Report On Our Big Adventure—Entry #2

Before continuing my report I wanted to mention a few things. Some of the photos are not as good as I would have liked but there were several factors working against us. The train windows were dirty. We also got quite a bit of reflection on the glass at times. The train was moving at various speeds and unless pictures were taken looking forward of backward there tended to be a great deal of blurring. Now on to more of the report.

We were quite tired on Monday evening and it wasn’t long after it became dark as we traveled toward Minneapolis-St. Paul that we settled back and tried to sleep. The lights on the train were turned down and quiet time was requested—cells phones turned to vibrate, all electronic gadgets to be use with earphones, etc. Even station stops were no longer announced over the P.A. The conductor or attendant was responsible for waking those scheduled to disembark—a destination tag was displayed under the seat number. I think I slept through some of the station stops entirely. I did wake up when we pulled into the Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN station around 10:30 P.M. We were there for 45 minutes or so but I went back to sleep and was not aware of us leaving or stopping at the next several stations.

Sleeping on the train in Coach Class wasn’t too bad. The seats reclined some and we were given a small pillow to use. Most of the time when I did awaken it was because I was getting a stiff neck from the position I was in and I would have to reposition myself. When I did awaken early Tuesday morning it was difficult to know where we were. It was pretty easy to observe that we were in an area where Winter was still with us. The photos below (although with some reflection) were taken after daylight between Rugby and Minot, ND. These were taken from the observation car and I think there was more reflection there than in our own car.



Around 11:00 A.M. we stopped at Williston, ND. This has a bit of a special interest to us in that it was the home town of Ardis who was the bridesmaid at our wedding. I took this photo of an old locomotive that sits across from the Amtrak station. On the return trip I stepped off the train and snapped the picture of the station.


Shortly after leaving Williston, ND we crossed into Montana and Mountain Daylight Time zone. Here are a couple of pictures taken in Eastern Montana.


Going across Montana I saw quite a number of antelope but never had my camera ready when I saw them. The top photo below was taken West of Malta, MT and East of Havre, MT. In was in this area that we pulled into a siding to await the passing of the East bound Empire Builder, as seen in the bottom picture.

In my next entry I’ll cover our approach to and our trip through Glacier Park.