It’s a high school prom, it’s a Springsteen
song, it’s a ride in a Chevrolet. It’s a man on the moon and fireflies in June,
and kids sellin’ lemonade. It’s cities and farms, it’s open arms, one nation
under god. It’s America.
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Rodney Atkins
This entry comes from the outer reaches of Burlington, Iowa. We’ve been on Amtrak’s California Zephyr for nearly six hours, and are now crossing our second state, having left Illinois a few minutes ago. We’ve also crossed the mighty Mississippi River and are tracking ever westward, bound, sometime tonight, for Lincoln, Nebraska and on into Colorado by the morning. We are just about on schedule, even after a longer-than-expected stop at Galesburg, Illinois where Trev and I were the last folks back onto the train.
Leaving Chicago wasn’t easy. We got to see
Brian one more time when he dropped Lauryn and her suitcase around to our hotel
this morning. If nothing else, it was another chance to thank him for such
wonderful hospitality over the last week. He suggested last night that we come
back during the warmer months next time, maybe over the Memorial Day weekend in
May or Independence Day in July. That may be the go next time.
After dropping our car back to O’Hare
International Airport, we took a Blue Line train back to downtown Chicago –
about 45 minutes – and walked two blocks south from the Metra station to Union
Station, which actually looks more like a museum than a train station. It’s an
ultra-impressive building, a holdover from the old days when train travel was
the only mode of transport if you wanted to get somewhere in this vast country.
The good thing about having sleeper
accommodation is access to the Metropolitan Lounge with it’s free WiFi and
luggage storage. We checked our big suitcases in – they’re travelling in the
hold beneath us – and left our carry-on stuff in a luggage room so we could
walk a couple blocks across the Chicago River to Willis Tower and the SkyDeck.
Chicago’s most famous building also happens
to be the world’s tallest, rising a mammoth 103 storeys over the middle of the
cityscape, and is better known as Sears Tower. There’s nothing quite like
walking out of the elevators and over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, peering
down to street level to watch locals go about their business.
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| Chicago from the Willis Tower SkyDeck |
As impressive as the incredible architectural
attention to detail on every building and tracing the path of the Chicago
River, is Lake Michigan, a giant body of whose waters come right to the edge of
the city. One of the famed Great Lakes, Michigan is the only one lying entirely
within United States territory. It’s big enough that it that touches five
states: Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota. Really, it looks
more like the coastline of a country than a mere lake.
The coolest feature of the SkyDeck is a
recent addition: architects added four boxes of clear glass which jut out from
the tower’s superstructure. There’s literally nothing between you and a fall of
103 storeys but a few inches of – thankfully, very solid – glass. I’m not scared of heights, per se, but it was a
little nerve-wracking just because you’re so high up and the city below is so
enormous. We got a professional photo taken there, and bought it as a souvenir
of our touring crew.
After fitting in some souvenir shopping and
a quick lunch, we went back to Union Station in time for boarding. We’re in
what is called a Superliner Roomette, which is basically two large seats facing
each other with a table in the middle and a long window. It’s a little close,
but we’re dealing with it pretty well. Lucky Lauryn and I are family. The good
thing is, we’re on the upper deck of this huge train so we should get good
views through the Rocky Mountains west of the Mile High City, Denver, Colorado, tomorrow morning.
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The toilet, just next door, is interesting.
Not only do we get the added bonus of hearing a lot of the activity that goes
on there when our glass door isn’t pulled shut, but it’s hard to activate the
lock that stops other people from barging in whilst we’re in the middle
of…yeah, I’m sure you get the idea. A magnet for unusual – remember the onion
ring burns? – Lauryn managed to get pushed in through the open door when the
train rocked, and the door closed neatly behind her.
At night, the two seats pull forward into
one bed, and a second comes down from the roof. Lauryn’s going to try her luck
up top tonight, but I could well be up there tomorrow night if she doesn’t go
so well. Nathan and Trevor are two rooms down on the other side of the train.
Also on this train is a domed sightseeing car, a full service dining car – and
the food is pretty good, considering we’re on a fast-moving train – and a
lounge car, as well as a number of carriages of people sitting up, like on an
aeroplane. That’s a long haul if you’re going 51 hours out to California like
we are – about 4 times as long as the flight from Sydney to Los Angeles.
The route we’re on – Illinois, Iowa,
Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California – is one of the oldest in
America, and one of the most picturesque. Aside from the plains of Illinois,
Iowa and Nebraska, we’ll see the Colorado Rockies, the Salt Flats of Utah, the
Nevada desert, the Sierra Nevada mountains and, finally, the San Francisco Bay
Area on the run into Emeryville, which is a suburb of Oakland. We’re really
covering some miles on this journey!
They’re calling our dinner reservation.
Gotta go eat!
