This was the start of the longest day of the trip: an early get up, followed by a long day on the train, followed by a long drive to Alton, IL. It started off well. Sleeping in two empty seats was more comfortable, as I mentioned in Day 2, but I was still pretty tired from two nights of less sleep.
Amtrak started calling over the loudspeaker for breakfast and cafe announcements at 7:30am, so that’s when I gave up on the sleeping idea. Today was doubly hard to continue sleeping because we also paused in Minot, ND, for a 25 minute fueling stop. The cafe was closed for some reason, the depot didn’t have a coffee shack, so I gave my heating coil a try.
It worked rather well. I didn’t keep track of how long it took to get the water to hot, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. Ally continued to sleep, she can sleep through anything, while I enjoyed a couple cups of coffee, then researched what the difference between getting a sleeper car vs coach seats.
If you’re curious it cost me less than $500 for both Ally and I round trip, a sleeper car is $1200 and thats one way, but includes meals (a savings of around $250 for two people x 8 meals). Other perks include being able to lay flat to sleep, access to a shower, and the equivalent of a large closet as a private room.
While Ally continued to sleep I had a breakfast of pepperoni sticks and a pop tart, cleaned up my coffee cup, and settled down to watch North Dakota roll by the window. One of the aspects of train travel I do enjoy is the changing scenery. There is always something to look at, small towns to wonder about, and the cellphone reception has been pretty steady to find the answers to any question that might pop into my mind. I have an app on my phone, maps.me, that doesn’t require data to show your location. Weirdly enough it doesn’t work in tunnels. I had an opportunity to test that aspect when we travelled through a long tunnel in western Washington.
Montana’s grasslands had turned into hay and wheat fields in North Dakota overnight, with the occasional cornfield starting to appear. I’ve learned something with my multiple trips across the United States this summer. The United States grows a massive amount of corn.
Originally we were suppose to arrive in Chicago by 5:00pm on Tuesday, but with all the delays we had experienced even before the train got to Portland we were up to eleven hours behind our scheduled 5pm arrival time. So I was time to start working on modifying my rent a car reservation.
…but the Union Station Avis closes at 8:00pm and doesn’t open until 7:00am. Then again they didn’t have any available cars for the 25th, so the fact that they weren’t open really didn’t matter. I would have thought “my car” would still be sitting there unrented, but thats a philosophical question I suppose.
The nearest Avis location in Chicago that did have a car was the Midway Airport location eight miles away. Luckily, I’m an Uber veteran so getting there shouldn’t be a issue.
… hopefully I’m not much later than 1:10am, because that location closes at 2:00am.
Then I looked up my hotel in Alton, IL, north of St. Louis. Great… non-refundable. But after almost three days on the train I’m more than willing to pay $80 for four hours of a big flat bed and a hot shower.
The good news is that we’ll be back on schedule by the time we get to Ashland, KY, Wednesday night.
The really good news is that I’m learning so that when Shar and I do something similar I’ll be much more flexible in my planning the first day/night of arrival. i.e. AirBnB the first night, Uber around the first day/night, then have a rent a car set up, etc.
Neither Ally or I are excited about a third night on the train though.
Well, I’ve heard it said that the only thing thats constant is change. The outlook of getting to the Chicago Avis by 2:00am didn’t look good, so I started looking at alternatives. I found an Avis in La Crosse, WI, and called them. I got sent to voicemail, and left my contact information inquiring about available cars. A nice lady named Lisa returned my call confirming they did have something available. I jumped online and modified my reservation and confirmed with Lisa that it had gotten through. She also indicated she would wait until we got there. Lisa is my personal hero at the moment.
It would be an extra two hours of me driving, but I estimated that we would get into Alton almost three hours earlier than if we had waited until Chicago.
Then at 8:00pm I remembered we had to be back in Chicago eventually to catch our train to California. After a slight panic attack, I started researching options like dropping the car off on July 29th and then catching the leg of Amtrak that we had skipped, Ubering everywhere after that, etc. It wasn’t a great solution, costing around $200 more and the loss of two days, but it would have worked.
Then I researched one way fees for rent a cars. San Fransisco to LA was reported to be around $250, so I felt that was comparable. I relaxed and made a mental note to bring it up with Lisa when we got to La Crosse.
We pulled into La Crosse and had another bit of panic as we waited at the doors of the train for someone to let us out. The Avis place closed at 9:45pm, though Lisa said she would wait for us, and it was 9:32pm. I had just started running up the stairs, leaving Ally at the downstairs door, when I heard voices. So I ran back down the stairs, we got off the train, and I had ordered an Uber no more than two minutes later. Shay the Uber driver picked us up a couple minutes after that, and we beat 9:45pm at Avis by a good two minutes.
Unfortunately, Lisa couldn’t change the reservation to make Chicago the drop off point, but estimated $200 as the one way fee. Feeling much better about life, Ally and I loaded up our pretty grey/blue Ford Focus and headed south.
You gotta love cruise control and 70 MPH freeways. Ally stayed awake for awhile, digging on the radio with me, but was asleep by the time I refilled the gas tank. The freeway became familiar when I hit I-55, and I recognized several attractions from the first day of Shar and I’s Route 66 adventure. It was hard to believe that had only been two weeks earlier.
Ally and I left the freeway just as dawn was starting to break, and pulled into the Super 8 in Alton, IL, right at 6:00pm. I had done 440 miles in just under seven hours, hadn’t slept in 20 hours, and hadn’t had a shower in three days. Check out was five hours away, so I set an alarm for 10:20am, took a quick shower, and passed out. Someone knocked on the door just after I had crawled into bed. I yelled “No Thank you!” thinking it was housekeeping, and was asleep again before my head hit the pillow.
Comments
Post a Comment