Greetings from Seattle

We finished our journey on the Empire Builder earlier this afternoon and have arrived safely in Seattle.  It was a good experience overall - lots of interesting scenery and people along the way.

The trip began with us leaving a little bit late because of some baggage issue but we were soon on our way north.  The train went right by Susie's street in Deerfield - I got a couple pictures of the road.  Contrary to what Dad said earlier, the train did not have a scheduled stop in Northbrook, so it's a good thing we didn't try to get on there instead...  We were stuck behind a commuter train for a good way out of Illinois, so that slowed things down a bit.

Things got a lot slower outside of Red Wing, MN.  We were waiting on a siding for a freight train to pass us the other direction when that freight train then had to make an unscheduled stop in the town, on the only track going through.  It seems there were some people trying to illegally ride that train and the police had to find them.  That put us a couple hours behind, and when we did finally get moving again, we were stuck behind a different freight train all the way to Western Montana.  We ended up falling back about 6 hours behind schedule at the worst point, though we caught up a couple hours at the end of the trip.  Massive flooding in North Dakota also slowed us down quite a bit.  There is still a lot of damage across the region from all of that flooding a couple months ago.

Because we were behind, it was the middle of the night when we went through Glacier National Park, so we didn't get to see any of that scenery, which was a shame.  The prettiest part of the trip that we did get to see was the trip through the Cascades, right at the end.  It reminded me a lot of going through the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the last trip.

There was no one on the train that was truly annoying at all.  Our sleeping car attendant was Stan.  He was very good.  Patty was the dining car person - she ran a pretty tight ship (train).  We ate meals with all sorts of people, most who were just fine.  There was one woman we ate with the first night that was really strange and the most painfully slow eater.  We purposely picked a later time to eat dinner the next night so we wouldn't be with her again and then when our time was called, she was going to eat as well, so we waited a couple minutes to avoid her.

We did the wine and cheese tasting yesterday afternoon.  The cheeses were good.  I'm not a wine person, so I didn't really care for those.  But I did win a free bottle of wine because I knew the answer to a trivia question.  Go me!  Originally a won a bottle of the Airfield wine (a white wine), but someone else who won a different bottle asked to trade so I ended up with Pacific Rim, another white wine that is actually a German wine.   Of the 4 I tasted, it was the one I like best, but like is a strong word to use.  We also got 2 small bottles of champagne when we left Chicago for some reason, so there was no shortage of alcohol.  We had more fun using the champagne bottle as a flower vase than drinking it.  Dad picked some weeds at one of the stops and we put them in the bottle to make our room more sophisticated.

We haven't killed each other yet, so all is well.  I am currently way in the lead in both cribbage and Uno games won.  I am sure this trend will continue when we resume playing on Monday.

This afternoon in Seattle we walked around a lot.  We went to Pike Place Market and wandered around there.  It was really crowded and kind of overwhelming.  They had lots of really pretty flowers at cheapo prices and good looking produce.  We then walked along the water for a long while and had dinner at a seafood place.  Not eating seafood, I had a mediocre burger.  I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that the non-seafood stuff wasn't that good at a seafood place.

I'm looking forward to sleeping in a real bed tonight.  Two nights on the rock hard slab they call a bed on the train has not been good for my back or neck...