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August 15, 2004
Riding Around America: Empire Builder
After one too many days in Seattle, I was looking forward to the 2200 mile ride on America's most famous train, the Empire Builder. The route was named for James J. Hill, the ultimate railroad tycoon, who built the Great Northern Railway. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the famous route and also the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition. I would be riding the entire length of the route - Seattle to Chicago. I prepared by stocking up with the food supplies and by cracking the book I had brought along specifically for this leg of the journey - "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose, a popular book about the Lewis and Clark expedition.
The train was crowded from the start and I was seated next to woman who was very excited to hear about this website ("I love stuff like that"). She was a former park ranger who had worked at Steheiken in Washington and she made me wish that I had done some hiking while I was there. Now I'm going to have to go back sometime and check out everything that she recommended.
The ride east from Seattle was some of the best scenery yet as we sped up, over and through the Cascade Mountains. We passed through wilderness areas and national forests. The train labored slowly up a steep 2.2% percent grade at one point, with a nearly vertical rock face on one side and a pine forested valley on the other. We also went through the longest tunnel in North America which measures nearly 8 miles long. I was going to time how long it took us to get through but I fell asleep just a few minutes in. So much for my chance to see how fast we were going.
I fell asleep before Spokane, and slept well apart from the jolt at 12:30 in the morning as extra cars were added to the train. I woke up as the train approached Glacier National Park. Fog lay low along the river and amongst the trees and slowly burned off as the sun rose higher. A few minutes after I woke up, the train stopped at Whitefish for a 15 minute smoke break. It was still early but I didn't want to miss the chance to get a breath of fresh air so I decided to go outside. I was jolted awake as I stepped off the train by the cold outside air and steam came out of my mouth. I stayed outside as long as possible, enjoying the clean fresh air before the two short blasts of the train's whistle signaled the all aboard and we were off again.
I spent the remainder of the day dozing, reading the paper and starting the Ambrose book. I had lunch in the dining car with a couple who were in the middle of moving from Portland to Vermont, with their four week old baby, Sam, who was very well behaved as the three of us talked and ate.
I fell asleep that night a few minutes after the train went through Devil’s Lake, ND and had an even better sleep than the night before because I now had two seats to myself which allowed me, after much blanket arranging and seat tilting, to get into a comfortable sleeping position. I slept through Grand Forks and Fargo, woke up briefly in St. Cloud and then de-trained for some fresh air in Minneapolis. I dug out some quarters, bought a copy of the Star-Tribune and made the local call to my parents to say hi. They weren’t home, or they were still asleep – I had forgotten that it was Saturday, so I got back on the train and soon we were off again.
The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. I got through a large part of the Lewis and Clark book, met a nice girl from Holland who was traveling around the country with her sister as a break from studying to be a teacher, dozed off a few more times, and arrived in Chicago last night only one hour late.
And that’s a brief summary of my pleasant journey on Amtrak’s Empire Builder. Now I have three days to explore Chicago before backtracking to Minneapolis to spend time with my family and then heading back to New York at the end of August. This journey around America is far from over.
Posted on August 15, 2004 at 10:47 AM