Sounds like the ex-Prairie Home Companion host and writer will be riding the Lake Shore and the Southwest Chief this week. Precisely because he and his English visitors deplore the pejorative phrase, "flyover country." From Looking forward to a week of uninformation - Garrison Keillor: "I look forward to the imminent arrival of my English relatives who love this country so sweetly. They are hikers and in America there’s more to hike. For me the visit is a vacation from listening to people bemoan Mr. Mar-a-Lugubrious and despair about what they read in the morning paper. My Brits can talk your ear off about the depredations of the Tories and they look on the monarchy as a malignancy but they love America in all its splendor, and so I’m taking them to visit [the] Grand Canyon and gaze at geology and descend the Bright Angel Trail into the depth and then learn a great lesson — it is harder descending and easier coming up — which may be applicable in life generally — and we won’t be flying to Arizona, we’ll take the train out of New York and up the Hudson and over to Chicago so they can see the splendor of Ohio and Indiana, and then the Southwest Chief for the splendor of Missouri and Kansas. Most Americans would prefer to fly over Kansas. My Brits will be awestruck at the prairie, the little frame houses on the vast flatness."
I know AU members will respect Mr. Keillor's and his party's privacy, but if they just happen to strike up a conversation at, e.g., breakfast in the dining car while the Chief chugs over the invisible Kansas-Colorado border, let's hear about it. (This easterner marveled at the vast flatness. A "horizon" isn't something yinz see much, growing up in Pittsburgh.)
I know AU members will respect Mr. Keillor's and his party's privacy, but if they just happen to strike up a conversation at, e.g., breakfast in the dining car while the Chief chugs over the invisible Kansas-Colorado border, let's hear about it. (This easterner marveled at the vast flatness. A "horizon" isn't something yinz see much, growing up in Pittsburgh.)