Every Mile A Memory

I hope you've enjoyed reading about my adventures on the rails this past July. I certainly enjoyed being there. I shot just over 2,000 photos with two cameras, and I spent hours looking at all of them and deciding which ones to keep and which ones to toss out. I still kept about four CD's worth of photos! Many of my friends have asked to see them, and I certainly enjoy showing the photos and telling my friends about my trip. People at work have mentioned they haven't seen me in a while, and where have I been? Well.....

I left home July 2 and got home July 31, a time period of 30 days. In that time, I traveled 12,041 miles in 278 hours. Of that, 11,400 miles and 263 hours were by rail, 11,379 miles and 260 hours on Amtrak. What makes up the rest of the time? I rode 8 miles for 45 minutes on Boston's subway system, the T. I spent about 2 hours on San Francisco Municipal Railway, riding 13 miles. I spent 3 hours on ferries and tour boats on San Francisco Bay, traveling 22 miles. I also rode 619 miles by bus, giving me another 12 hours of travel time. During all this travel time, I went to 27 states, 14 of which I had never visited before. I have now been to a total of 35 states.

Let's put that into perpective a bit. 278 hours is over 11 straight days. That's like getting on a train right now (assuming you are reading this the day I posted it) and getting off on August 29! As for the mileage, that is like going from my home in Nashua, NH to Sydney, Australia...the opposite side of the planet! And I should remind you, I never flew anywhere, so I never left the surface of the earth in my travels. On Amtrak, I traveled 11,379 miles. For a $579 rail pass, that means I spent 5 cents per mile. As for time, at $579 for 260 hours, I spent $2.23 per hour. Both, I'd say, are very good rates! Out of my 30 days of travel, only 16 days were actual travel days, and on those days I averaged 753 miles per day. My average speed for travel days was 31.4 miles per hour.

Okay, that's enough statistics. What else did this trip do for me? It was my first time traveling completely across the country to the west coast. It was my first time seeing deserts, palm trees, Spanish missions, big sky country, the Cascades and Mount Hood, and the Pacific Ocean. Some things I had learned about in history classes in school now have more meaning: the Alamo, the Chisholm Trail, Pioneers and the Oregon Trail, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and General Custer's less than fortunate military actions. I also got to ride such once-famous trains that I had only read about such as Great Northern's Empire Builder, The joint effort of the California Zephyr, Santa Fe's Super Chief (now Amtrak's Southwest Chief),Southern Pacific's Sunset Limited, Missouri Pacific's Eagle (now Amtrak's Texas Eagle),Southern Pacific's Coast Daylight (now Amtrak's Coast Starlight), and New York Central's Lake Shore Limited. I realized just how enormous this country is, seeing everything from vast deserts to open plains to mountains that seem to touch heaven itself. I met people from all over the country going to other faraway places. I met young people and older people. I met people who remember riding the original trains when they were run by the private railroads, and people who had never been on a train before. I met people who travel for the sake of traveling (like me) and people who were traveling on business or going to visit friends. I met people with all sorts of cool accents (Texas comes to mind) and people from the northeast that didn't have a hard time understanding what I said to them. I met people who could name all the species of cactus as they went by, and some people (like me) who had never seen a cactus before.

I had a blast riding the train. It was bittersweet coming home. I missed home, of course, and was happy to get back. Now that I am home I find that I miss my coach seat that bounces along the track as I sleep, I miss the dining car with the amazing french toast breakfasts and salmon dinners, I miss the lounge car with enormous windows that showed me a new landscape every day. I tend to shy away from people I don't know, and even people I do know, so I'm surprising even myself to say that I miss sitting with people I've never met and telling them about my adventures and listening to theirs. In quiet times, I find myself thinking back to my adventures and remembering the things I saw, the places I visited, the people I met. The trip may be over, but I know that it will always remain, every mile of it, a great memory.

If you missed out reading my articles about this trip, you can find them all on the website. Speaking of the website, don't forget to check out the rest of it. It is a great place to find all the past articles we have written, and if you are looking for a specific article, they are very easy to find. There are also a few features on the website that are not available on the blog, so go check them out!