Trains are like Snowflakes: No Two are Alike

Last year, we decided to save ourselves a couple thousand dollars and take a train to Wisconsin for Christmas. You can read about it here. It went well enough that we decided to give it another go this year.

First off, being the train veterans we are now, we prepared a little better.  We knew there was no wifi, that the train would be a freaking sauna, and that our cooler wasn't going to keep our food cold enough to have pre-made turkey sandwiches.  So we consolidated a little bit, opted to keep some bread in a tupperware with peanut butter and jelly to make sandwiches en route, and Rachel came up with the brilliant idea to freeze water bottles the night before the trip to add a little extra ice to our cooler without sacrificing food/beverage space in the cooler.  We were all over this trip.

Things were a little different this time around.  We snagged front row seats knowing it would allow us slightly more leg room at the expense of having a tray on the back of the seat in front of us to use.  Turned out to be a non issue, as we could take our food down to the observation car to eat.  Speaking of which, last year, the observation deck was packed at pretty much all times of day. Our first morning on the train, we made our way down there around 9 AM, and there was one other person down there, watching the stop motion Rudolph on his laptop.  Maybe it's because all of the people on the train had been there before or something, because I didn't find the observation car to be quite as exciting either. Sort of like going to the Grand Canyon: the first time you see it, it's incredible.  After twenty minutes, unless you're riding a donkey or taking an airplane tour through the canyon, it becomes kinda "yep, still looks the same."

Also, last year on the train, our train conductors were awesome.  They cracked jokes, vaccuumed the aisles, cleaned the bathrooms, and were extremely friendly.  This year: not so much. We had no vaccuuming, definitely no bathroom cleaning, and the conductor for our car was a major stickler for the rules, at one point disapprovingly looking at a girl with sock/slipper hybrids on trying to head down to the observation car to play Settlers of Cataan with her boyfriend and saying "I know you don't think you're walking out of this car without shoes on." She was a peach.

Also new this year were the delays.  We were delayed last year as well, not getting out of Portland for four and a half hours due to engine trouble.  This year, it was the weather that was an issue.  About the time we hit the Rocky Mountains, we encountered this:

Beautiful, right? However, notice that we aren't moving? The snow was so thick, that freight train crews were having trouble making it to certain stations to report for work, so we had to pick them up and then back down the tracks about 20 minutes to drop them off at work.

Once we got over the Rockies, we had a new problem to deal with: wind.

 It got so bad at one point, we had to sit on the tracks stationary for 45 minutes while the wind subsided.  They weren't allowing trains to cross a trestle up ahead of us for fear of the crosswinds.  Yikes. Being stopped when you're in Glacier National Park and it's snowing heavily isn't all the bad.  Being stopped in Eastern Montana, where it looks like a post apocalyptic movie set, isnt quite as cool though:

All told, we ended up being about 4.5 hours late into Wisconsin Dells, which, over the course of a 42 hour trip, isn't all that terrible I suppose. Shortly before our stop, the conductor announced that they apologized for all the delays (making sure to point out that it wasn't Amtrak's fault that the freight trains were clogging the tracks and the weather was also a factor), and offering us all a free meal in the dining car.  I thought this was cool....we could just snag a voucher, and use it on our return trip, as we weren't going to have enough time before disembarking to eat this time.  That's when we found out that the free meal was a "beef stew" and that if you wanted your free meal, you needed to be in the dining car when your train car was called. No vouchers, no "you've been on this train for two days, you probably deserve a little more than the person who just got on ten minutes ago in Minot," nothin.  You take your beef stew and you be grateful for it!

We passed, and opted to head to Culvers immediately after leaving the station. True to form, I forgot to order cheese curds again. Fortunately there will be other Culvers trips this week....I'll make sure of that.