Well, my trip was a success. I'm sending this from my parents' house on their new computer (sniff...I want a new computer
).
I got to Salem, Oregon about 10 minutes before the Thruway bus arrived. As the bus was heading out of Salem, we went under the southbound Coast Starlight that was only 2 minutes late. I will say that the Thruway busses that Oregon uses are pretty nice busses. Lots of leg room and great view from the windows. It had a pretty comfortable ride, as well. There weren't a lot of people on the bus, which allowed for everyone to stretch out and get their own seats.
The bus arrived at Portland at about 4:20 PM, and I walked into Portland's Union Station. 10 minutes later, they started boarding train #28, the Portland section of the Empire Builder. I get on and notice that there are a lot of seats left open when we left the station. Once again, I was able to stretch out and take a pair of seats. There were even some pairs of seats completely open. The movies that night were Star Trek: Nemesis and Die Another Day. The Builder arrived in Spokane about 15 minutes before scheduled arrival of 12:15 AM.
I transferred over to the Greyhound section of the terminal and waited and waited and had a great breakfast in the cafeteria at Spokane and waited...you get the idea. I'll not go into too much detail about the non-Amtrak part of the trip, except to say that Greyhound is functional, utilitarian transportation, and that's about it. There are no frills, no leg room, not even running water in the bathroom.
A couple of days later, after a great visit with a good friend of mine, I got back to Spokane and quickly rushed down to the Amtrak waiting area. Shortly thereafter, they called first call for boarding. I got in line, not knowing that they had already called for sleepers a few minutes before I arrived, and presented my ticket. The conductor looked at my ticket and realized that there were some mix-ups in room placements. Someone was in my room, so they quickly found me another room. I was asked to wait until all the coach passengers were taken care of. After a few minutes, the conductor took me to the Seattle sleeper and pointed me to my room. The beds were already made up, so I pushed the top bed out of the way, got everything situated as I wanted it, and crawled into bed. I don't remember much after that until Whitefish, Montana.
I was lazy, so I slept into 10:30 AM, which meant that I missed both breakfast and the beautiful scenery of Glacier Park and the Rocky Mountains. Since I've been on that route a bunch of times, I didn't miss too much. After a nice, warm shower, I met George, the sleeper attendant. He quickly returned the room to the daytime position once he introduced himself. Even though I was on the bottom level, I saw him quite a bit throughout the day. Not just before a stop, but throughout the day. He was very helpful with everyone, and definitely liked to chat.
I ate two meals in the dining car: lunch and dinner. During lunch, I had the Angus burger with swiss cheese and bacon. For dessert, I had the ice cream with chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Yum! There's not much in this world for either taste or raising the cholesterol count than a good bacon cheese burger. :lol: Supper was good as well. I had Delmonico steak with baked potato and roast corn blend. I also had some Cabernet Savignon wine (please forgive my attempt at spelling). Dessert was the cheesecake with strawberries. Double yum.
The best part was the dinner schedule. Traditionally, the dinner times were in Mountain Time. First seating was usually 5:30 or 6:00 PM MT, while the arrival time into Williston is 6:09 PM MT (7:09 Central Time, which is Williston's local time). Unfortunately, that means that they would make first call for the first seating as I'm getting ready to get off of the train. Today, however, they had the dinner times in Central Time, which meant that I was going to be able to eat dinner on the train, and of course I did.
Interestingly, as the dining car steward was going around with reservations, I told her that I won't need a reservation since I'm getting off in Williston. She replied that I would have plenty of time to eat since we were running half an hour late, and oh, by the way, here's the 6:00 PM reservation I already made for you. Works for me.
Unfortunately, we did arrive into Williston about half an hour late due to a mechanical failure on a freight train that was in front of us about 10 miles outside of Havre, Montana. We had to wait thirty minutes for the freight crew to get their train out of our way. We never made the time up. The conductor did a good job of keeping everyone informed on what happened by making a couple of announcements over the PA system.
All things considered, this was an excellent trip on Amtrak. The service was excellent and the trip was very relaxing. Can't wait to get back on the train in a couple of days (I'll let you all know more about it later).
