Vacation Day 1 - We Amtrak

Taking grandma to Tucson requires making one's way to Sidney, Montana. We couldn't drive, because the point of the exercise was to take grandma and her van to Arizona. That leaves two options. One, fly into the Sidney airport like that idiot teen who wanted to visit his girlfriend in Sydney, Australia, but couldn't spell or figure out where Australia is in relation to Montana. But, despite my many hours in a small engine plane, including solo-ing, I have an unnatural fear of riding in small planes with someone else at the yoke. No damn way. I don't even like to fly commercial without checking to ensure the maximum number of engines possible between source and destination. Option two, the train. Amtrak from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Williston, North Dakota, 11:00 p.m. to 11:00 a.m. Some advice - spring for the sleeper car if you can afford it. I slept like a baby, except when the train would stop. Pooteewheet slept like a baby, only when the train was stopped. Eryn slept all the time. It was sort of like the three bears, except without a cute blonde sneaking into my bunk in the middle of the night and complaining I was too big.

Here's Pooteewheet taking out her lack of sleep on a stuffed dog in the dining car. He's a bomb-sniffing dog from the State Fair, so I don't know what she's trying to cover up - probably an explosive temper.


A light from what are probably Amtrak days gone by. The women's lounge, next to the Lav Area. We still have a breastfeeding room at work, but I don't think this is the same thing. I went in search of it, just in case it was one of those 100-virgin things, and they really meant it was a room full of women for me to peruse (hey...if it really is an Amtrak harem, peruse is the correct word), but all I found were the bathrooms. In defense of Amtrak, the light never lit up, so maybe I just didn't purchase the right level of sleeping berth.


Lots of Flickr photos from the Amtrak ride.