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Published: September 11th 2019
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On Tuesday, we woke up approaching Minneapolis-St Paul after a better night's sleep to clouds and rain. The St Paul stop was 20 minutes, so we stepped out to stretch our legs into a really nice, covered outdoor station. It's apparent they have lots of material to make red brick nearby-most of the buildings are made of it.
After St Paul, the train follows the Mississippi River for 2 1/2 hours through some beautiful territory with lots of trees, mostly deciduous. It's clear we've left the plains behind. The land is still pretty flat, and plenty of gentle hills continue. The most noteworthy difference is the abundance of pretty trees. The thing about the terrain that amazes me is how wet the low and flat land is, not all of it could be left by recent rains (none from Dorian remnants) but instead from proximity to the Mississippi. There's a whole lot of fields of cattails and algae-covered ponds in the lowlands.
The thing Natalie noticed, repeatedly, is the absence of graffiti. There has been some, but you have to look for it and it's not nearly as much as everywhere around Seattle. And then we began to approach
Chicago. That's more like Seattle.
Yesterday as we crossed Montana, we caught several glimpses of the Missouri River. It is impressive, too. This morning it finally dawned on me that I'm not thinking to take any photos, so we have a few of the Mississippi. (Don't think we've forgotten the Snake or the Columbia, though. It's just that the Mississippi and Missouri are such enormous factors in so much of US History.)
As we rode today we passed through many tiny towns, most looking to be not more than a couple streets deep, but I'm sure a few more than that. It was quite surprising how many nice houses were almost right next to the tracks, with no apparent barrier between yard and house.
Before I forget... When we boarded in Edmonds, there were no two seats together so we asked the attendant. He asked for a volunteer to move, and found one. We were seated together, but on the right side of the train, so we missed the good view of the Sound as we rode north to Everett. The thing we learned, though, is that people get on and off everywhere, and we can get
up and move to a newly unoccupied seat when someone finishes their train trip. We were able to do that, so we told the attendant and had very nice seats the rest of the way.
We arrived in Chicago just before 4:00 pm, a few minutes early. It was quite an experience just getting from the train to the station house, with several trains arriving and more trains boarding at nearly the same time. They could have used several traffic lights to manage the lines of people streaming through the station, all going different places at different speeds. At one point, after we were in the station, we just asked how to get where we needed to catch an uber.
Just so you know, there are 40 stops between Edmonds and Chicago!
Well, that all worked just fine, and we found our hotel, checked in, stretched out and decided to check out the river walk. We expected to find a place for dinner, but didn't, so we just walked back toward our hotel, assuming we'd find a nice place to eat. We did, and are now ready for a good night of sleep. In a bed.
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Jim Schettler
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It's fun following
So you made it safely to Chicago! Thanks for sharing, it looks all so peaceful.