The first leg of our travel was the longest – 70 hrs from LA Union Station to Washington DC Union Station. It included 2 transfers, some boring moments, some nervous moments and plenty of excitement in between.
We parked our car at the long term parking of Union Station – it was way easier and seemed way more secure than I had imagined. There were guards on golf carts doing rounds.
Then came the fun part – waiting for the train. We were 2 hrs early. So we waited. And waited. And then an Amtrak person came to make the announcement – if you are on the 6pm Southwest Chief come to the counter and get your seats assigned. This was a surprise. But no worries – we got the seats…. But then there was another surprise – apparently we could check our bags. But this had to be done atleast 45 mins before the train departs. Oh well!!!!
So we dragged all of our luggage to the coach car and secured our luggage on the lower level and carried our backpacks with essentials to our seats. Just like on Indian trains – I secured our luggage with chain locks. Lol.
The train ride itself was alot of fun. Going from one car to another. The favorite by far was the Observation Car. The biggest challenge was that there was no wifi on board and the cell signal was spotty as we went further away from towns and cities.
Then came fun – over the course of 2 days there were multiple delays and our train was eventually 5hrs late getting into Kansas City. At this pace we would have missed our connection to DC. There were few others on the train who were in the same boat as us. As we were all planning our exit strategy in Chicago Amtrak made a classy knight-in-shining-armor move. They identified all of us who have the next train to catch, put us all in a large bus and shuttled us directly to Indianapolis where we can catch our train to DC, completely bypassing Chicago.
Fun experiences of 2 kids and their dad 