Keeping it rail...
TREVOR PEAKE RIDES THE RAILS ON AN EPIC AMTRAK ODYSSEY ACROSS THE UNITED STATES
‘YOU’RE travelling around the US by train? Can you do that? I ain’t never been on a train!”
That was the reaction I had several times when chatting to all and sundry during a 6,900-mile lone train journey from east to west in America, and back again.
All I can say is they don’t know what they’re missing.
Amtrak travel is excellent – the only way to see and appreciate the vastness of the United States.
It was something I’d always wanted to do and last year when my LA-based daughter Jess announced she was going to get married in Palm Springs on March 19, it seemed a golden opportunity to tick off one of the big items on my bucket list.
I discovered an organisation called Holidays By Rail on the internet, rang them, told them roughly my plan and within hours they came up with the itinerary of a lifetime.
I flew to Philadelphia, an excellent starting point for any trip to the States with an American Airlines flight leaving every morning from Manchester, arriving on the other side of the pond in the early afternoon, giving you half a day to get acclimatised.
After a night in Philly, I started with a two-hour train journey to Washington DC, one of the world’s great tourist cities.
Here, I spent my first night in a Hostelling International establishment sharing a dorm with five others, my first experience of communal living since I had several hostel holidays with my then teenage son 15 years ago, when I was a slip of a 60-year-old.
The second night
I spent in an old brownstone B&B in Capitol Hill run by Keisha, her sister Chaise and mum Ebony, who were delighted to welcome visitors to their beautiful house with intricate shutters on the windows, wooden floors and beautiful examples of the joiners’ and plasterers’ craft everywhere.
After two days in DC, I was a coach passenger on the Capitol Limited train for the 780-mile, 18-hour overnight trip to Chicago, with a comfortable reclining seat, loads of room, and access to the observation car, where I spent the first five hours watching the world go by.
I also sampled the dining car, a great boon for anyone travelling alone as the attendants fill up the tables of four so you’re sitting with different people at every meal. There were quite a few Americans aware of my adventure before it ended.
If you don’t want the dining experience there’s a well-stocked snack bar within the observation car on every train.
After a couple of nights in another excellent HI hostel in Chicago, where I had a pleasant 20-mile bike ride along the shores of Lake Michigan, it was back on the train for the highlight of my trip – the California Zephyr, a 50-hour ride across Illonois, Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado.
The train then runs through Utah, Nevada, through the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, to San Francisco.
For this two days and two nights epic I had a roomette, a comfortable sleeping car, with breakfast, lunch and dinner all part of the deal. Virtually all of the meals I had on the trains were delicious.
The Zephyr runs every day, unlike some of the other Amtrak routes. I just did it in one hit but it stops at exciting cities such as Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, Reno and Sacramento on the way through, so you can plan to get off at any stop and pick up the train a day or two later.
The HI hostel at Fort Mason in San Francisco overlooks the bay so the next morning I hired a bike to cycle over The Golden Gate Bridge, another one off the bucket list.
It was a glorious, if windy day, and after ‘conquering’ the bridge, I swooped down into Sausalito to catch the ferry back to San Fran.
The next leg down to LA on the Coast Starlight afforded some glorious views of the Pacific surf pounding deserted golden beaches much of the way.
A week in LA and Palm Springs, for the wedding weekend of Jess and Ben at the beautiful Casa Cody hotel will live long in the memory. But then it was back on the train to continue my journey.
The Sunset Limited, which runs three times a week from LA to New Orleans takes almost two days to cover the 1,995 miles between two of America’s iconic cities.
I caught the train at 1am on Monday morning for the 712-mile, 15-hour, overnight leg to the west Texas town of El Paso, arriving mid-afternoon after crossing Arizona and New Mexico.
With the next Sunset Limited heading east not due until Thursday, I spent three nights in El Paso, which sits right on the border of Mexico, linked with Ciudad Juarez just over the Rio Grande.
I braved the heat to take the half-mile walk over the crowded border bridge into Mexico, thinking I’d get a stamp in my passport, 48 years after I had last been in the country for the football World Cup of 1970. But I hadn’t taken my visa with me to show I’d entered the US, so they wouldn’t stamp me in – but they did at least let me out.
A pleasant air-conditioned art gallery and a nearby museum provided welcome respite from the heat. The San Jacinto Plaza in El Paso was a great place to sip a cooling evening beer.
El Paso is regulary ranked among the safest cities in America and is not as frenetic or as big as the others I visited on my travels. After three nights at The Gardner Hotel, I boarded the Sunset Limited for the 19-hour overnight journey to Houston on the other side of Texas.
The HI Morty Rich hostel in a leafy suburb of Houston provided some welcome respite from the heat, with a pool a major bonus.
Next day it was Champions League final day with Liverpool taking on Real Madrid, so I tracked down Lucky’s Bar with a huge screen and about 14 other TVs.
Some spectacular skyscrapers and a tram ride were the sightseeing highlights after the game before returning to the hostel for a chat with fellow travellers.
Next morning it was back on track again for the 363-mile, nine-and-ahalf-hour penulatimate leg of my odyssey to New Orleans.
Arriving late at night at the interesting India House hostel just off Canal Street – a throwback from
the hippy erea of the Sixties – and leaving at 7am after my all-toobrief two-night stay only scratched the surface.
A street car ride at 10am took me down to the banks of the Mississippi where I enjoyed a two-hour river cruise, during which a jazz trio kept passengers entertained in one of the lounges.
Then, in a couple of hours strolling the streets of the French Quarter, I watched an impromptu eight-piece jazz band playing on a street corner before ducking into a couple of bars to listen to music. The heat and humidity eventually sent me scurrying back to the cool sanctuary of the hostel, vowing to spend more time in this fascinating city.
The final 29-hour train journey from New Orleans to Philadelphia crossed Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, DC, Maryland and Delaware before arriving at 30th St station in Philly, where I had started 27 days before.
The only downside to this sort of trip, which was basically travelling for travelling’s sake across the US from ocean to ocean, is that you can’t really spend as much time as you’d like on your city stopovers.
I did 6,952 miles by train in almost a week of travel, crossed 22 states and stayed in nine cities.
It was invigorating, it was memorable and I met some lovely people who I’ll never see again. I’m glad I did it.