The Downside of our Trip: 37 Hours on a Train

The Downside of our Trip: 37 Hours on the Train

I’ve written about the things we enjoyed on our trip to Montana, which we had looked forward to for over a year. My husband especially was looking forward to the long train ride from South Bend, Indiana to Chicago and on to Glacier Park—through Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and finally Montana. I had never been to North Dakota, and Montana was new for him.

But I heard my husband mumble “never again” after the 30-hour train trip that turned into 37 hours.  We both tried to sleep in our seats (which were roomy and fairly new), but still it was hard sleeping sitting up, or laying heads on each other.

That night – after many delays and stops (there was a small tornado, leaving tree limbs on the tracks that workers had to remove, plus frequent waits for freight cars to pass), we were delighted when a head honcho of Amtrak apparently told our train personnel to offer all passengers in the coach cars two free pieces of pizza (sleeping car passengers get free meals anyway, or rather, it’s included in their overall cost). After all the waiting, the pizza was a sweet and appreciated surprise—and it was even a good and somewhat warm pizza!

Eventually, instead of arriving at our destination at the hour of 8 p.m., we got to our lodge in Montana about 3 a.m. Not much fun.

The bedrooms in the huge and ancient Lodge (circa 1913) were large enough—except for the bathrooms, where I had to hold the shower curtain for my husband to keep it and the water from billowing out. The sink was as tiny as the toy sink we have in our kids’ and grandkids’ playhouse.

Finally towards evening, we secured two tables for all of eight of us traveling together in the Observation car, and played our family’s silly but fun dice game, “Greedy.” We had some great laughs.

The worst rattling moments though on the final leg home was when we had to sit in the very first seats at the head of the train from Chicago to South Bend, on top of what Stuart says is the truck/boogie. It jiggled us enough to rock us off balance (certainly) and even in the seat, it was rough. The engineers were in a hurry too, sometimes going what felt like 80-85 mph.

You just have to expect unpleasantries when travelling anywhere, right?

We are so grateful, though, for this trip and the adventures we enjoyed, some great food and fun, especially our trip to the “Going to the Sun” road. As they say, trips like this make great memories, especially when travelling with family members you don’t see that often. And memorable happenings. And, we eventually caught up with our loss of sleep!

Have you had a trip experience to share?

I’d love to hear from what you like or don’t like!