Soon after arriving in Seattle, Hope received some sad news. Her maternal grandmother had passed away, and the funeral was now being planned. In addition to grieving the passing of her grandma, this also meant that we had to cancel the rest of our trip plans. In addition to our planned trip together to Glacier, I cancelled the remai…

Sleeping in coach class on an overnight Amtrak train is hard. For me, dealing with this discomfort (as required when maximizing a USA Rail Pass) was an intentional part of my trip experience, the closest thing I would get to the hardship of a long day's walk on the Camino de Santiago. During my trip, which featured five overnigh…

After a lovely week in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was time to continue my journey northward to Portland and Seattle, this time by myself. In planning my trip, I was particularly excited about taking the Coast Starlight, which runs the span of the west coast from Los Angeles all the way to Seattle. I have driven this journey seve…

After a couple of enjoyable days in Denver catching up with friends, it was time for the main event. Malvin and I were completing our journey on the California Zephyr, this leg being 33-hours from Denver to the terminus at Emeryville, just across the bay from San Francisco. Along the way, the train passes through Colorado, Utah and …

We arrived an hour or so before departure at Chicago Union Station for the first leg of our ride on the California Zephyr, a 19 hour journey from Chicago to Denver. The hall was elegant, massive and felt strangely empty. We headed to the gates, only to find a line had already formed for our train. A security guard with a thick local…

After taking the Carolinian from Durham to DC, I spent four lovely days catching up with my friends in the capital, a place I have lived at various points in my life. I finally had the chance to visit the African American museum, which was moving and spectacular. As I tend to do whenever I’m in DC, I stopped at the Lincoln Memorial.…

On the scale of train travel fandom, I’d put myself at about an eight out of ten. I was never one of those kids who built train sets, although I liked watching them whenever we were stuck at a railroad crossing as a boy. My appreciation for traveling on trains came later in life, and is specific to long-distance leisure travel. (Sub…