As the last of Milwaukee’s suburbs rolled past and behind us, the setting sun disappeared over the low hills out my large window. Ahead lay some of the prettiest trackside scenery in the Midwest. We’ll roll past lakes, marshes and rolling farmland before reaching Wisconsin Dells and the mighty Mississippi.

Unfortunately, today happens to be the twelfth shortest day of the year. With the sun having set shortly after our departure from Milwaukee, a lot of beautiful scenery was going by unseen in the darkness.

Like I said however, there’s more to a train ride than just the scenery. Consider for a moment just what a passenger train is. Aside from the two locomotives heading up our train, today’s consist included ten cars. Following is a listing of them with each car’s ultimate destination in parenthesis:

Baggage car (Seattle)
Transitional Crew Sleeper (Seattle)
Sleeper (Seattle)
Sleeper (Seattle)
Diner (Seattle)
Coach (Seattle)
Coach (Seattle)
Sightseer Lounge/Café (Portland)
Coach/Baggage (Portland)
Sleeper (Portland)



Amtrak Superliner Coach Seating
The coaches offer spacious 20” wide seating on par with some international airline business classes in terms of seat pitch.



Amtrak Superliner Sightseer Lounge Seating
The Sightseer Lounge offers convivial couch and buffet style seating surrounded by near floor to ceiling windows
A café on the lower level offers light meals, snacks and a variety of drinks including beer and alcohol



Amtrak Superliner Dining Car
The Dining Car offers good filling meals – nothing gourmet, but decent nonetheless.
It’s a great place to meet your fellow travelers


All this in addition to the sleepers – your home away from home – which I’ve discussed earlier. So you see – a train isn’t just a bunch of seats. It’s more like a place that’s going somewhere. Want a break from that book you’ve been reading? Head on back to the lounge car café for a snack and a drink. Fancy a hot breakfast to start your day? The diner’s only a short walk away. Want to take in the surrounding scenery while surrounded by it? A seat in the glass topped lounge car is a great place to watch the world go by. Then again, if all you really want is a nice comfy place to get into a good book, the spacious coach seats or your bedroom are just the place.

Shortly after our departure from Milwaukee, Floyd stopped by to see what time I’d like to eat. Due to its popularity, dinner on most Amtrak trains is by reservation only with a variety of seatings ranging from as early as 5:00pm to as late as 8:00pm. Having recently polished off a big bowl of lentil soup back in Milwaukee, I opted for the latest possible seating – that being 7:00pm on tonight’s train. Seatings are announced over the train’s PA system, so all you have to be is hungry and ready to go.

It was about 6:00pm when I made my way back to the lounge car. A Jack Daniels and a bag of almonds sounded like a good appetizer for the steak dinner I knew I’d be ordering later. Returning to the upper level, I found a couple of empty tables at the far end of the car. Perfect.

Looking around, I took in a sampling of my fellow passengers. This time of year, many rail travelers tend to be retired but tonight we had a surprisingly youthful contingent onboard. Across from me sat a family of Amish travelers, the men and boys all dressed in blue shirts with suspenders while the women all wore plain but pretty dresses and bonnets. At the table ahead of me, a college aged girl tapped away at her laptop while swaying to the beat of whatever melody flowed through her headphones. Two tables up a group of thirty-somethings were engaged in a game of cards and boisterous conversation. On the other end of the car were a sprinkling of passengers spread out in seats and couches facing the large almost floor to ceiling windows. Being as it was dark outside there wasn’t much to see except for the occasional lights of a farm house or the flashing lights of a railroad crossing but even those were mildly entertaining as we flashed by at 79 mph. I had brought along a copy of that morning’s USA Today and sitting here all by myself, now seemed like a good time to catch up on the news of the day. After all, you know what they say… If it’s in USA Today, It Must Be True!

It’s worth noting here that while opportunities abound to meet and/or interact with your fellow passengers on a trip of this length, the dining car is the only place where - due to the communal nature of its seating – you have no choice but to meet your fellow travelers. In the lounge car, each visit unfolds differently. Sometimes, like tonight, the people around you are all engaged in their own activities and doing just fine, thank you. Other times you’ll end up sitting down next to someone and something comes up that sparks conversation and there you go. Mind you, I’m speaking in the context of a solo passenger here. Traveling with others, you tend to make your own party.

Me – I’m easy either way. More so than most people, I’m totally comfortable doing stuff all by myself. As such, I certainly don’t feel put out to be sitting here all alone with my copy of USA Today. This double Jack Daniels is warming me up nicely and soon enough I’ll be sharing a dinner table with who only knows? And I’m fine with that, too. Those of you who have read any of my past trip reports may recall that for the past thirty years I’ve worked in Denali National Park. Although I own a place just down the road, I rent it out and prefer to spend the summer in employee housing with 250 other people and my roommate, a 72 year old ex-Marine we call “Texas Lee”. We all work together, eat together, drink together, play together… It’s like adult summer camp. Add to that every morning I host 48 of America’s most tenacious travelers on my 8 hour run out to Eielson Visitor Center and back. I provide a lot of information along the way and during the rest stops there’s a lot of interaction with my passengers. So – I’m totally down with sharing a table in the diner with complete strangers every bit as much as I am with sitting here all by myself with a double Jack Daniels and a newspaper for company.

Not everybody is comfortable with situations like this. I know of a few otherwise very nice people who, when it comes to social interaction, are, for lack of a nicer phrase, just plain needy. They wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they were sitting alone in a lounge car type setting surrounded by others doing stuff not inclusive of them. People like this should probably not travel alone – at least on anything more than an airplane flight. And, for the most part, they generally don’t.

The call for 7:00 o’clock dinner reservations rang out at about 6:50pm. Awright! I’m ready to go. Making my way forward through the two Seattle coaches, I entered the dining car where, per instructions given over the PA, I waited at the entrance until I was greeted by the steward, a nice fellow named Jeremy, and led to an empty table. Soon I was joined by Frank, a single traveler up from the coaches, and Bob, a retired auto worker from Michigan who, like me, had a roomette in the sleepers.

Seating in Amtrak’s Dining Cars is booth style - two on each side, four to a table. Menus had already been set at each place and so, after introducing ourselves, we took a moment to consider the menu offerings…
.



Amtrak Dining Car Place Setting and Menu



Amtrak Dining Car Ambiance


Our waiter was Richard, a 16 year Amtrak veteran with the past five of those having come in the dining car. He took a moment to explain the specials, starting with the “Healthy and Flavor Forward” entrée which tonight was the Chinese Rice Noodles with veggies with cashew sauce. The daily special was a stuffed chicken breast topped with a red sauce. For the life of me though, I can’t remember what it was stuffed with.

Not that it matters, because I knew coming in that I’d be ordering Amtrak’s flat iron steak. Bob also went with the steak while Frank opted for the hamburger, which is also available as a dinner option at about half the price of the dinner entrees. Bob and I had no concerns in that regard, for as sleeping car passengers our meals were included in the cost of our First Class fare.

“Would any of you care for a salad with your meal tonight?” Richard asked

“Oh, you betcha!” I said. Being as we’d soon be entering Minnesota and spending much of the day in North Dakota tomorrow, why not brush up on the local accent? Speaking of which, one table back and across from us sat the Australian family of four. Their pleasant Australian patois carried clearly up to our table and – from the sound of things – they were enjoying their time on the train.

A bread basket with heated rolls was delivered, followed by our salads and a basket of dressings. All of the dressings were from Paul Newman’s line, one of which – the Balsamic Vinaigrette – I use at home.

So it was just the three of us at our table on this night. Frank, who was traveling in the coach, was a carpenter from Batavia, New York (just outside of Buffalo, he explained) who was on his way to Whitefish to visit his brother and his family down in Kalispell. His specialty was restoring Victorian homes but as work was a bit slow this time of year, now was a good time of year to take a trip like this. That said, he’d only just decided to go last week but with holiday airfares being way too high (especially with less than two week’s advance notice) he’d kind of stumbled upon the train. He didn’t even know you could take a train to Montana from New York but he appreciated the savings (about $600.00) and was generally impressed with the ride so far. Even so, he was glad to be flying home as he was still trying to come to grips with the fact that he wouldn’t arrive into Whitefish until tomorrow night.

Bob worked on the Ford Motor Company assembly line building trucks until his retirement nine years ago. He and his wife lived in Niles, Michigan and were on their way to visit her sister in Great Falls, Montana. Actually, she was already there as she’d flown ahead last week.

“I know Niles!” I chipped in. “I spent a couple hours between trains there one afternoon. It’s got a really nice little train station.”

“It does, at that” replied Bob. “You’re one of the few people I’ve met outside of Michigan who knows where Niles is.”

“Well I never made it into town but I sure was impressed by that station. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore…”




The Niles, Michigan Railroad Station



Niles Station Waiting Room


Conversation flowed easily, interrupted only when Richard arrived with our dinners. A bottle of Steak Sauce was located for Bob, along with ketchup for Frank. Butter and sour cream were provided for the baked potatoes and we were good to go.




Amtrak Flatiron Steak


I’ve ordered a lot of steaks in Amtrak diners over the years and I’ve always been impressed with the ability of the collective chefs to consistently cook them just the way I like them – medium rare. They also do a great job with the baked potatoes which are almost always perfectly done – hot, soft and fluffy. No doubt they have a lot of experience as the steak is far and away the most popular item on the dinner menu.

In past reports, I’ve had a few people ask about the vegetarian options. Check out the menu I’ve highlighted with a link to above. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more vegetarian friendly menu on any public conveyance. So chow down with confidence, veg heads! Be it breakfast, lunch or dinner, you’ll have multiple tasty options.

It was about 8:00pm when Richard asked us to finish up and perhaps relocate to the lounge car. The crew wanted to eat dinner themselves before getting the dining car cleaned up and prepped for tomorrow morning’s breakfast service. On the upper level this meant getting all the tables set, condiments restocked and small service items like coffee and juice restocked and ready to go. After that, they could go to bed and return at 5:30am for another 16 hour day.

Bob, Frank and I all bid each other a good night and went our separate ways. Bob was in the 730 car, conveniently located right next to the diner. It was a first generation Superliner Sleeper that had not yet benefitted from a refurbishment at Amtrak’s Beech Grove shops. The topic of Amtrak’s Superliner fleet had come up in our dinner conversation. Aside from commuter operations, there are not very many long distance trains around the world that utilize bi-level cars. In fact, the only one that comes to mind is in Finland on the 660 mile Helsinki to Rovaniemi line.

When Amtrak took over operation of America’s intercity passenger rail system in May of 1971, it inherited a fleet of mostly older cars, many of them in need of refurbishment or even outright replacement. Amtrak’s single level Amfleet and bi-level Superliners were the first new equipment that Amtrak ever purchased.

The Superliners are modeled after the Santa Fe Railway’s old “Hi-Level” cars that served on the all coach El Capitan between Chicago and Los Angeles. I was fortunate to ride on a few of those old Hi-Level cars in the early 1970s. Per the Santa Fe’s configuration, I think they represented the finest coach accommodations on any train in the world. By far. The plush leather upholstered seats included full leg and foot rests and reclined to about 75°. They remain to this day the finest railroad seat I have ever sat in. By far.

The first of the new Superliners were delivered in 1978 and entered revenue service with this train – the Empire Builder. That means some of the oldest Superliners are approaching 40 years old. Over the past eight years the oldest of them have been cycling through Amtrak’s Beech Grove, Indiana shops for a refurbishment that for the sleepers includes attractive wooden paneling, much larger bathrooms and showers, new heating and air conditioning and enclosed wardrobes in the roomettes. My car, the 731, had benefitted from this refurbishment. Bob’s car had not. He was curious to see the differences so I took him back to my car for a brief tour.

The older cars are still perfectly good cars and every bit as comfortable as the refurbished ones. For me at least, the most beneficial improvement was to the bathrooms. The new ones are almost twice as large as the originals and have a much nicer sink and vanity area.

Bob was impressed. I told him I wouldn’t say anything if he were to sneak back and “borrow” our bathrooms. We bid each other goodnight and I returned to my roomette which Floyd had already configured for night time use. It was still reasonably early and I figured I would eventually make my way back to the lounge car. First however, I thought I’d pour myself a nice big glass of 10 Year Old Russell’s Reserve. I once shared a bottle of this with fellow FlyerTalkers violist and lily aboard the Alaska Railroad’s Denali Star. It goes down particularly well on the rails. So well in fact that as I lay stretched out perusing Amtrak’s impressive new onboard magazine “The National”, I became so comfortable that I decided to stay right where I was. Here’s a view of the Superliner’s lower level roomette bunk:




Amtrak Superliner Roomette Lower Bunk




DAY TWO
Rolling through North Dakota and Montana

I awoke at just a few minutes after 7. Be it the bourbon or some pretty smooth rails, I’d slept pretty much nonstop through the night, so it was a good feeling to awake refreshed and ready to go this morning. And – for what it’s worth - I didn’t get drunk on that bourbon last night, just relaxed. I’m not much for drunkenness.

A quick peek out my window revealed low, snow covered plateaus cut with the occasional ravine. Row after row of telephone poles rose and fell as we rolled across the plains at what had to have been the maximum speed for Amtrak trains on this line – 79 mph.

Quickly throwing on a pair of jeans, I made my way up to the service center located at the top of the stairs. Coffee and orange juice is available there throughout the morning hours and – depending upon the car attendant – sometimes well into the afternoon. Coffee, please.

As I sat in the empty roomette across from mine savoring good hot coffee, I heard someone vacate the shower down the hall. Oh, yeah! I’ll take advantage of that! The baggage storage shelves were located just down the hall from my room, so I grabbed a clean shirt and underwear from my suitcase and then headed off to the shower.




Amtrak’s Spacious Superliner Shower


Alright then –let’s head on upstairs and go see what’s for breakfast!

As I mentioned earlier, due to its popularity dinner is generally the only meal where reservations are the standard. As such, when I arrived in the diner at about 8:00am it wasn’t even half full and I was sat at a table by myself. I was half expecting this and so I brought along a copy of yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for company.

Richard was my waiter again, and he arrived bearing two sets of silverware and a couple of menus. Coffee and orange juice was delivered in short order after which I was informed of today’s breakfast special – a waffle with fresh fruit and scrambled eggs. Ahhh… I think I’ll stick with my usual - the veggie omelet with cheese.

“Would you like Swiss or Cheddar with that?”
“Cheddar”
“Potatoes or grits?”
“Hmm… Let’s go with grits today.”
“Bread? We have a choice between biscuit or croissant.”
“Biscuit.”
“Care for any bacon or sausage with your omelet?”
“Do you still have the chicken sausage?”
“We do. It’s in patty form”
“That sounds good, I’ll go with that”




Vegetable Omelet with Grits & Chicken Sausage


I was halfway through my omelet when Jeremy arrived with a single table mate in tow. I was immediately struck by how remarkably similar she was to this lady in the movie Fargo. Do any of you remember that scene where a man and his wife come in to pick up a new car they'd ordered, only to be told that it’ll cost him an extra two hundred bucks for a coating of Tru-coat. The man is furious, sputtering mad. He'd specifically said he didn't want the Tru-coat when he'd ordered the car. His wife meanwhile sits at his side, clearly uncomfortable with the situation, and utters only a cautionary “Dear, please” when the man swears at Jerry Lundergaard.

What were the similarities? Appearances, demeanor, degree of discomfort, lack of dialogue. It was quickly apparent that this lady just wanted to be left alone to eat in peace. Had I pressed the conversation, I doubt she ever would have snarled at me but instead would have shrunk farther back into the booth, all the while looking even more uncomfortable.

Thankfully for both of us, I was able to finish up my meal quickly and leave her in peace. My timing was good, too, because we were just minutes from arriving into Minot when I excused myself from the table.

Minot is a service stop for the Empire Builder which means we spend a bit of extra time there while garbage is offloaded and things like ice, food and drinks are replenished. Most service stops are only fifteen minutes but the Empire Builder’s schedule called for a full half hour here in Minot. For me it was a great opportunity to get off and stretch my legs for a bit while looking for that morning’s newspaper. After all, it was Monday and I wanted to check out the previous day’s football scores.




Train Time In Minot


As you can see from the picture, it was a typical North Dakota winter day in Minot – that is to say overcast and snowing lightly with a temperature of 8°F. There was a slight wind blowing, too, so the wind chill had to have taken the ambient temperature down to a few degrees below zero. I didn’t spend much time admiring the view outside – just long enough to snap a trackside picture, purchase a copy of the Minot paper and hustle back on to the warmth of the train.




Comfortably Stretched Out In My Roomette


Comfortably stretched out in my roomette, I gave a thorough perusal to not only the sports section but the entire newspaper. Life in rural America is markedly different than that experienced in the big cities, and the local newspapers can be interesting and entertaining with opinion pieces that address aspects of rural life or the local view on the larger national scene. Whereas the big city paper might have a story on a murder or two that happened recently, out in rural America the most exciting thing in the police blotter might be that a hitch-hiker passing through town was stopped and questioned.

It was about 11 when I decided to relocate to the Sightseer Lounge Car. We had the whole day ahead of us and – if nothing else – the buffet tables in the lounge car provided a better and more comfortable setting to plug in my laptop and work from. Mind you, I could have done so from my roomette as well but it was still configured for nighttime use and even if it were in its daytime configuration, the small fold out table is really inadequate for anything more than drinks or possibly a game of cards between two.




The view upon entering the lounge


Having a lounge onboard a train is huge. We humans are social creatures and if you’re going to put us on a train for forty some-odd hours, it’s important to give us a place to mingle, to interact with our fellow travelers, to eat and drink or simply to get away from our seats or rooms for a while. As often as the lounge presents an opportunity to meet your fellow travelers, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a social experience. For some, the lounge car is a nice place to relax with a cup of coffee while watching the country roll by.

Now some people would scoff at the notion of North Dakota and eastern Montana being worthy of sightseeing, but I’ve always found an attractive desolation to the scenery. Even today, as grey and dreary a day as ever a high plains winter could produce, I found the landscape oddly calming, a multi-hued palette of whites and greys offset by the occasional brown or beige of a copse of trees or a field of winter wheat.

Settling in at an empty booth, I fired up my trusty laptop, set up Philip Aaberg’s wonderful album “ ” on the Windows Media Player, and set to work on this report – pausing occasionally in a moment of admiration as the landscape did its thing. We had just departed Williston, ND and were just crossing into eastern Montana.




Look! Trees!



Rolling into Malta



First Montana Mountains


I shared my luncheon table with Sean, a college graduate with a major in philosophy. Like most philosophy majors, Sean was not making a living as a philosopher, or even a teacher of philosophy. Sean was a landscaper, working for his buddy in Chicago for the past year and a half. He was on his way to Spokane to visit his girlfriend who was a student at Eastern Washington University. When I asked about the difficulties of such a long distance relationship, Sean waxed philosophical.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder…”

When it came time to order, my enthusiasm for the spicy Black Bean and Chipotle Burger must’ve hit a nerve with Sean, because he decided to order it as well. He took his plain though whereas I fancied mine up with bacon and cheese into what I like to call a “Vegetarian Nightmare”.




My Vegetarian Nightmare


Our conversation continued (We had the table to ourselves) and it turns out Sean and I shared similar tastes in music. Unfortunately neither of us had any blank CDs on hand, much less even a thumb drive or mp3 player, or I would have turned him on to some great, little known jambands from over the past 25 years. He was familiar with archives.org yet surprisingly unfamiliar with livedownloads.com. He also turned me on to a couple of sites though as of this writing I can’t seem to remember it as it’s logged onto my other laptop.

It was in Havre, Montana that things started to go south. Havre is a major fuel and service stop, as well as a crew change point. We were running pretty much on time when we rolled into Havre. Unfortunately, our relief crew wasn’t. We’re talking locomotive crews here as the onboard personnel such as car attendants and dining car staff stay with the train throughout its journey. We sat in Havre for almost an hour and a half waiting on the new crew and from that commenced a cascading series of events that led to this train pulling into Spokane, Washington almost 8 hours late with the rest of the run to Seattle being scuttled.

To make a long story short (which means I’ll skip telling you about the excellent afternoon I had in the lounge car drinking whiskey and playing cribbage, or the second excellent steak dinner and company I enjoyed), when we pulled out of Havre an hour and a half late, things really didn’t look so bad. There’s a fudge factor in the schedule between Spokane and Seattle that would’ve allowed us to make up almost an hour. No worries. I’m good with that. Unfortunately, a freight train broke down a few miles in front of us and – with no way to get around it – we sat and waited until it was able to get moving again. That took up about three hours.

As if to pile insult onto injury, now that we were running over three hours late (regardless of why), we had to pull off on sidings and wait to let any on-time freight trains through. This went on throughout the evening and into the next morning. Here in America, most freight trains make money while most passenger trains don’t. While legislation has been passed to give Amtrak trains equal footing, there comes a time when depending upon the length of the delay, all bets are off.

When I went to bed on the second night, we were sitting on a siding somewhere east of Whitefish, Montana. When I awoke the next morning, I expected us to be somewhere around Wenatchee. That would put us into Seattle four or five hours late and if I was lucky, I might be able to utilize Alaska’s same day confirmed space change perk and book flights all the way home to Fairbanks tonight. Alas, it was not to be…


DAY THREE


“Excuse me, but would you happen to know where we are?” I asked a couple who were helping themselves to coffee and orange juice at the service center upstairs.

“We’re a few miles outside of Sandpoint, Idaho” the man replied.
“We’ve been sitting here for about a half hour!” his wife chimed in.

Sandpoint? I glanced at my watch. Wow. We were running so late that there was no way we’d be arriving into Seattle until mid-evening, at best. So much for getting back home today. I wasn’t overly concerned, though. I generally never am. A lifetime of travel has included all manner of events that led to significant alteration of my original plans. If I’ve learned anything about dealing with the vicissitudes of travel over the years, it’s that there’s nothing to be gained by getting stressed out. Your old reality has suddenly been replaced by a new reality. Adjust and deal with it. It never hurts to bring a sense of adventure with you, either. On a positive note, I’d get to cross the Cascades by daylight. I’d heard the route is beautiful, so that was my silver lining. I’d figure out how to get home once I got a better fix on when we’d actually be arriving into Seattle.

It was in the middle of breakfast that an announcement was made informing us that the Empire Builder would be terminating in Spokane, Washington. Passengers traveling to points west of Spokane would be transported by chartered busses or vans that would be awaiting our arrival at the station in Spokane.

Well dang! I was really looking forward to that daylight crossing of the Cascades. On a positive note though, Spokane was well served by Alaska and Horizon Airlines. If I was lucky, I could perhaps add a Spokane to Seattle leg onto my already booked Seattle - Fairbanks flights. I got on the phone to Alaska.

I got kind of lucky. Yes, there was a confirmed saver award seat between Spokane and Seattle departing at 430pm. From there I could get to Anchorage on a 745pm departure arriving Anchorage just in time to barely meet the minimum connecting time for the last flight of the night up to Fairbanks. Unfortunately, that flight wasn’t just sold out – it was oversold! Still, the way I see it, if I can get to Anchorage in time, I’ve at least got a chance. And if it doesn’t work out, I can always Priceline a room at the Millennium for about $65.00. As such I confirmed a flight departing Anchorage at 100pm the next afternoon. One way or the other, everything was gonna work out fine.

It was about 930am when we finally eased into Spokane’s Union Station. The temperature was 4°F and it was snowing lightly. Floyd had my bag off loaded and waiting outside on the platform. I bid him farewell, bestowed upon him a nice tip. These days, I go $20.00/day for sleeper car attendants – pretty generous for a low maintenance guy like me, but then I’ve always given serious points for attitude as well as service. Tipping is not required on Amtrak and its employees are well paid but what the hey – it’s nice to see people who not only do a good job but whose enjoyment of their work makes every little interaction with them that much more enjoyable. Thank you, Floyd. Job well done! ^

Inside the station I heard a few passengers grousing “I will NEVER ride Amtrak again!” This delay wasn’t Amtrak’s fault and to put the blame entirely on it is unfair. That said, delays of this magnitude are frustrating and I’ve no doubt that some people were considerably inconvenienced. Any of you who’ve read any of my most recent trip reports know they’ve involved a lot of rail travel. I spent 19 nights on trains last year. So far as I recall, all of my Amtrak trains were either on time or early. Amtrak has made major strides in its on time performance over the years but even so, bad days still happen now and then. Regardless, travel by train is a great way to see this big, broad country of ours and should your train happen to run a few hours late like mine did on this trip, hopefully you can keep your chin up and remember your journey for all the beautiful country you saw and the interesting people you met along the way. After all, isn’t that the very essence of travel at its best?


* * *  * * *  * * *


Now, then… how to get to the airport? For a lot of people the answer is easy, especially if they’ve got a lot of luggage. Hire a cab. It’s quick and it’s convenient. It’s also expensive. As a solo traveler who’s perfected the art of traveling light, if I’ve got the time – and I usually do – why not look to the public transport option?

When I arrive in Chicago by train and need to get to either O’Hare or Midway, I can hire a cab for about $30.00 out to O’Hare or I can walk two blocks down to the Clinton St. Station and catch the Blue Line for $3.75. Depending upon the time of day and the traffic, I might even beat the cab. Here in Spokane, I once arrived by train on time (130am) and needed to get out to the airport for a morning flight. At that time of night there were no busses running, so I had no choice but to cough up about $25.00 for a taxi ride. Today however, it’s a different story and I know there’s bus service out to the airport.

The airport police have a desk in the station, so I stopped by to inquire about the bus. There’s no service here at the station but if you walk about 5 blocks down the street outside, you’ll come to the main terminal for the city transit buses. Great! Thanks!

Upon stepping outside and walking halfway to the end of the block, it became immediately apparent that I wouldn’t be walking down to the bus station. As I mentioned earlier, the temperature was 4°F and there was a slight breeze. I had only my shirt and a down vest for warmth. Additionally, it had snowed about 7” the night before and the sidewalks were covered in frozen slush and snow.

Back at the station, I hailed a cab. To the bus station, please. I apologized for the short fare and thankfully the driver took it in stride. “Any fare’s a good fare.” was his response. I gave him $5.00 for the ride and then hopped on the next bus to Spokane’s Geiger Field for $1.50.

With over four hours to wait until my flight to Seattle, I called the Ramada Inn at Spokane Airport. Ramada’s can be hit or miss but this one’s a definite hit. Indeed, it may be the finest Ramada Inn I have ever stayed at. It has an excellent bar and dining room and, upon hearing that I only wanted to come over for lunch, they were only too happy to send over a van.

It was about 2 by the time I returned to the airport. To make a long story even shorter, I lucked out and was able to snag a seat on an earlier flight to Seattle, and then, upon noting that a larger aircraft had been substituted for the previously oversold late night flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks, checked in at the Customer Service desk to see if I could get on it.

They did me one better. They booked me a seat on the nonstop to Fairbanks. Whoa! Thanks, Alaska! It’s hard to imagine an airline that takes better care of its top tier elite level flyers. I even got an aisle seat back at 29D. And then, as an added bonus, there were still bowls of Tom Douglas’ delicious Coconut Chicken dinners available by the time the cart made it back to me.




Tom Douglas’ Coconut Chicken


It was clear and 19°F when we touched down on time at Fairbanks International. A van was quickly dispatched from Pikes Landing where my truck was parked. True to the reports, it had snowed about 15” and, after getting my truck brushed off and started up, I needed to put it in 4 wheel drive to get out of my parking space.

The best part though was that I was home. As I sat sipping from a glass of Woodford Reserve and watching the Tonight Show, I couldn’t help but reflect for a moment on my good fortune. I’d had an excellent five day adventure that allowed me to avoid the various difficulties typically associated with riding out a major winter storm. Thanks to a little help from Spokane Transit and a lot of help and good will from Alaska Airlines, a potentially difficult final day had turned into a pretty darned good day as well. Am I blessed of late or what?

I certainly hope so because provided I continue to gain strength and don’t have any setbacks associated with my surgical recovery, my next trip report will cover 54000+ miles of train and plane travel around the world with extended stays in Bali and Fiji and travel aboard seventeen different airlines and two new aircraft types.

To any and all of you who took the time to actually read through this entire 13000+ word trip report, I thank you for your indulgence as well as your fortitude. I hope that despite the lack of international premium class travel, you found the time you invested in reading this report to be enjoyable.

Til next time…