Thursday 18th May
I was awoken during the night by some huge cracks of thunder, the likes of which I'd never heard before. Charlotte meanwhile was sound asleep and was completely oblivious when I asked her if she'd heard them the morning after. I managed to get back to sleep pretty easy and we were both well rested for a busy couple of days ahead. We freshened up before breakfast before packing things away and researching and finding that great quote from Jack Nicholson in The Shining that gave the clue for our next destination. It seemed pretty obvious to us what Portland we'd be going to but judging by a message I received from home, not all found it that easy. Anyway, we made our way to Chicago’s union station, which was a very convenient 10 minute stroll from our hostel. Despite the convenience, we were still lumbered with plenty of bags given at how long a journey we were undertaking. When we arrived at the station, we queued to check our luggage nice and early, which turned out to be a very good idea, as we were standing in the queue for a good half an hour despite there only being around 5 bookings in front of us. By the time we'd checked our bag, the queue was about twice the size and moving just as slow. With our backpacks, food bags and 3 litre bottle of water in tow, we headed back outside the station and back a few blocks to a highly recommended bakery we'd passed on the way from our hostel. When we entered through the door, it was more restaurant than bakery and the miserable lady tried to sit us down at a table. We informed her we were only there to pick something to takeaway with us and she stroppily pointed us in the direction of the carry out counter. The girl at the counter seemed to struggled with the concept of getting a sandwich to go but we eventually got there and headed back to the station with our BLTs tucked in a rather elaborate bag. We held off eating until we boarded the train, which turned out to be a mistake, as boarding was the most painful process we'd ever experienced. The elderly, overweight, families with kids and the Amish were all boarded first and there was only a handful of riff raff left to go. Eventually, we were allowed on and found an abundance of empty seats available to us. We were about 3 rows back from the nutter who had the worst cough we'd ever heard, the seats in front of the guy who loved the sound of his own voice and 2 rows in front of the crazy person who had to make exclamations about everything we passed. We just sat there and tucked into our sandwiched, which had gone cold but were still pretty tasty. We rattled out of Chicago at 14:15 on the dot and it was about an hour and a half until our first stop in the city of Milwaukee. From Milwaukee, we continued through the state of Wisconsin and continued to get our ear chewed off from the 2 guys exchanging their life stories behind us. We weren't part of the conversation but the whole carriage could hear the talk. Even earphones and ear plugs couldn't drown out their shouting at one another, so I eventually gave in and starting writing the blog to drown them out. Even when one of the guys got of at a town called Colombus, the other invited a Thai lady to sit next to him and then started talking to her for some reason. Thankfully, his was the next stop, so we wouldn't have to tolerate him for too long. With the man's departure came a much emptier carriage all round and we ended up with nobody behind us and only a couple of people across the aisle from us. The carriage got even sparser as we made stops at a place called La Crosse in Wisconsin and Winona, which was just across the border in Minnesota. The ride in and out of Winona was some of the best scenery we had seen from a train, or any window for that matter, on our travel. What we later found out to be the Mississippi River was flowing to one side of the train and seemed so still that it reflected the glorious sunset in its surface. We were also flanked by pine trees on either side, punctuated occasionally by small houses that had a perfect view across everything. At the risk of sounding stupid, we were really surprised to find out that it was the Mississippi next to us, as we'd been so close to its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico, miles and miles away in New Orleans. From Winona, the sun turned the horizon a deep red, which was hard to capture on camera, whilst on a moving train but Charlotte did manage to get a photo of me looking like I had a spinal injury. There were a couple more small stops before we reached what I'd call our first and, probably only, large city stop on the journey and that was Minneapolis/St.Paul. Unfortunately, we arrived in the twin cities quite late at night, so we couldn't make anything out through the darkness.
Friday 19th May
It wasn't a sound sleep for us on the train. Mainly thanks to the weird guy behind us who spends the whole night speaking to his phone, “how long to St.Cloud, Siri?”, “How long to Fargo, Siri?”. To our relief, he got off at a place called Grand Forks, North Dakota at about half 4, although he almost mucked that up. Despite the conductor giving him 10 minutes warning, he was still sat in his chair, having not moved, when we pulled into the station and needed the attendant to tell him that it was his stop again. With him gone, we were just left with the talkative guy ahead of us who had taken to coughing up large amounts of phlegm and spitting them into a napkin. Still, it was better than a Greyhound. We awoke about 7 to the vast plains of North Dakota, which offered very little scenery to appreciate but were still more watchable than what you see from a bus window. After a coffee, we sat for a short while in the viewing car and played a round of Mapominoes, with Charlotte emerging victorious. As there wasn't much to see, we retired to our seats and spent some time reading and napping. Whilst travelling through North Dakota, we passed through the pretty nondescript towns of Rugby, Minot, Stanley and Williston, which proved popular departure points for the Amish who were still on board. It was interesting to watch them get off, as they carried absolutely no luggage, seeming to just have the clothes on their back. If only Charlotte and I could have travelled like that! After Williston, we left North Dakota and entered the wide state of Montana, which was announced over the tannoy. The announcement was hard to understand but we did hear that we'd be travelling through Montana “all day” and we should “have (our) cameras at the ready”. It was typical that we'd not long left the viewing car and then that announcement came. We left it a couple of hours, seeing as the landscape was still very flat and very agricultural, before heading back into the viewing car. We played a game of Cribbage and a couple of games of Mapominoes at a table, before moving to a set of seats that were set to look directly out of the large windows. The move in to Montana led to some better sounding and more unusual place names, like Wolf Point, Glasgow, Malta and Havre. At Havre, we were joined by an elderly lady and an elderly man, who had shirts on that said they were rangers. We didn't think much of it until they started speaking to everyone in the viewing car over microphone and handing out maps of Montana and Glacier National Park. We spent the next 5 hours with them and a pretty full viewing car, being told about the Geology, geography and history of Montana, as well as doing a bit of wildlife spotting on the side. There wasn't a huge amount of wildlife to see, but we did catch glimpses of a white tailed and pronghorn deer and a fox. After the towns of Shelby, an oil town and Cut Back, we could start to see the blue shadow of the Rocky Mountains rising in the distance. That was really what everyone had been waiting for. The first peak we could make out was one called “The Chief”, which stood out sharp, like a point. When we passed Browning, the mountains were no longer just a smudge on the landscape and were looming large and we could clearly see the evidence of fresh snowfalls on their slopes. For the next couple of hours we wound our way through the Rocky Mountains and along the southern border of Glacier National Park. The views were incredible, although a couple of times we had to curse the sun for causing too much glare on the windows. By now, everyone was over the mountains and fully focused on catching a glimpse of an elusive bear. I'll claim now that I saw a large brown blob down a bank close to a road that I'm almost convinced was a Grizzly but I didn't want to shout out and look foolish and nobody else mentioned that they saw it. About a minute later, a couple of hands went up to say people had seen a black bear but it all went too quick for Charlotte and me; in fact, so quick, that even the rangers missed it, though at their age we weren't surprised. At just before half past 8, we had to leave and get ready for our reservation we'd made in the dining car. We waited for the call but it never came, so we headed down ourselves and were seated opposite 2 single travellers. We perused the menu but when it came to ordering, it was pretty much done for us by the waitress. They had very little food left, so we only really had a choice of a burger or chicken fillet if we wanted to leave the dining full up. Charlotte and I plumped for the chicken fillet, along with a beer each. We chatted with the other 2 people on our table over dinner, finding out they were both American, one travelling to Seattle to see family and the other travelling with her husband, who was ill and couldn't attend dinner, to Seattle via Portland in order to embark on a 14 night Alaskan cruise. The dinners weren't huge or delicious but they filled a hole. We all paid and went our separate ways, although we all headed in the same direction down the train, and wished each other a safe onward journey. When we got back to our seats, we spent a short while reading before turning in for an attempt for a good night sleep. It was made slightly easier this time as the carriage attendant had actually bothered to turn the lights off. At some time during the night, we left Montana, passed through the panhandle of Idaho and entered Washington state, which meant we were now back to being 8 hours behind the UK. Whilst we were sleeping, we stopped in the city of Spokane, where the train split, with half of it heading on to Seattle and half of it, including ourselves, heading on down to Portland, in the state of Oregon.
Saturday 20th May
With multiple disturbances it wasn't the best night sleep but we still managed to get some. We woke around 6 o'clock local time and were treated to some lovely scenery going past the window. For once we felt like we'd chosen the right side of the train to sit on. For the most part, we were running along the banks of the Columbia River, which was flanked by huge wind farms and had what seemed to be herons or storks flying up and down its waters in search for food. After the wind farms were large plots of land filled with grapevines and apple trees and the landscape started to feel a bit reminiscent of New Zealand. The nostalgia didn't last long though as the remainder of the trip was thick with pine trees on either banks of the river. Our final stop before arriving in Portland was the town of Vancouver, Washington, which, despite being in a different state than Portland, is actually considered a suburb of the city. We pulled in to a surprisingly industrial scene at Portland, which we hadn't really been expecting. Once off the train, we picked up our bags and started our walk to the hostel. They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but we took an instant dislike to the city. There were lots of homeless people and numerous tents lined the pavements. There was also lost of interesting people, who weren't necessarily homeless, walking around and it made us feel very wary. The blocks we walked were all filthy and pretty poorly kept. We were relived when we finally arrived at our hostel. As ever as it wasn't even 11, we couldn't check in, so we had to store our bags before relaxing in the communal area and letting the sweat we'd built up on the walk from the station dry over the sweat we'd accumulated on the train. Seeing as we'd come so far, it didn't seem worth getting a shower until the evening. We spent some time catching up with the outside world having had no internet access on the train before heading out onto the streets of Portland. We'd gone about 10 blocks before reading we'd started off in the wrong direction but we had plenty of time so we didn't stress about it too much. A quick change of direction helped us find the river and once we were there, we just had to stick with the bank in order to find our destination, which was the Portland Saturday Market. Whilst we were walking long the river, we could see even more just how industrial Portland was. There were a few large cargo ships moored up on the opposite bank, huge steel bridges that spanned the river and were started to show their age with rust and huge grain silos and elevators ready to fill the ships. We passed underneath 3 of the rusting bridges before finally finding the market. The Saturday Market is known to be the largest open air craft market in the USA, so we lost ourselves for an hour or so looking at the various stalls. It was mainly jewellery, with some clothing, paintings and a couple of wood carving places. We weren't after anything and nothing took our fancy, so we left with our money in our pockets. After we'd had our fill of the market, we wandered a few streets adjacent to it, turning our noses up at the huge queue for the doughnut shop, before heading back to the hostel. We were still slightly early for check in, so killed the time by hunting down a supermarket and eating almost an entire pineapple for lunch. I say almost because we ended up having to chuck the final piece away as our mouths were to sore or burned from the citric acid the pineapple contained. Once we'd overdosed on the pineapple, it was gone 3, so we went to reception and checked in to our room. We were pretty knackered from the train ride, so spent our afternoon relaxing around the hostel and its onsite café, where we made some plans over a coffee or two. We'd picked up some wraps for dinner and had minced beef, with some veg along with a couple of wraps each. After dinner, it was definitely time for an early night.
Sunday 21st May
We didn't have anything specific to do for the day and had both been awoken by yet another chainsaw in our room, so we made the most of a lie in before heading down for brekkie around half 9. It wasn't a buffet breakfast but the bagel we received was a good size and we got a free refill on our cup of coffee. We ate our bagel out on the sunny patio but quickly regretted the decision when we found out just how hot it was outside. We mulled over a plan for the day over our second coffee, which we had in the much cooler café. Our first half of the day was spent walking up to a place called Washington Park, which was 20 minutes or so from the hostel. The park was massive, so we didn't even consider trying to cover it all. We focused on our end, which seemed to be the most popular. Initially, we struggled to gain access to the park due to maintenance work but we eventually found an entrance and a windy road that led us to a couple of the attractions. The first one was the international rose test garden, which was good, however the roses weren't currently blooming, so we were just looking at rows upon rows of flowerless rose bushes. Just up from the rose garden was the Japanese garden, which we avoided due the extortionate entrance fee. Instead, we spent a couple of hours meandering around the parks paths before heading back to the hostel for lunch. We had loads of food remaining from the 2 day train journey, so got through the rest of that along with half a tin of soup and a wrap each. Thanks to the heat and train exhaustion, we were feeling pretty lethargic but decided to head out to one of Portland’s numerous gimmicky shops. Powell’s City of Books calls itself the biggest new and used bookshop in the world and when we entered, it was hard to disagree with that statement. The shop was huge and needed colours to distinguish which room you were in and which genre of book you were looking at. Rather than spend hours pouring over the whole shop, we just stuck with the few topics we were interested in and after hunting high and low for the last copy of a certain one that was next in line for Charlotte to read, we picked it up and headed out. We continued on for a few blocks in search for a souvenir shop we'd found online but gave up when it was nowhere to be seen. We started heading back to the hostel, passing numerous amounts of weirdos along the way. It was pretty clear that they favoured the downtown areas of Portland, as by the time we reached the area the hostel was in, it was pretty clear of crazies and had a much nicer feel to it. Still feeling pretty tired, we relaxed but didn't nap during the later afternoon until dinner. In order to use up our remaining wraps we came up with the odd concoction of tuna, sweetcorn, cheese and pepper to have in them. It was pretty much just a tuna salad in a wrap without any sauce but it was still delicious; we couldn't believe it was the first time we'd thought of having it on the whole trip. After dinner, we returned to our stifling room to pack our things, freshen up and turn in for the night before our departure fairly early the following morning.
"The bluest skies you've ever seen..."
James and Charlotte
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