Go By Train

I just stepped off the train in Davis, CA. I left Montana on Tuesday aboard the Empire Builder. I took that to Portland and got the Coast Starlight to Davis, just outside Sacramento. Both trains have a reputation regarding their adherance to the schedule. The Empire Builder is notoriously on time, while the "Coast Star-late", well, you can figure it out. However, this was not the case for either train. Due to a derailment in Minneapolis, the Empire Builder lost about an hour. Going west from there, the train got to Minot, ND where the railroad line had only opened the day before. The tracks from there all the way across eastern Montana were plagued with slow orders due to the recent flooding, and the train ended up getting to Spokane about 3 hours behind schedule. The train was so late I didn't even get to see Glacier National Park because the sun had already set by the time I got there. After Spokane, the "Baby Builder", as the Portland section is often called, made up about half an hour before arriving in Portland. I had about an hour before boarding the Coast Starlight, so I got something to eat and looked around a bit. However, the Coast Starlight then pulled in 15 minutes early. The train boarded right away but sat in the station until it was time to depart. We arrived at the next stations right on time, and eventually got to Klamath Falls, OR half an hour early. Again, we had to wait until it was time for us to depart. The train can't leave early because then it can leave people behind that haven't gotten to the station yet. I went to sleep after Klamath Falls and woke up in Sacramento...a full hour ahead of schedule. The train sat in Sacramento for an hour and then left for Davis, arriving there right on time. I am staying at a friend's house in Davis for a few days, I will be going to San Francisco tomorrow.

My Empire Builder ticket was from Williston, ND. Williston and Wolf Point, MT are both about two hours from Glendive. However, we were not able to leave the apartment until about one hour before the train was due in Williston, so we went to Wolf Point instead, which is further west, so the train gets there later. We didn't think to check the train status before leaving. I got some lunch in Wolf Point and waited...for quite a while. I was an hour early if the train had been on time, and it was about two hours late by that point. There were a few other passengers at the station. A father and son were traveling back to their home in western Montana. They had been visiting a friend in Circle, about halfway between Glendive and Wolf Point, when they wrecked their car. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, they had no choice but to take the train back home. The other passengers left the station when they heard the train status, so I did not get to talk to any of them. However, I did tell a few people on the train about my trip, and news about my journey must have spread around the train because people were coming up to me the rest of the way to Portland and asking, "Are you the kid traveling all over the country by train?" Most people are not aware that you can do that. Most of the people on that train did not know that it goes all the way from Chicago to the west coast over a span of three days and that there were people crazy enough to do just that. I, however, am one of them.

I missed the trip through the Rockies and Glacier National Park because the train was late. However, because the train was late, I did see the whole Columbia River gorge between Spokane and Portland. That is a beautiful run. The train follows the old Spokane, Portland, & Seattle alignment on the north bank of the river, the Washington side. The train is on the riverbank most of the way. On either side of the river, the hills rise out of the water like giant walls. Looming in the distance for most of the run is Mount Hood, an 11,249 foot behemoth towering over northern Oregon. Despite the clouds, you could see the whole mountain...because the clouds were below the summit! Although it was July, the giant rock was covered in snow and ice. Washington, Oregon, and northern California are full of these random mountains. They tower over everything else and are white year round. Mount Ranier in Washington, the biggest of the bunch, is where a lot of Americans that climb the Himalayas go to train. Mount Saint Helens is known for, well, exploding. Sure, they are in the Cascade Range, but these monsters are so big that they hardly seem to be in a mountain range at all. They stand apart from each other, not clustered together. The surrounding mountains are so small compared to these giant landmarks that they hardly seem to exist. Mount Hood was at least 30 miles from the tracks at the closest point, and it was visible almost the whole length of the Columbia River Gorge. None of the others were visible, but I'm sure Mount Saint Helens can be seen from the other side of the river. There was a rock wall on the north side of the Empire Builder and nothing could be seen that way.

The train arrived in Portland with not enough time to look around the city much. I did go outside and get some photos of the famous train station in Portland. "Union Station" and "Go By Train" proclaim the clocktower that once stood high over the city. Once a towering icon of the city and an important transportation hub, this antique little landmark among modern glass skyscrapers stands as a reminder of what travel once was. Formerly the only gateway into Portland, the long, empty platforms stand as a reminder of days when the tracks hosted trains from the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific Railroads. Today, this station only sees two long distance trains per day. I had gotten off one and was about to get on the other.

The Coast Starlight, a remnant of the Southern Pacific, left Portland right on time. This train already had people from Seattle on board, and would go all the way to Los Angeles. That, however, was not my route. The train was sold out, so they were assigning seating. I found my seat, put my seat check there, and went to the lounge car. The train passed through Oregon City, the destination of the pioneers following the Oregon Trail in the 1840s. We followed the Willamette River right up into the Cascades. The train crossed the Cascades on a 1.8% grade, climbing to a summit of over 5,000 feet. After the Cascades, the sun went down, so I uploaded my photos from the day to my computer and went back to my coach to sleep. I woke up in Sacramento, and it was another 20 minutes to Davis.

Davis is an interesting place. There is a big university here, so there are a lot of young people with bikes. In fact, there are parking lots for bikes. There are more bikes in Davis than there are cars. A lot of people here own more than one bike, like people owning more than one car, so the bike population of Davis is probably about the same as the people population. Tomorrow I am going into San Francisco. It is a city that I have always wanted to visit, because it is very unique among American cities. I will write about that trip later.