Monday 23 June – we left York by train heading to London Kings Cross, on arrival we stored our luggage nearby (we are only traveling with hand luggage of 10kgs + a small ‘personal item’ Rucksack for under an airline seat). We then met a mate at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, had a quick wander around the Gallery, punctuated by a coffee stop.
We were joined by our friend’s wife, and all had dinner at Maison Francois, before heading to the Royal Institution for a lecture on ‘The Poisons of Agatha Christie” by the author Katherine Harkup. An fun, interesting lecture on how scientifically, and medically, accurate Agatha Christie was in the use of positions in her books, we didn’t know she trained as a pharmacist in World War I and retrained again in World War II
A night in a Premier Inn at Gatwick airport, not the closest one to the airport, but with really friendly staff and probably the best Premier Inn breakfast we have ever had!
Tuesday, checked in for our FlyNorse flight to JFK in New York, we asked for a price to upgrade to Premium, the price was good, so we splashed out, glad we did. It meant we were off the plane first and early in the queue for passport control, after a 30 mins delay sitting on the tarmac awaiting a gate. From our expected arrival time, to getting through passport control, two trains and a short walk to our hotel in central manhattan took us about 2 hours 30 mins – we were stunned, we expected to be hours in the airport, but no.
We then met a friend for dinner, for our long term readers, it’s one of the Americans we shared interesting bus and train rides with, in the Balkans, on our Interrail adventures back in early 2023, who has since moved to New York.
We had dinner at a Korean restaurant, lovely food, and we decided to try a Korean drink. when they delivered a bottle and 4 small shot glasses, we were worried that it was going to be potent stuff, thankfully it was only 13% proof.
Wednesday morning, we headed to the train station for a 6:40am train to Chicago, a 26 hour train, 30 stops including Baltimore, Washington DC, Charlottesville (Virginia), and various stops in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and finally Chicago in Illinois. The train was delayed at times for up to an 1hr 30mins because of the high temperature of the track, but made up most of that time overnight, so we only arrived in Chicago 30 mins late.
We had a good three hours for a very quick wander around Chicago, in 35 degree heat, to grab some lunch and fresh supplies for the next leg of our train journey, the 46 hr trip to Seattle on the ‘Empire Builder’ Amtrak train.
Chicago has a lot of impressive and iconic architecture, plus a nice river walk, even so it was damn hot !
The ‘Empire Builder’ is a double decker train, with half the train going to Portland and half going all the way to Seattle, XX miles as the crow flies. We spent a lot of time going through North Dakota, where there was a lot of nothing, wide open farm land with few towns. Into Montana, where the time changes again (our third USA time zone so far).
On the US railways freight trains have right of way, we saw many freight trains of 100 carriages, one of our fellow passengers was talking about freight trains up to 4 miles long.
Spotted a Coyote the side of the railway, but didn’t manage to get a photo. Also plenty of deer in the fields too. Not to mention a lot of abandoned vehicles, of all kinds.
The ticketing and seating is a very manual process on the trains, you can’t book a seat, once you have found one in the correct part of the train, (all the train is not going to the same destination) the conductor then sticks a piece of paper on the luggage rack above your head showing your destination, so he can let you know (or even wake you up) when approaching the station.
Slightly oddly the onboard cafe closes for it’s lunch break at lunch time, however there are no published opening times, you do get 15min notice announcement on the tannoy before it closes, that is if you can hear the tannoy, which is a little intermittent.
All in all, some of you may think 72 hrs on a couple of trains across America from New York to Seattle is crazy, but we enjoyed it. Seeing all the different scenery and landscapes, talking to some of our fellow passengers, just watching the world go by and plenty of time to write a more fuller blog than usual.
Saturday (after a short discussion, we agreed it must be Saturday) we have crossed another 2 time zones. After arriving in central Seattle by train, we got the tram out to the airport to meet our good friends from the Isle of Man, hire a car and start our road trip.
The airport was crazy busy as was the car hire depot, after having to run the gauntlet for do you want to buy extra insurance, a WiFi package, a tank of fuel – obviously the answer to all is No (we already have a separate car hire insurance policy, which includes ‘Supplementary Liability Insurance’. We then headed to the car park, the chap looked at the four of us and our luggage (not a load) and proclaimed that the proposed car was not big enough (we booked a Toyota Rav 4 or equivalent) and would we prefer a Jeep Grand Cherokee and obviously Yes pleaser this time.
We had about 1hr 30 mins to drive to our first stop in Cle Elum, we stayed in the Cle Elum Travellers Inn a classic American motel. Had few drinks and pizza in the local Brewery ‘Dru Bru’, a really good selection of tasty beers!
Travurple 