Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Our Big Trip - Part 1, The Train

So here it is at last, the tale of our big adventure two-week summer vacation.
On July 19th, my friend Kim graciously picked us up from home on her way to work downtown and dropped us at the Amtrak station at roughly 2nd & Lamar. It's a tiny station and feels like stepping back in time to the 1980's, roughly. I'd compare it to a bus station, but Greyhound might look a little more up-to-date. I'm not sure, it's been a few years since I saw a Greyhound station, I'm grateful to say. While the tattered upholstered chairs outside the Austin Amtrak station reeked of urine, the inside seemed clean enough.

Here's Natalie eagerly awaiting the train at the station.

Rob dutifully hauled our luggage, aside from 2-3 backpacks I shouldered. Yup, that's a cooler in the photo. We had TONS of snacks ready to go.

We had arrived at the station early and ended up spending a long time there. No matter, we managed to keep the girls entertained and their more bothersome behaviors down to a dull roar.
We left Austin an hour late due to a freight train that stopped for repairs before our train made it to the station. Fortunately, the conductor made up the time between Austin and Dallas. We sailed through Fort Worth and Dallas, though I hear Dallas is often where you get stuck for an hour or two. If you're going on a long trip, they mostly make up the time they lose to delays (usually involving freight trains, which have priority on the tracks.)

Funny thing--our sleeper car room attendant looked like strikingly like a human version of the train conductor dinosaur on Dinosaur Train. He didn't seem all that stable, so I didn't mention it to him.

So, how was the train ride, you ask?

The girls LOVED to be able to move around and explore the train. At no point were they saying, "are we there yet?" They were sometimes a handful when they wanted to run around unfettered and we couldn't let them go around and bug people in the observation car.

They adored the bunk beds. Rachel kept saying "bunkabed!" They wanted to get up and down, up and down. The enjoyed the scenery, but seemed more interested in the train itself. It was priceless to be able to move around our sleeper room, the sleeper car, the dining car, and the observation (a.k.a. lounge) car.

The meals were actually decent. Not fine dining by any means, but far better than airplane fare. The price of the meals was included in the price of the sleeper car, so that was a bonus. We ate big meals with desserts.

We met people, which was something I enjoyed probably more than Rob did. I overheard a mom talking to her pediatrician about her son's newly discovered insect bite, lamenting that she didn't have any Benadryl. I had some, so I offered it to her. She eagerly accepted. Later we ran into them at dinner, and they offered to pay for our alcoholic beverages (the only item not included in the price of the meal.) I enjoyed a glass of merlot with my steak.

We brought our white-noise machine, which turned out to be a brilliant idea, because in the roomette next to our family sleeper, there was a loud and loquacious 6-year-old who took to banging on the walls. Her grandma was very apologetic. We later got the little girl playing with our girls, and wished we'd done so earlier in the trip.

The scenery was beautiful, if a little nostalgic and sad at times. The rails cut through some quaint little ghost towns, lush green countryside, industrial parts of bigger towns and cities. In Dallas we passed through a big tunnel with lots of tracks branching off in different directions, and emerged out from under a building several stories tall. We saw highways and byways, from the perspective of maybe 100 feet away. Approaching St. Louis in the early morning, we met up with the vast, shining, mighty Mississippi River and followed its course for maybe an hour. We enjoyed this view over breakfast.

The motion of the train lulled the girls to sleep pretty well, or at least didn't bother them. Rob and I had a bit harder time sleeping; for me it was the noise of the back of the train creaking with every bump and shift. We could hear the train horn frequently, but it was far enough away from our sleeper car that it wasn't a nuisance. The ding-ding-ding of railroad crossings was a frequent accompaniment.

All in all, I'd say it was a success. I'd definitely do it again. My husband is not such a raving fan, but I don't think he's as in love with trains as I am. He says he enjoyed the experience, though he probably wouldn't travel with kids by train again. The girls loved it and I bet they'd get even more out of it as older kids, though in some ways they might be even more of a handful. Being able to physically keep them in the room was a big plus.

Weird thing, sort of--I have bouts of vertigo from time to time. The motion of the train didn't bother me at all while I was on the train, except as it occasionally required my holding on to something in order to keep from falling over. I didn't get dizzy or sick, in other words. But when I got off the train, it took me a full 24 hours to stop feeling like the floor was moving under my feet every time I stood still. My husband did not experience this lingering effect.