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Saturday, July 22, 2006
The voyage home
I had been keeping tabs on our "ride" home, Amtrak #7 since it
left Chicago. By the time it reached Wisconsin Dells, it was
already three hours late. Not good.
Baolu and I sat in the basement of the Izaak Walton Inn sipping
water and trying to beat the heat (it would reach over 100
degrees today on our rental car's thermometer).
How to kill time? Normally, #7 gets in to Whitefish at 8:45 pm
and I envisioned a late train getting later. Well, we slept in,
had a late breakfast and stood patiently on the steps waiting
to wave goodbye as Kris Werner and family rolled past on the
morning #8 back to Minnesota. We waited and waited. No train.
Finally, it was time to check out (11 a.m.) so as we were upstairs
in our room packing (and out of position), of course, #8 rolled
by. I waved from our third floor window, but doubt they saw
us. Hope you had a good trip back, folks!
After checking out, we paid a short visit to the fabulous
I.W.I. gift store and ordered some GN-replica china to be
sent home. Just a few pieces we might actually use like
plates.
Anyway, NOW what to do? I know, let's head over to Glacier Park
Lodge and nose around. We started off in the air-conditioned
rental car and watched the beautiful scenery roll past. Hey, look
Baolu! Here comes a westbound right into the sun. Can...I go
back and get a picture? Sure, sure, she replies... I pull a quick
U turn and head back for this classic picture at the summit with
the mountains in the background:
Soon, we are on our way again. Hey...here's ANOTHER train! Can I,
huh? huh? OK.... This time, I nail him at Bison siding and at
the nifty signal bridge at the east end of Summit siding. Ah, Baolu
is my good luck charm when railfanning -- we ALWAYS see trains when
she's along for the ride. Thanks, honey!
OK, that has killed a good hour -- on to the gift shop at the Glacier
Park Lodge. We park and hoof up the short hill to the main entrance.
Who do we bump into but Bev Tracy! She invites us into the dining
room to chat. We demure until we have accomplished gift shop pillage.
After acquiring the necessary trinkets, we stroll into the dining
room. There's John and Bev. We have a nice chat as they eat their
dessert. Lots of talk about past and future conventions. We say our
goodbyes and shove off west towards Whitefish.
It is blazing hot (100 plus) so we figure wherever we go, it MUST
have a/c. First we check out likely spots for dinner
on Whitefish's main street. Nothing strikes our fancy so in short
order we are punching down US 93 towards Kalispell. Wasting time
is the order of the day and we wind up at a pizza place just
south of town. We linger in the air-cooled goodness. A bottle
of wine, Caesar salad, deep dish pizza, chocoholic dessert all
come and go at about HALF the price we would have paid in Redmond
(can you say over-taxed, boys and girls?). When we finally leave,
there are about 30 people waiting.
Next, a brief stop at the Kalispell Center Mall which is practically
shut down at 7:30 on a Saturday night. We take a walk in the eerily-
deserted corridors and finally call it quits when the security guard
kicks us out at 8pm (they really do roll back the sidewalks early
here).
Now what? Killing time is hard work, ya know? Ah, there's a TARGET
store (we're REALLY scraping the bottom of the barrel). That kills
some time. Just up the plaza is a Borders Books. Hey, they don't
even close until 10pm! We browse. We putz. We watch the kids
watching each other.
The sun has gone behind the horizon when we head back north to
Whitefish. It is coming up on 10pm and I'm getting concerned
the gas stations will close before I can refill the rental car
tank. We stop at a Conoco and gulp some 87 octane.
We are still WAY too early. OK, hell. Let's drive up to Big
Mountain resort! The road is 25 mph and I pull off at every
opportunity to let the yahoo's by. We wind up yon mountainside
with the lights of Whitefish below. The resort is nearly
deserted in summer except for a wedding reception that is just
breaking up, the bride and groom resplendent in white and black
finery.
Reluctantly, we make our way back to the Whitefish depot to
drop off the rental car. All the Hertz slots are taken, so I
park the Dodge in a "two-hour" slot. We leave our luggage
and stroll into the depot. Ai-YO....there is a sign taped
to the arrival time which says 12:10 am! Expletive deleted.
With nothing better to do, we stroll the platform with the
rest of the stranded travelers. The Amish or Mennonites are
out in full force as we sweat alongside them waiting for #7's
theoretical arrival.
Freights come and go both directions stopping briefly on the
platform to change crews. What's this? The arrival time has
been changed to 12:45am!! Jeez, Louise. That may not sound
like much, but when you're wracking your brain trying to keep
busy and stay awake, it's a handful.
We walk Whitefish's main street for the umpteeth time. We
weigh ourselves on the station scale. A pop machine eats
my four quarters and dispenses nothing. I start to ask
myself why I didn't just drive out here.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
By 12:45am, EVERYONE is outside on the platform. No train.
At one a.m., a feeble triangle of light appears to the east.
#7's three units roll slowly past, their dusty consist in tow.
I spot our sleeper (0731) as it flashes past. We hustle our
luggage west along the bumpy platform.
As we reach the car, the attendant dismounts and places the
step stool on the ground. "Where you folks headed?", he
challenges. "Car 0731, Bedroom E!!!" I shout. I'm in no
mood for delays now. Me want SLEEP! He allows us past,
but bars an elderly woman who tries to sneak past him. I
schlep our heavy bags up the narrow, spiral stairs of the
Superliner and find our room. It is messy.
The car attendant arrives shortly thereafter and says he
will make up the room in just a few minutes and oh, by the
way, WE HAVE NO DINING CAR this trip. Oh, I can't WAIT
to see what happens tomorrow morning. Baolu's reaction
to no food is as follows:
He's good to his word and we turn in for the night. Oops,
no towels. I hunt him down and fetch us some. Let's go
to bed honey, it's been a long day.
The next morning...
6am in Spokane. It is already 80 degrees. #7 is hopelessly
off schedule.
Our car attendant taps on the door asking if we'd like some
coffee and juice. Bless him, he's still with us. Shortly,
he delivers Baolu's coffee and as a surprise, hands us each
a sack with a juice box, an orange and three mini-pastries.
All of this he ordered up on his OWN. Thanks fella!
The elderly couple in the adjoining bedroom have been
banging around since early morning. There is only a
moveable partition between us so we can hear practically
everything that's going on over there. That includes
the tremendous WHOOOOSH! of the vacuum toilets which
they use quite frequently.
They play that symphony now, only to our great horror a
terrible STINK comes flooding into our compartment from
next door! Gramps must have just pooped! It is
the most vile, paint-stripping STENCH I've ever experienced.
Both of us dash into the hallway gasping for air.
We are standing in the corridor gagging and commenting
on the fumes when Grandpa exits the bedroom, gives US
a dirty look, and waddles off towards the diner.
Well I never...
Slowly, we trundle through sunny Eastern Washington. At
each detector, the "temp-er-a-ture..." goes up and up. There
are freights waiting for us at Espanola and Edwall. I had
always thought this stretch of track was fast, but we seem to
be in no hurry even after reaching the double track near
Harrington. This section is much curvier than I realized.
Somewhere out near Marlin, we pass a couple male deer, both
with rather large antlers and the engineer comments on the
radio, "Nice couple-a RACKS there...." to his conductor.
Coming into Wilson Creek, our car attendant suggests we move
to the malfunctioning diner to wait whilst he makes up our
room. We walk through the 0730 sleeper and start to sit at
a table in the diner. A member of the diner crew snaps at
us, "You can't sit here! Move to the other end of the car!"
Nice way to treat a first class passenger.
It quickly becomes evident that the entire dining car staff
is merely along for the ride, sprawled in one entire half
of the car looking quite sullen. I'm glad to see the
"improvements" recently introduced on the Empire Builder
haven't affected the staff any.
We sit at a table at the far end of the car as instructed
and watch the view. Soon afterwards, a stout woman and
her henpecked husband slide into the table in front of us.
"Bertha" (probably not her real name) immediately gets on
her cell phone and dials Amtrak reservations.
"My husband has a 12:30 meeting in Seattle." she announces
tartly to the clerk on the other end. "Because Amtrak
made us late, I want to change our Seattle-San Francisco
reservations to Tuesday (two days from now) and my husband
wants a Deluxe Bedroom", she says.
I'm thinking, "Yeah, right lady. Try getting a room on ANY Amtrak
train during the summer season".
Sure enough, the clerk tells her no way, Jose. Of course, this
is "unacceptable" and she demands to speak to a manager. Meanwhile
all though this, I'm snapping pictures as we roll through
Trinidad horseshoe curve, down the Columbia to Wenatchee.
 
I do overhear from Bertha the reason for our lack of meal service.
Apparently the train's dining car chef was electrocuted and
had to be airlifted to a medical center. Beats me how he/she
did that (and I wish them a speedy recovery), however, does
that mean the approximately 10 grouchy train personnel slouched
in one end of the diner can't function? Union rules, I suppose.
So after listening to Bertha go on-and-on, it grows tiresome
and we head back to our sleeper (no wine tasting on THIS trip,
nyuk...nyuk...nyuk...).
The room is still not made up for day configuration, so we head
downstairs. The Wenatchee stop is made and we step off the
train into the blazing heat. It's a short pause and we're on
our way again.
Our attendant has gotten the room made up so we have a seat
and watch the view over Stevens Pass. The one saving grace
of the entire ride from Whitefish is the air-conditioning
is working AND the toilet's flush! I guess you can't ask
for much more than that on a 100 degree day.
We are rolling along somewhere near Merritt when the first
pangs of hunger start to hit. Oh gawd, I'm not going
back to that diner and beg a bag of pretzels from the
barbarians. Here, honey. Here's a "Menthos". Try not
to chew them because they last longer that way.
We roll through the Cascade Tunnel and are spiraling down
somewhere near Deception Creek when our car attendant (bless
his beautiful hide!) stops by with a ham sandwich lunch for
the both of us. This is a lifesaver as we still had a good
two hours into Seattle and you can only ingest this many
wafer-thin mints.
They announce because of our tardiness, they are going to
take all the Vancouver BC passengers off the train at
Everett. Once we reach that city on Puget Sound, we turn
south and follow the coast line all the way into Seattle
arriving about 3 1/2 hours late.
   
We tip our car attendant and bid him farewell. We roll
our suitcases out to the taxi stand and with not a one in
sight, call the number for a ride. This has the desired
effect as a fleet of yellow Crown Victorias begin to
roll in to take us home.
Summary: Well, that about cures me for overnight travel
on Amtrak. I think I'll just stick to day trips locally
by train and drive or fly on the overnight stuff. For what
we paid (approximately $700 one way sleeper) it just wasn't
worth it. And I LIKE to travel by train. Even a fan
has his limits.
THE END
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