When the cat’s away, the mice will play.
Well, when this Kat’s away, she — OK, I — can’t be concerned with mice (or any other rodents, for that matter), unless they directly impact my travels; simply put, there’s just too much else going on. When I’m on the road, or in the air, or on the rails, I always wind up with a story to tell (rarely rodent-centric), and this is where I’m going to tell those stories — in a new weekly travel column for mountolivetribune.com.
Now I’m not going to bill myself as a world traveler who’s backpacked through Europe, scaled Mount Everest or sand-surfed the dunes of the Sahara. My travels are more modest, although they do span all 50 states and a whole lotta years, and one thing I’ve learned is that travel seems to be of interest to almost everyone, regardless of travel status. In other words, travelers love to hear other travelers’ tales, and homebodies like to live vicariously through their traveling friends. So, I’ve launched this column for you — the travelers and the homebodies, alike — in hopes of sharing helpful information, satisfying curiosity, and providing entertainment (I’m not above sharing my on-the-road goof-ups, of which there are many, or those of my husband and traveling companion, Steve, of which there are many more.)
My first few columns will focus on train travel since Steve and I recently completed a cross-country Amtrak trip that started from the depot in Selma (not too far from our home in Johnston County) and took us first to Boston (via Washington D.C.) and then to Phoenix (via New Orleans). From Phoenix, we took a rental car to Laughlin, Nevada, and on to Las Vegas. From Las Vegas, a three-hour shuttlebus ride took us to Kingman, Arizona, where we resumed our rail journey back home via Chicago and New York. We were gone a total of 26 days, and in case you’re wondering why we planned such a wonky vacation schedule, we didn’t: This was actually a work trip for Steve (I tagged along, as always), and we managed to add in bits and pieces of vacationing along the way.
We’d been curious about train travel and had tossed around the idea of giving it a try for quite some time. Steve went online to research our options and learned about Amtrak’s Rail Pass. It costs $499 and allows you ten segments of rail travel over the course of 30 days. That looked like a great deal, and it looked even better when he caught the pass on sale for $299.
Here’s the thing: parts of our journey would require overnighters on the train, and the Rail Pass can only be used for coach seats. We knew sleeping in coach would be a challenge, but we’re always up for adventure (that’s a lie; Steve is never up for adventure), and at $299 apiece, the price was right, so we went for it.
Prior to our trip, we talked with several friends and family members who’d taken the train from Selma to D.C. (a five- to six-hour ride); they all gave it rave reviews. In a future column, I’ll let you know how a relatively short train trip compares with a much longer one.
Another part of our pre-trip preparation included watching YouTube videos and reading online reviews about train travel, and one issue repeatedly mentioned by passengers was the frequency with which trains run behind schedule. Watch for an upcoming column in which I’ll let you know if this jibed with our experience.
We also did some strategizing on the best way to pack for the trip, knowing we’d be gone three weeks but that we would be doing a lot of shuffling — from car to depot to train to hotel to…well, you get the idea — and we’d be on the go a lot, so we wanted to keep the packing to a minimum. In a future column, I will share with you the dumbest thing we did with regard to packing. Heck, it may have been the dumbest thing anyone has ever done. You won’t want to miss that one.
As a matter of fact, I’ll make you a deal. Meet me back here next week, and I’ll start with that. I’ll start with the one about dumb packing. And we’ll see where the journey takes us from there.
