Introduction:

Today is: Wednesday, October 1, 2008 we are five days away from departure.

This trip has been in the planning for a long time.  We wanted to go out to Washington State to visit with the Bride's mother and several members of her family who still reside in that region.  We have been excited about taking a long trip on the train and this was the perfect opportunity so our plan was to forego the regular approach of flying on United non-stop, and travel by Amtrak.

I have come to realize that traveling by airline has become far to much like cattle car services, non existent for the most part.  Travel by train, on the other hand is relaxing, the services are excellent and the experience is one of pure enjoyment.  We determined that our trip to Seattle, from the Washington, DC metro area would include the train trip as part of the actual vacation, not the means to get there.

Preparation for the trip:

When I started making preparations for this trip, I thought I was being rather smart by booking our travel origination as the Harper's Ferry, West Virginia Amtrak station.  In this way, we could drive up to my son's house in Charles Town, WV, leave our car at his place, and have him drive us to the station.  What I didn't know was that this station was no longer a full service station, but instead was only a whistle stop  for the picking up and dropping off of passengers.  There was no ticket facility, nor was there any baggage check-in.  Whoops, big mistake.  Unfortunately when I went back to the AMTRAK folks the sleeper compartment was not available out of Washington's Union Station but we could take a regular seat until we reached Harper's Ferry and then we would have access to our regular sleeper compartment.  Oh well, what ever, this was a vacation adventure, right?

So, as it stands right now, we will travel by Hire Car to Union Station, in downtown DC, board our train at 4:05pm in a regular coach car.  We will arrive at Harper's Ferry at about 5:00pm and will then move into the sleeper car and into our compartment.

As this adventure progresses, I will update this log and let all know that there is something else to read about.  We will insert photographs as we take them in here as well.

Sound like a plan?

Here's the routes we will be traveling:

This is the Capitol Limited, from Washington, DC to Chicago.

To view a detailed version of the map, click here.

This is the route of the Empire Builder from Chicago, through Spokane to Seattle, WA.

To view a detailed version of the map, click here.

More as we go along.

Monday, October 6th

We will be leaving in less than 20 hours.  I am almost as excited as a child at Christmas as one poster indicated to me.  Frankly, it is true.

A special note, do not click on the VIEW DETAILED MAP, that link is not functional.  To see the detail of the train route, click on the word here in the sentence below the map.

So, remember tomorrow afternoon at about 4:00pm our train will start the journey.  We will be rolling out of Union Station, if my previous experience with Amtrak holds, right on time.

Expect to have the updates with photos up each morning around 9:00am.  After all, we will be on vacation, and will be sleeping in a bit.

Tuesday October 7, 2008.  On the Train at Cumberland, Maryland

Well gang, we are on out way.  We lucked out when we got to Washington's Union Station to check out bags.  Turns out our sleeping compartment was open at that location as well, so we were able to get right into our compartment with no requirement to sit in a regular coach seat and then switch to our reservation car when we arrived at Harper's Ferry, WV.  The train pulled out right on time and we rolled through the outskirts of Washington, DC, into Bethesda, MD and Rockville, MD which was the first stop.  We picked up a couple of people there and next stop was Harper's Ferry where we would have normally been.  Turns out the station is rather ratty, run down and no wonder there was no station personnel there. However, there were several folks who were getting on and a couple who were getting off.

Our train is composed of double-decker cars and we are in the upper level of the car.  Gives us quite a perspective of the countryside as we passed through it.  We were called to dinner (reservations were required) at 5:30pm, shortly after we left the Harper's Ferry Station.  The menu had a good selection of entrees and the Bride and I decided on the Flatiron Steak.  Wonderful steak, very tender and tasty.  We had a dessert of vanilla Hagen Daaz icecream and then off to the Observation Car (yep, we had one of those also).  Amazing views from that car, but it had already started to turn dark and photographs were simply not feasible.  Flash back from the windows would kill any images.

This is our sleeper compartment car out of Union Station.  Our compartment is the third one back from the end of the line of windows.

The Bride Settles into our compartment.

We cross over the Potomac River near Harper's Ferry, when we saw Harper's Ferry rail station, we were ever so glad that we could change our ticket to leave from the Washington, DC Union Station.

The Dining Car at the dinner hour. We are near Cumberland, Maryland at this point.

Char at our table, viewing the menu selections.

We have just left the Cumberland station and are now headed for the Pennsylvania/Maryland border.  Unfortunately we will be passing through Cleveland at 2:41 in the morning, so no Wavy wavy Thistle, sorry.  Just know that we stopped at the Cleveland Amtrak station and we were simply snoring away.

We had a fine dinner, went back to our compartment, read a bit, I worked on this journal entry and then had the Car Attendant prepare our compartment for sleep.  We slept okay, not used to sleeping in a moving vehicle, but we still got our rest. 

We awoke at about 5:00am, 6:00am Eastern time.  We got our shower, and cleaned up for breakfast.  Again, a fine meal, omelets, sausage patties, and a biscuit.  The coffee on the train is excellent, and plentiful.  They keep a pot available in our car all the time.

We rode through the Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania country side looking out our large picture windows a farms, and some beautiful horses.  It got dark before we were into PA for very long so we couldn't see much there.  We met several really interesting people on the train from Washington to Chicago.  There were two ladies in the compartment across the hall from us who were also going on to Seattle.  So we will have someone we recognize on the next leg of our journey.

Our train, the Capitol Limited runs between Chicago and Washington, DC, through Cleveland and Pittsburg.  Again on this trip, the staff on the train were friendly, helpful and really cared that we were there as their customers.  It is really nice to be treated like a customer again, ya know?

We are currently sitting in Chicago's Union Station.  It is about 11:10am Central Time and we will be here until 2:00pm when our train leaves for Seattle.  I am going to close this journal for right now, we will go outside the Union Station and see what there it of interest to see.  I know that we are right alongside the Chicago River.  If you know your Chicago history, every Saint Patrick's Day, they dye the river green!!

More later.  Stay Tuned.  We do expect to have a lot more pictures as we travel during the daylight hours.

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