A Three-Day Train Trip!

I've left the Pacific Northwest and ventured into the wilds of St Louis

I gotta get into the habit of writing posts in here regularly! I was just sitting here thinking, “Damn, I need to do something interesting, so I can post about it in Substack,” and my brain was all, “Bitch, you spent three days on a train and haven’t posted about that yet,” and I was all, “That was like four days ago. It’ll be weird if I’m just now posting about it,” and my brain was like, “Well, it’ll be weirder if you keep waiting.”

And for once, my brain was right, so I’m posting about it now.

I left Seattle on Friday, almost a week ago and got on the “Empire Builder” train, which is honestly kind of a worrying name for a train. I mean America is not officially an empire, right? So, what exactly is Amtrak implying?

I’d like to think they’re being underhandedly snarky about the colonial bullshit the US has been pulling in the last two-hundred-odd years, but I feel like that’s giving Amtrak a bit too much punk cred.

Anyway, the Empire Builder goes through Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and ends up in Chicago. The first day and a half or so is fucking gorgeous. I kept trying to get pictures, but we were moving too fast, and by the time I realized I should actually be taking videos, it was too late and we were out of the mountains.

Here are the three pictures I did manage to get, but they do NOT do it justice:

Three days straight on the train was exhausting, and I think going forward I’ll limit it to two day trips and just add more stops where needed. The first two days were fun, and the third was just waaaaay too much, especially with my dog.

Speaking of which, here’s an obligatory picture of Chalupa at a stop in North Dakota:

I mean, don’t get me wrong, she was super chill and definitely helped me when I had a full-on panic attack at the Chicago train station on day 3. But it’s hard to move around the train when you have to bring Chalupa everywhere, plus I had to make sure I got off the train every time we stopped so she could pee, including setting an alarm for the fresh air stops in the middle of the night, when they don’t make an announcement.

All that said, this was waaaaaaay better than the time I spent four days on the Greyhound bus, going from Portland to St. Louis for my friend’s wedding. That was totally worth it, though, because it gave me material for my book Magic Today, when one of my main characters is going across the country and her car breaks down and she has to hop on a bus the rest of the way.

Fun fact: if you’ve read Magic Today, and you remember the scene where Mattie’s on the bus, almost to St. Louis, and there’s a guy trying to get off the bus on the freeway? That actually happened when I was on the Greyhound.

In my case, the driver didn’t use magic to make the guy shut up, though. She just yelled at him a bunch.