Amtrak Life
6/10 thru 6/12 & a little bit of 6/13
Our adventure begins on 6/10 as we board the Coast Starlight Amtrak train heading north from Martinez, CA at 10:45 pm. Even though we were only going to Portland, we booked a “roomette” sleeper room and it was all made up into bunks as we entered. So we basically went to bed immediately.
We tried “Coach” the first time we traveled on Amtrak and quickly decided that neither of us could sleep at all in the Coach seats. Now we always book a sleeper. Another advantage-meals are included with sleeper accommodations. On this leg, we ate breakfast and lunch before departing the train in Portland to visit with our good friend, Bob Hillhouse.
Bob used to live in Napa and owned Bicycle Works; he is a lifetime member of the Eagle Cycling Club. We had a great visit with him and also met Ron Tracy, brother of Terry, another friend from the Eagles.
We spent the night at Bob’s and he delivered us back to Amtrak in the morning, where we caught the commuter train to Seattle. I was excited that it appeared that the train had Wi-Fi, but, alas, the Wi-Fi had no internet access. IOW, worthless Wi-Fi. Amtrak has been talking about Wi-Fi on the trains for at least 10 years, but I stopped holding my breath long ago.
While in the Seattle train station, waiting for the Empire Builder, commonly called “the builder” by the train staff, we chatted with Joelle, a quebecois woman who had ridden up the Pacific coast route from San Francisco. She has been riding for 3 months, first in New Zealand, then in Japan. She is riding the train all the way to Chicago.
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We boarded and were off on time, about 5pm. Word to the wise-if you book this train going east, try to get accommodations on the left side of the train because the first couple of hours follows the Puget Sound coastline which is lovely. The right side has a view of bushy cliffs and some meh beach houses.
Somehow through the night, the train got 1 hour behind schedule so we arrived in Whitefish, MT about 8:15 am. Amber and Rich were there to meet us.
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