I had a plan and I had the OK from Frances. Time to get down to brass tacks and nail this trip down but there were still some wrinkles that had to be ironed out. Eventually a call to 1-800-USA-RAIL and, well, you'll just have to read the rest of this. Click the link below for all the details.
It was time to try and nail down some dates. Frances had some in-service dates starting around June 12th or 13th but we didn’t know the exact dates. She also had to be back by the middle of August for the start of school. I had some commitments at church and with the Boy Scouts. I had thought about leaving as soon as school was out but our daughter put a stop to that when she said she and her husband would be going to Florida for a week in early June and we got to keep her dog. We didn’t mind doing it; it just eliminated some possible dates from our available time. After clearing as many obstacles as possible I had a window of opportunity between July 3rd and August 5th.
The next thing I had to consider was the “days of operation” for some of the trains. For example, the Cardinal leaves New York on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. That means it come through Cincinnati on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday on its way to Chicago. On the return trip it leaves Chicago on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The Sunset Limited leaves New Orleans on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. All of the other trains operate daily. I used Excel to try out the different departure dates. It turns out that Saturday or Monday worked best. If I left on Thursday I would have to spend three nights in New Orleans before I could catch the Sunset Limited to Los Angeles and I didn’t want to do that. The rest of the trip was pretty much open to travel any day until we returned to Chicago. We needed to arrive in Chicago on Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday to make a connection with the Cardinal. If we made the Thursday connection we would have six nights in hotels.
The next question would be how long to stay in each location. Chicago was just a connecting point and that would be about eight hours, no hotel to worry about. We could grab a lunch, go see some sights, do some shopping, and then have a nice evening meal before boarding the City of New Orleans for the overnight ride.
The first overnight stop would be New Orleans. We had to spend one night there. It was impossible to make same day connections there. Frances and I had been there several years ago but with the hurricane damage and associated problems, we didn’t really want to stay there more than one night. We would arrive around 3:00PM Sunday and leave just before noon on Monday. We would have time to see a few things that evening, enjoy a nice meal, and grab a breakfast or brunch before leaving town.
After two days on the Sunset Limited we would arrive in Los Angeles. Originally I had thought about three days here but since we would be stopping in the San Francisco Bay area for a day, I decided to limit our stay to just two days. We would (maybe I need to change that to “should”) arrive at 10:10 AM on Wednesday and leave at 10:15 AM on Friday.
Our next stop will be at Emeryville. Emeryville is one of the stations in Oakland. I chose it because I had been there before and I knew where there was a hotel and I knew how the local transportation connections worked. If the Coast Starlight was on time we would arrive at 10:02PM on Friday and then leave at 10:12PM on Saturday. Lately the Coast Starlight has been aptly called the “Starlate.” We would have a twenty-three and a half hour trip to Seattle.
Seattle would be another two night stop for us. We “should” arrive on Sunday evening if the Starlate is even close to on time. We’ll have all day Monday and then till mid afternoon on Tuesday to see what Seattle has to offer. The Empire Builder will be waiting for us on Tuesday afternoon for our return trip.
The Empire Builder usually runs a pretty good schedule and that’s good because we need to be in Chicago on Thursday to catch the Cardinal back to Cincinnati at 7:45PM. If everything is on time we would have three hours and fifty minutes to make the connection. I’m not sure what options we would have if the Empire Builder was late. I suspect Amtrak would hold the Cardinal for connecting passengers if the delay wasn’t too long.
So now I knew what dates we would be leaving and I knew when and where we would be stopping and for how long. So, back to AAA to let them book the trip for me. The agent I talked to this time was not quite as helpful as the agent I had talked to originally. He basically told me to call Amtrak, make the reservations and get some kind of number and bring that back to him and he would handle it from there.
I called Amtrak the next day. They have “Julie,” their automated agent that has voice recognition software. I had tried it once before for something simple but this time I had a fairly complicated order with two different types of discounts. I knew that sometimes when you get a human, things can get confusing but at least you can sort of talk naturally and work out the problems. Julie recognizes the word “agent” and will send you to a human if that’s what you want.
I talked to a very nice agent. I forgot her name but she was very helpful and she deserves a pat on the back. I described my planned trip and then we got to work booking each segment. She took the AAA and Veterans Advantage numbers and gave me a price of twelve hundred and some odd dollars. I questioned the price. She looked at something else and told me that I was right, the cost would be $771.75 and she apologized for the error. She said I qualified for the “Explore America” fare.
If you look at the Explore America info on the Amtrak web site it is a little confusing. It says you can make three stopovers along a route. I was actually making six stops on my trip. I’m not sure if the three stops an a route means three stopovers on the same train (IE: Sunset Limited originate at New Orleans with stops in Houston, El Paso, and Tucson and terminating in Los Angeles) or does it mean three stops between the origin and destination regardless of how many trains are involved. Whatever it means, the computer said I qualified and it let the agent enter the reservations.
We were just about finished. She needed some names and address info and the credit card number. Told me that since there was plenty of time before the trip, the tickets would be mailed out in about two weeks. She then checked to see if there was an baggage check at Cincinnati (there isn’t) and told me to bring a light blanket if I wanted to and Amtrak would supply the pillows.