2 Go To Portland ~ On The Amtrak Empire Builder

Hello Folks!

We have had the best weekend away.  When we left Chicago, things with The Virus were ok ish and when we got back five days later, things were a tad more serious.

Anyway, let me show you pictures from our trip.
We boarded the Amtrak at Chicago Grand Union Station.

















The train is a double decker, incredibly noisy and not particularly fast.  This journey would take us three days.

We settled in our cabin, which had a toilet and shower, a fold down double bed, a single bunk and a chair.

We were given the low down on how things worked on the train by our guard Chris.  He was really helpful and couldn't do enough for us.

Our cabin was on the upper deck of the last carriage and for most of the trip we had the whole carriage to ourselves.

Before long, we on our way along the Chicago River,

and holding up the traffic in the suburbs.

A few hours later and we were already in industrial Milwaukee.

We had been advised by our guard to 'spread your weight' while walking around the train or as Mr Clicky put it 'walk like a duck.'  Dinner time was soon upon us and we walked the five carriages along 'duck walking' wasn't all that successful for me!  Many of my steps were accompanied by a 'oop, or sorry! while clattering into a seat.'  We were seated with two of our fellow passengers and chatted through our meal.

So from Illinois, we went into Wisconsin and then slept through Minnesota.  It wasn't the best night's sleep I have had, although the rocking of the train was quite nice!

When we awoke we were in North Dakota.  I have mentioned that the train is not the fastest.  The route is also used by frequent goods trains and is, in places single track, so we had to wait in sidings.

We clattered and clanked along, through North Dakota's oil fields.  

Stopping to let people off, and on.

And then into Montana, Big Sky Country.  More meals in the Dining Car; time slipped slowly by with a clank and a clatter.  Sometimes the train stopped, sometimes it just went very slowly. 

We talked about nothing and everything, played cards, snoozed and of course, I knitted, a glove this time.

Train Time certainly slowed us down.  It took all day to go through Montana, sometimes there was a little relief of mountains in the distance.

Suddenly it got a bit snowy.

Snow crept in between the carriages.

As we ate another dinner we arrived in Glacier Park.

Sadly we didn't see any glaciers as by now it was dark.  Even more sadly, experts are predicting the Glaciers will have gone by 2030.

We settled in for our night's sleep and travel through Idaho into Washington.  When I woke up next morning Mr Clicky was already awake.  He was tracking our progress on the Amtrak App and said we were delayed by three hours.  Then came an announcement from our singing snack car lady that we had hit a tree in the night.  The engine had been damaged so we had been shunted back up the track and the engines had been swapped.  

We had a cold breakfast this time as the train had split in Spokane, the front half went to Seattle along with the dining car.  We soon came into The Columbia River Gorge in Washington.  It was spectacular.  

Can you spot the goods train on the Oregon side of The Gorge?

We spotted a sea eagle but I couldn't get a picture!

We carried on slowly down The Gorge for a few more hours and then we packed our things together.  The train trundled into a stop in Portland Union Station, Oregon.  Time for one last picture of our home for the last three days.

Union Station.

We walked the short distance to our hotel in a snowstorm and set out to explore the city.

Next instalment, 2 have fun in Portland.

See you soon..........Clicky Needles.