In 2005 I took a trip with my brother, his friend Sonny, and my nephew from Chicago to Portland, then Emeryville (Oakland/ San Francisco area) and back to Chicago. These trains were not to be confused with the Kentucky Cardinal.
Click the link below for some of the planning that went into the trip. Then watch for details of the trip.
Amtrak in 2005, a totally different experience.
In the early part of Spring, 2005, my brother called me and ask “Would you want to in take a trip on Amtrak?”
“Sure! What’ya got in mind?” was my reply.
He told me that he was thinking about taking a trip somewhere and he had ordered and received Amtrak’s booklet with all of their maps and timetables. He said that he got a call from “Sonny”, one of his friends from his high school days and Sonny had said something to him about an Amtrak trip also. Sonny also had the Amtrak booklet. Here I am the biggest rail fan in the bunch and I don’t have anything. Anyway, the three of us got together for a few minutes on the phone and kicked around a few ideas and then decided on a time when everyone could meet at my home. I didn’t really know what they had in mind. I was figuring maybe driving to Cincinnati, Catching the Cardinal to Chicago and back or maybe a roundtrip to the Washington DC area. When we had our little meeting I found that these guys were talking “West coast.” Destinations like Seattle, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. We decided on a few things right away. We wanted to get the most miles for the money, We wanted to see as much of the country as we could, and we wanted to go west on one train and return via a different route. My 14 year old nephew would be going with us and my brother wanted to maximized the number of states he would travel through, however, that wasn’t a high priority since any route we would take would take us through a dozen or more states. Three trains were among our possible choices; the Empire Builder, the California Zephyr, and the Southwest Chief. The Sunset Limited was sort of ruled out because of connections and time constraints. Sonny and I are retired but my brother still works and he could only take 7 days off from his work. We jotted down a few ideas and I took the task of searching www.amtrak.com to see what kind of schedule and cost options we had available.
About a week later we got together again. I had priced several options and routes. We decided to drive to Chicago, take the Empire Builder to Portland, then the Coast Starlight to Emeryville (Oakland), Ca., and the California Zephyr back to Chicago. We had considered spending a day in Seattle but we just didn’t have the time. We took the Portland option because it would give us several hours between our arrival and the scheduled departure on the Coast Starlight. If we had gone to Seattle, the scheduled arrival of the empire Builder would have been 20 minutes after the Coast Starlight’s scheduled departure. At Oakland we had to spend a day there. The California Zephyr departed about two hours before we arrived. Besides, we needed a day to clean up and sleep in a bed. Our stop at Oakland would be our “go visit the sites” day. The next morning we would depart on the California Zephyr for our return trip. Total of 14 states visited and 5419 miles by rail. Scheduled time on the train would be 115.2 hours. Cost for the four of us would be $1043. Now it was time to work out all of the details.
If we’re driving to Chicago we’re going to have to park somewhere. I figured parking in downtown Chicago would be pretty expensive, We later found that we could have parked for $60.00 for a week. Since we would be returning on the California Zephyr and since it had a stop in Naperville, Il., I wondered if I could find someplace in that area that would let us park. While I was looking at the METRA schedules I stumbled onto a link to information about a shuttle bus between the Naperville station and a local church. Well, to make a long story short, I contacted the church and made arrangements to park in their lot. We would just have to get a cab to take us to the station. At the station we would catch METRA, the commuter rail service and ride it into Chicago’s Union Station. Using Naperville as our starting and ending point had another advantage. On the way back we would be departing the train about 1 hour before it arrived at Chicago so we could be on our way back to Louisville an hour earlier. We were going to need a hotel in Oakland. I used Microsoft “Map Point 2002” to locate some hotels in the area. Since we were only staying one night, I figured we could go a few extra bucks and get something nicer than a Holiday Inn. There was a FourPoints Sheraton about 2 blocks from the station for $140 for the night. As it turned out, when we got there they had a special rate going and it only cost us about $99.00 plus tax but that’s something for the next installment on this blog.
After researching everything and getting the prices nailed down pretty good I called the other guys to confirm that everything was still on. Everyone said to go ahead and order tickets.