be such a big deal. Train travel, by its very nature, is a more leisurely way to get from Point A to Point B.
* Though there is a snack bar on the train, you might want to pack a few munchies for those midnight cravings. Bottled water is provided for passengers riding in the sleeper cars.
* Even if you book a sleeper, don't plan to take much luggage into your compartment. There simply isn't room. I had a backpack and a case with my Dana word processor, and that was about all that was manageable. You can check your baggage on the long legs of the trip, but be sure to keep items that you will need (such as medicines) in your carry-on bag because you can't retrieve your checked luggage until you get to your destination.
* There are shower facilities for sleeper-car passengers only. Learning to stand in a shower that's moving is quite a challenge. Bring a pair of flip-flops to wear in the shower.

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To read last month's Travel article, click here.

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