Bob’s Amtrak Adventures

Seattle to San Luis Obispo via the Coast Starlight, 29 hours 29 minutes

I am about to embark on the most extensive train trip I’ve ever done. It will take me to San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, Rochester NY, Chicago, Denver, Sacramento and then home to Seattle. My wife Mary will meet me by jet in New Orleans and New York City, and we will travel together by train to Rochester and Chicago.

Mary takes me to the King Street Station in Seattle where my journey begins. I pull the luggage out of the trunk and she says “Hey, there’s the 13 Coins. Do you have enough time for breakfast?” That is a great idea and I do have time, so we put the luggage back in the car and head inside. 13 Coins is old school, serving classic fare since 1967 in booths with high, tufted leather backrests. The place feels like a piece of history, even though they relocated here in 2018. Coming here just might be a new train tradition!

I go inside the station, get my seating assignment and look around the place while waiting for the boarding announcement. Looking up, I see the beautiful Beaux Arts style plasterwork ceiling. The station is diminutive compared to Chicago’s Union Station, but it is a gem. It was built in the early 1900s by James Hill to serve his Great Northern and Northern Pacific railways. It has a 12-story brick clock tower that reminds me of the bell tower at St Mark’s Square in Venice. As it turns out, they were both built around the same time. The 17th century version in Venice collapsed in 1902 and was rebuilt ten years later.

I’m on the train and grateful that my oversize luggage was not an issue. I am allowed two pieces of luggage stored below that are 14″ x 22″ x 28″, and two smaller carryon bags that are 14″ x 11″ x 7″. I’m pushing the outer limits on my carryon bags. Although the larger bags are stored down below, they are still very accessible throughout the trip. I have lots of bedding in the bigger bags that will come in handy tonight. My first task is to get my seating space all set up so that everything I need is reachable. This has been a problem for me on past trips, so I’m trying an experiment: I brought 8″ lengths of 14 gauge insulated wire that can be fashioned into hooks, allowing me to hang up my coat and easily reach my personal hygiene stuff. I also made a holder that allows my iPad, Kindle and phone to rest against the window, making them very easy to reach. So far, I’m pleased with the results of the experiment!

I head to the Siteseer car to snag a table. The Siteseer car is Amtrak’s name for the observation car. Like most of Amtrak’s fleet, it is older, most likely built in the 1990s. Although it’s a bit tired looking it is a very pleasant place to spend the day. I grab the remaining free table and place an “OK to sit here” sign I made back home on the tabletop. I’ll be here for a while and don’t want to be a table hog. It’s also a good ice-breaker to get conversations started. My first is with two couples across the aisle. They are heading to Portland for a Brandy Carlisle concert. I mention how instrumental she was for helping Joni Mitchell get back into performing, and one of the women says “Oh, yeah, I saw Joni at The Gorge. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the audience.” It comes up in the conversation that her husband has a model railroad at home. It fills one room of their house, leaving just enough space for a guest bed. Spending a night there could be quite an experience! Her husband and I share travel stories, and he tells me of a trip to Berlin he took when he was in his early twenties. It was before the Berlin wall came down, and he traveled by rail through occupied Eastern Germany to get there. I mention that I will be in Berlin in May. He says “Don’t miss the Checkpoint Charlie museum. It’s kind of touristy but still fascinating.” Our conversation dies down after they get into a game of cards. A man comes into the Siteseer car, eyes my “Welcome” sign, and sits down. He is a NICU nurse in Atlanta, but is taking some time off from work to explore the country. He managed to be in Seattle during a brief period of sunny weather and said that he loved the city, taking the car ferry to Bainbridge Island and the foot ferry to West Seattle. He says “Imagine living somewhere that you can go to the beach all the time and have little campfires on the sand!” Hmmm, I need to up my game. I’ve lived here my whole life and think I’ve only had a fire on the beach maybe once. His next destination is LA, where he plans to rent a car and drive to San Diego to see an old friend.

I enjoy a chicken sandwich for lunch and pesto pasta for dinner, then head back to my seat for the evening. The train is nearly full, but I still have an empty seat next to me. At 10pm, though, a couple get on the train and she is assigned the seat next to me. They are disappointed that they can’t sit together. After several minutes of unsuccessful negotiations with other travelers to swap seats, they head to the Siteseer car where they can sleep next to each other. Looks like I dodged a bullet! My dreams that night involve earthquakes. I can’t say for sure, but my guess is the swaying and shaking of the train worked their way into my brain. Even so, it was a fairly restful night. In the morning, I’m happy to still have an empty seat next to me. The amount of stuff I have around me would make it way too crowded if I had to share. Time for another packing tweak. In the future I will separate my unrefrigerated food into day-packets, leaving the bulk of the nuts, dates and bread in the downstairs luggage. That will help considerably.

After a breakfast of nuts, dates, cheese, buttered bread and an apple, I head back to the Siteseer car. I get myself situated, put out my “OK to sit here” sign and then notice the couple across the aisle have done the same thing. I laugh and tell them I like their sign, and he says “Yeah, we saw yours yesterday. We’re copycats.” The first guests at my table are two women in their mid-seventies who have known each other since second grade. They are on their way to the Monterey Jazz Festival. One of them has traveled extensively using RoadScholar.org. Her most recent adventure was a boat trip down the Danube river with stops in Prague, Vienna and Budapest. I need to check that organization out. The other woman asks me where I’m going on my train trip. I tell her and she says “Oh, you have to talk with Tom! I’ll go find him.” She comes back with Tom in tow, offers him her seat and sits across the aisle. Tom is a veteran of the rails, going on wanderlust journeys for the past twenty five years. When he is home in Chicago he works in his garden, complete with a G-scale model train running throughout his property. He asks me where I’m going on this trip. I tell him and he says “That is similar to mine. I went from Chicago to Seattle. When I get to LA I’ll spend the night and then head East to New Orleans, then New York City, Boston, and then home to Chicago.” Like me, he is doing it all sleeping in a coach seat. I say to him “I’m seventy. Do you mind me asking how old you are?” “Eighty seven” He says. Wow. I guess I won’t age out of this any time soon.

Tom says goodbye and heads back to his seat. Thirty seconds later, Bill, the NICU nurse, sits down and we have a pleasant conversation about his first experience with train travel. He tells me he had breakfast earlier that morning in the dining car and was seated with a woman in her twenties who was a big fan of rail travel. They had a free-flowing discussion for nearly two hours, and then she pulled out her Amtrak credit card and paid for her meal. He says “I’m not normally the kind of person to start up conversations with people I don’t know, but there is something very welcoming about this kind of travel. I really like Train Culture.” Train Culture. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Bill goes back to his Roomette for a nap. Looking out the window, I soak up the beautiful scenery as the train approaches San Luis Obispo.

San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles via the Pacific Surfliner, 5 hours 32 minutes

I walk two blocks from the station to the San Luis Obispo Hostel. How convenient! I also have the added convenience of a private room and a freezer where I can give my freezer gel packs and food a boost of cold. I won’t have access to a freezer again for over sixty hours, so this re-chilling session is important. After a light home-made dinner in the hostel’s kitchen, I join the conversation that other guests are having in the living room. Two women from France checked in at the same time I did and are in the living room. They traveled by Amtrak across the country and will be on the same Surfliner I’m taking tomorrow morning. They are going all the way to San Diego, but after a week will backtrack to Los Angeles and then take the Sunset Limited to New Orleans. It’s getting late and the Surfliner leaves at 6:15am. I say my goodbyes and head to bed.

My alarm is set for 5am but I awake naturally at 4am. I use this bonus hour to repack so that the bulk of the unrefrigerated food is in the big luggage suitcase, and my backpack only contains what I need for the day. After a quiet breakfast I restock my cooler with frozen food, tiptoe out the front door and head to the station. I recognize a man sitting on a bench as someone who was in a coach seat on the Coast Starlight from Seattle. “Looks like we have similar plans” I say. “Are you going to Los Angeles?” “No” He says. “I’m taking the Surfliner all the way to San Diego. After that I’ll head back to LA and then take the Texas Eagle back home.” He is traveling for the same reason I am. Amtrak’s Rail Pass, which is normally $500, had a sale in January offering it for only $250. With the Rail Pass, you get ten on-off travel segments. It is possible to go from Seattle to New York City using only two segments, so a tremendous amount of travel can be done for a very cheep price. The catch, however, is that if you break up your journey with stops to other towns and cities along the way, you will use up more of your Rail Pass. Every time you get off the train, you burn a segment. The travel segments must all be used within a thirty day period. The Rail Pass only applies to Coach travel, which means you will be sleeping with the masses in a coach seat. Ninety percent of the time I have had the luxury of a vacant seat next to me at night, but it is not guaranteed. If you are traveling with a friend and the tickets were purchased together, expect to get cozy with them, because your seat assignments will be together.

I board the Surfliner and find a forward-facing seat on the water side of the train. The views on this route are stunning, with a wonderful contrast of the sun-lit waves crashing on the beach and the hazy silhouette of the Channel Islands in the distance. My only wish is that the train windows were cleaned more frequently. This is not a tourist train, though. It is a workhorse commuter that connects the smaller communities along the coast that are situated North and South of Los Angeles. The Pacific Surfliner trains are newer than most of the Amtrak fleet, with the current stock being put into service after 2018. Being a local commuter, they are co-owned by CalTrans.

The train pulls in to LA’s Union Station. It’s Noon, and the Sunset Limited doesn’t leave for New Orleans until 10pm. I take the D-Line subway to a UPS location that will store my luggage for a reasonable fee, freeing me to explore the city. There is an app called Bounce that will find, reserve and set up payment for baggage storage throughout the world. From UPS I take the D-Line to Korea Town and have a wonderful Bibimbap lunch and glass of milky-white rice wine. Backtracking on the D-Line, I head to the older part of downtown and visit the Angel’s Flight funicular. My rail pass doesn’t work on this train, but my LA Metro TAP card does. I take a ride up, then down, and go across the street to the Grand Central Market. My plan is to get take-out dinner for tonight, but my brain is fried and my body aches. Instead, I leave the market, retrieve my luggage, and then throw in the towel and take a Waymo driverless taxi back to the station. I loved the ride so much, I gave nobody a big tip!