Los Angeles to New Orleans via the #2 Sunset Limited, 44 hours 40 minutes
I retrieve my luggage from the back seat of the Waymo and head into Union Station. I have some time to kill, so I decide to check out their Metropolitan Lounge. Amtrak’s lounges are primarily for travelers in sleeping cars, but it is possible to gain access with a lounge pass. Using the Amtrak app, a pass can be purchased using fifteen hundred points, which is worth approximately thirty-seven dollars. There is no signage leading to the Metropolitan Lounge, but I learn it can be reached using an elevator that is off in the corner of the hall. Upstairs, the elevator opens to a room with a locked door and a buzzer. I press it, and after several minutes the door unlocks and I walk up to the front desk. The lady at the front desk greets me with “You can’t bring that luggage on the train. You need to check it.” I explain that the two main pieces that are strapped together will detach, and both meet Amtrak’s carry-on luggage dimension requirements. She says “I am telling you, you can’t bring them on the train.” and then moves on to someone else. I walk over to a luggage dimension rack and start putting my Amtrak cooler in it to show that it will fit, but she yells at me “Don’t do that! That is my job! I’m calling some people and they are going to come up here and talk to you!” I’m thinking to myself “I’m spending thirty-seven bucks for this?” I tell her I’ve changed my mind and I don’t want to use the lounge. As I leave, she yells “I’m still calling people on you!” I take the elevator downstairs, and sure enough, ‘the people’ are walking toward me saying “You need to check your bags.” I explain again that they meet Amtrak’s requirements for carry-on and that I’ve taken them on many trains. She says “Are you refusing to check your bags? Because if you are, I can deny you access to the train.” I resist some more by saying “If you give me a logical explanation of why I need to check my Amtrak-approved carry-ons, I will do it, but not until then.” This brings a higher level of security, but also a higher level of service and competence. She listens to my explanation of the problem and walks me over to a luggage dimension rack. I put my luggage in, showing that it fits, and she says “Yeah, you’re fine” and walks away. I head back to the main floor lounge, trying to calm down by saying to myself “If nothing goes wrong it’s not an adventure. If nothing goes wrong it’s not an adventure.”
Boarding for the Sunset Limited starts a full hour before departure. Perhaps it is because there are so many passengers boarding. This place is crawling with people! A man my age is trying to thread his e-bike through the crowd. After standing with the throng for half an hour I finally get my chance to board. I easily find a place for my luggage (Take that, Metro Lounge Lady) and head to my seat. As expected, I have a seat mate. My surprise and disappointment, though, is that he is also taking the full trip to New Orleans. Maybe it’s due to the PTSD from my lounge experience, but I don’t think I can hack two nights sleeping upright in a chair. Checking the app, I discover that one Roomette is available at a price of $857. That’s a lot of money, but I do have enough Amtrak points to pay for it. I get up from my seat and walk from train to train, looking for the conductor to ask about the logistics of moving me and my luggage from Coach to a Roomette while the train is moving. But then, walking through the Sightseer car, I see my salvation. A grouping of three seats is calling my name. I run to my luggage and pull my foam topper pads and blanket from the suitcase. Then, I hurry back to the Sightseer car and settle in for the night. These seats are not new to me, but my previous sleeps were fitful because in the Sightseer Amtrak keeps the lights on all night. This time, though, I am prepared because I packed a blackout sleep mask. I wake up to a sunrise over the Sonora desert. My sleep is divine and I still have my Amtrak points! I am back on track and happy to be here.
I move to a table, put out my ‘OK to sit here sign’ and have breakfast. Nobody takes up the offer but I have a good conversation with the couple across the aisle. They are taking advantage of the Rail Pass sale to visit relatives in North Carolina. We talk about life before retirement and he tells me he was in law enforcement. They are both in their mid eighties and have taken numerous Amtrak journeys. The teenagers behind them are playing rap music. Unperturbed, the man is tapping out the beat with his fingers on the table while his wife engages the teenagers in friendly conversation. He and his wife are veterans of Amtrak travel and apparently have learned what I am still learning. When riding Amtrak, go with the flow.
The scenery across Arizona and New Mexico does not excite me, so I get plenty of reading done with nap breaks in between. As we approach El Paso, the conductor announces “El Paso is a short fresh air and smoke break. If you go outside, stay close. If you are hungry, Miss Juanita is outside near the rear car.” Juanita has been serving burritos to Amtrak passengers at El Paso Station for over ten years. I stand in line, pay my three dollars for a bean, potato and pepper burrito and head back to my table.
At 4PM I stake out my three-seat ‘bedroom suite’ to ensure a good night’s sleep. There was no need for it. This Amtrak hack is either not well known or not appreciated, with several three-seat suites vacant the whole night. I appreciate it, though, and have an excellent, dream-filled sleep. I wake at 5AM when the train stops in San Antonio. This is where the Texas Eagle cars at the rear of the train cleave off and get a different engine. They will go north to Chicago, while the Sunset Limited will continue east to New Orleans. I nod to Bryan, who I met briefly yesterday. We talk of our past work lives and our respawning as retired people. He spent many years as a news photographer and is well-known in the industry. This is his first Amtrak trip, and he is using his photography and writing skills to document the journey. We talk about politics, detective novels and then the weather as several flashes of light, followed by thunder, enter the Sightseer car. A man sitting behind me says “The forecast is for quarter inch hail from here to Houston.” I turn around and recognize him as the man with the e-bike. I find out that Mike is a production engineer and his job involves traveling from his home base in Houston to both Los Angeles and Florence, Italy. He is old enough to be retired but loves what he does, and he has crafted his life so that his work feels like a vacation. “I take my e-bike to LA because it gives me the freedom to explore. I can bring it on the Metro, and that opens the door to lots of places.” He has another e-bike that lives in Florence. When work takes him to Italy he has the same freedom to explore there.
The train pulls in to Houston. One hundred passengers including Mike get off and one hundred new ones get on. Thirty-two of them head straight to the Sightseer car. They are an extended family going to a casino in Lake Charles LA. They bring lots of food and drinks, and the Sightseer car takes on a party atmosphere. One of the women walks up to me and says “Would you like some lunch?” “No thanks, I just ate.” I say. She says “How about a cookie?” A raffle for gag prizes is next on their agenda, and I get the honor of drawing the first winner’s name out of the hat.
My ‘OK to sit here’ sign is out, and I get a taker. Michelle recently retired from special education and is using a Rail Pass she received as a retirement gift. She plans to take six months off and then start her second career as an environmental educator. Our conversation drifts away from train travel to environmental issues and politics, and then to disparity of income, torches and pitchforks… The air conditioner is over-performing, so Michelle heads back to her assigned seat to warm up. I settle in for another nap, lulled by the sound of conversations and of dominos clacking on the table tops.
For all but the first five minutes, the Sightseer car has been my only home on this forty-four hour trip. It’s time, though, to say goodbye because we will soon be pulling in to New Orleans station. Long-time friends who are staying here for the month will be picking me up. I can’t wait to see them and then take a hot shower! At the beginning of this Sunset Limited journey I had my doubts, but this trip, including you, Metro Lounge Lady, have been a wonderful experience.
New Orleans to New York City via the #20 Crescent, 32 hours 32 minutes
My friends, John and Michele, greet me at the station and help me load my luggage into their car. They live in Seattle too, but drove down here for a two-month stay. John grew up in Baton Rouge. I’m spending the night with them because I don’t have access to my AirBnB until tomorrow. The first thing they tell me upon entering their rented home is that there is a Boil Water advisory. One of the major domestic water lines in the city sprung a leak, causing the internal water pressure to drop below 20 pounds per square inch. This can allow bacteria in the ground water to enter the pipe. This is not the city’s first ‘Boil Water Advisory’ rodeo. There have been 12 advisories over the past fourteen months. The next morning, we take a stroll through Audubon Park, a 350 acre park created in 1871. The land was used during the French and Spanish colonial eras for a plantation, and this use continued under American control throughout the Civil War.
John and Michele drop me off in the Marigny district, where Mary and I will be staying. Looking around, I find it interesting that the neighborhood and street names in this area of town are all mostly French (Marigny, Dauphine, Touro) and yet the architecture, with its ornate ironwork balconies and private courtyards, is Spanish. Fires in 1788 and 1794 decimated the French houses, and the Spanish Empire, who had gained control of the city through the 1763 Treaty of Paris, rebuilt the city in their image. The Spanish changed the street names, too, but the deeply rooted French Creole occupants weren’t happy about it. When France regained control of New Orleans with the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1800, the French names came back.
Mary and her sister Ann arrive by jet later that evening. Over the course of the next couple of days we enjoy a free outdoor concert at the Jazz Museum, take the St Claude streetcar to the city’s amazing World War II museum and visit The Historic New Orleans Collection. The HNOC has exhibits covering Louisiana’s fragile coastal environment, beautiful art depicting life in the French Quarter before it was a tourist spot and a moving exhibit called ‘The Trail They Blazed’ which depicts the Civil Rights movement in New Orleans. After visiting the HNOC, we have an outdoor dinner with John, Michele, and Peter, who we reconnected with here last year.
I wake up early on my final day and get ready for the train, restocking my cooler with frozen food, frozen gel packs and refrigerated salad fixings. I go outside into the cool air just as the sun begins to rise and head for the St Claude street car stop. It is a short walk from where we are staying, and it goes all the way to the Amtrak station. Within the next two hours I will be on the rails again.
I board the Amtrak #20 Crescent, settle into my seat and then polish off a simple breakfast of buttered bread, dates and an apple. A family of six is behind me on both sides of the aisle. Two of the kids are getting rambunctious and accidentally kick the seat-back in front of them. The woman in the seat in front turns around to look at them, and the boy sincerely says “I’m sorry, are we aggravating you?” From his accent I can tell he is from the South, so I wonder if ‘aggravate’ is used more casually here.
I head to the Cafe car to eat my lunch. I’ve read that it is reserved for paying customers, so I buy a diet Coke. Looking around me, though, I see plenty of people with non-Amtrak food, so I’m not worried about it. My ‘OK to sit here’ sign is lost in my luggage somewhere, but a man asks if he can join me. He was born in Finland, currently lives in Berlin, and is taking six weeks to tour the United States, mostly by train. He bought two $250 rail passes and has almost used up his first one. I take a chance and mention that I’m so unhappy with what is happening in our country right now. He says he has friends throughout the country that he really wants to see, but if they weren’t here he probably would vacation somewhere else. I head back to my seat for a nap.
While preparing dinner, I find my ‘OK to sit here’ sign and head to the cafe car to eat my meal. A woman with two children in tow asks if they can join me. One of the kids is the one who said ‘are we aggravating you’ to the woman in front of them. The boy asks me if I want to join them in a game of Trouble. Trouble is basically a travel version of the board game Sorry, with a self-contained pair of dice and places for the player’s board pieces to rest so they don’t slide off when the train turns. He wins the game handily and gracefully. I think the word ‘aggravate’ probably isn’t typically used in casual conversation. He is just very bright. I head back to my seat to find out that I have a neighbor. He is also going to New York City, so sleeping tonight might be a challenge.
I wake the next morning with a sore neck and butt. At least I think I woke up; maybe I didn’t sleep. My body does not like overnighting in a chair. I’m not sure if it’s Spring Break, the half-price rail pass or just a general increase in Amtrak ridership, but on every overnight train this trip it has been filled to capacity. The Superliner trains west of Chicago have Sightseer cars offering a place to relax and, if I play my cards right, lay down for a good night’s sleep. The Viewliner trains that serve the East Coast are much more restrictive, with smaller Cafe cars that close at night. I enjoy using their Cafe car, ordering the occasional drink or snack to ‘buy’ my table and get a break from the confines of Coach, but this does not help me when I need it the most. If I plan another marathon trip (Ooh, I said if not when) it may involve ponying up for the occasional Viewliner Roomette.
One thing that has been working beautifully, though, is food. I’m loving my cheese, dates and home-made buttered bread for breakfast, chicken salad with red peppers, tomato and hazelnuts for lunch and a pesto pasta salad for dinner. Round this out with fruit and chocolate from my backpack and the occasional Cafe coffee and beer and I am a happy camper.
I spend most of the final day on the train in the Cafe car. A woman with an eight month old baby joins me at the table. The topic of vacations comes up and she shares that she and her husband will be taking a tour of Civil Rights landmarks in the South during the month of May. I mention the exhibit at The Historic New Orleans Collection, ‘The Trail They Blazed’. She is pleased to see that it will still be there when they are in the city. An hour outside of New York, the Cafe car closes and I reluctantly head back to my seat. The conversation with my seat mate, though, is very interesting. With his white goatee and mustache, there is a slight resemblance to Colonel Sanders. The similarities end there, though. He is a retired professor of literature. We discuss books, music and politics up until the time that the train pulls into New York City.
