Trip Report: October 8 - 28, 2000
by Ted & Sylvia Blishak
ONBOARD AMTRAK
WITH TED AND SYLVIA BLISHAK
October 11, 2000: Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.
The tracks east of Denver are rough, but in a different way than we have experienced before. We're running along a straight tangent fairly smoothly, at about 79 mph, and then '' WHAM". The train jolts as if it has run over something. Then back to smoother running. By the time we reach Iowa, there is a great deal of side-to-side lurching.
Travel Tip: Have both hands free when walking about the train. Carry your valuables in a waistpack when you venture to the dining car. Walk with knees slightly bent, in flat shoes, and have both hands ready to balance yourself against bulkheads, backs of seats, or overhead racks. Amtrak does not own the tracks it runs on (except between Boston and Washington DC) and therefore has no control over the lack of maintenance the freight railroads provides, so complaining to Amtrak won't help. It is very easy to lose your balance, so be careful.
We awake to rolling farmland and the kinds of towns that look like the "real America". Houses with wrap-around porches with porch swings, backyard vegetable gardens, and no fences look like they may not have changed much in the past century or so.
At breakfast we meet a 40-something fellow with a Lenin-style beard. Although he has a Ph. D in Physics, he is actually working as a ceramic artist in a country cottage near Tipton, Iowa. He tells us about using buffalo grass, which he has obtained from the University of Nebraska, as a ground cover to replace a conventional blue-grass lawn. He lives on a deep sand pile, deposited by glaciers, and has learned that bringing in topsoil only works for growing things until the roots go deep enough to reach the sand underneath; then everything withers. Buffalo grass, however, is drought-resistant, so needs little if any watering, puts roots down about 12 feet, and doesn't need mowing.
"Sounds perfect," we say. "Where can we get some?"
He says to contact the University. "It does have one drawback, though. It turns brown all winter and doesn't green up again until May."
In spite of the rough tracks, we have had a good night's sleep and feel refreshed. But just because this is a vacation, we take a nap after breakfast.
By lunchtime, the dining car is out of certain items. This is typical of other experiences we've had on the California Zephyr, as they are quite cost-conscious and don't want to end the trip with surplus food which must be wasted. There is no more chicken, cheesecake, Turtle Pie, bacon, or caffeine free teabags. We have our own supply of teabags, and also carry bottled water and M&Ms. The only emergency supplies we've had to use, however, are the teabags.
Our lunch companion is a man in his 60's from Oakland. He has never been on an airplane and doesn't plan to start flying, ever. "I just can't see why I would; I really enjoy train travel and have done it for years." He tells us about taking his three young daughters (the oldest was eight at the time) on their first cross-country rail journey. When he announced the plan, one of them said, "But where will we eat?"
"They have a wonderful restaurant right on the train," he explained.
"Where will we sleep?" asked another.
"We'll have a nice big bedroom right on the train," he said. He'd reserved a two-bedroom suite with the partition rolled back. When the girls saw it, they all wanted the top bunks, so he assigned sleeping arrangements and said they could trade the next day.
His girls are grown up and married and now have kids of their own. They've never forgotten that first ride on the "Silver Lady", as the original CZ was called, and now take their own kids on the train when they visit Disneyland.
We cross the Mississippi River, which is forested on both banks and looks like it should have paddle-wheelers plying its waters although it does not, at least at the moment. Then on past gently-sloping fields of dried cornstalks, barns, and towns with neatly-trimmed lawns surrounding square, two-story houses out of the past. Although we left Omaha this morning on time at 6:40am, we are now running about an hour late. Since the CZ schedule is padded, allowing an hour-and-a -half to travel the 28 miles between Naperville and Chicago, it looks like we may still arrive in Chicago on time.
Approaching Chicago, we have an opportunity to chat with our room attendant Otis about, among other things, the condition of this Superliner II sleeping car, Kentucky. Kentucky, which is the newest of the three sleepers on today's CZ (the others are Superliner I's) was formerly used on the Kentucky Cardinal and was recently transferred to the California Zephyr, where demand for sleeping car space is much higher. The public shower on the Kentucky has no water temperature control and the shower head in Deluxe Room D drips on the floor. Otis told us that he noticed these problems when he left Chicago on board Kentucky last week and wrote up a maintenance report on it for repair in Oakland. However, nothing was repaired in Oakland, and he said there may nothing done when it gets back to Chicago either. But at least he has done as much as he can. Kentucky will be returned to the Kentucky Cardinal on October 29, according to an e-mail downloaded from Friends of Amtrak last night, explaining that the Mayor of Louisville was instrumental in getting the sleeper returned to serve his home state, even though the Kentucky Cardinal actually terminates across the river from Louisville in Indiana. This same e-mail indicated that both the city of Louisville and Amtrak have "pledged" funds to reconstruct Louisville Union Station, with the hopes of some day actually having the Kentucky Cardinal serve you guessed it Kentucky!
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