Tag Archives: travel by train

Overnight through the heart of America.

Chicago, USA, , , ,

8:10 pm
Thursday, June 16
49 Lake Shore Limited
Between Schenectady, NY and Utica, NY

I found a wonderfully picturesque seat in the lounge car where I can gaze at the river beside me. Just a little while ago, the sunset was lighting up the wide, misty path of the river. I took so many pictures from the window here, glorying in how beautiful everything was. The sun has almost set, but now the surface of the serene river, with only very few ripples in it, reflects the cloudy sky above and the rising moon. The light of the sunset will probably linger for at least another half hour or so.

We’ve been running alongside the Mohawk River in upstate New York for a good half hour now. Sometimes it twists away, divided from the train tracks by a few houses or grassy fields, or is elevated through a set of locks, but has kept coming back. The river is fairly wide and placid, sometimes broken by large islands with sprawling green vegetation, or sometimes choked along the banks with thick reeds. Beyond the river, I can see some green hills or in some cases, small towns. There is a good deal of industry along the river in this part of New York. I don’t know what kind of factories are here, but there certainly are some. The locks and bridges that occasionally span it look somewhat rusted and faded. Earlier, we even went by a horse ranch.

Sitting up here in the lounge car instead of back at the seat has been slightly more interesting. I’ve run into a Worcester man of many years named Chris who is fervently “feeling the Bern”. He and I talked a little while about the People’s Summit that he and several people are on their way to in Chicago. Bernie Sanders is also giving a speech tonight, as I saw on social media, around 8:30 pm. Chris avidly denied the likelihood that Bernie was going to actually give in and ask his people to support Hillary, and invited me to watch the speech with the rest.

I also had a funny incident with an Amtrak conductor that caused me to blush as red as a lobster for five minutes. While fooling around with my camera, I tried to get as many photos of the outside as I could, and then switched to taking a few pictures inside the car. I even turned the camera on myself at one point, and then caught a conductor sitting kitty corner from me giving me one raised eyebrow. To be fair, taking a selfie with a DSLR looks pretty funny, so I laughed also, and then put my camera away.

I’ve been sitting in the lounge car for almost over an hour, just trying to get a seat in the dining car. Though it’s possible to buy some food from the café car, which is just like a concession stand, I’d rather get a seat in the dining car and meet a few folks and enjoy an actual meal. After all, there are still quite a few hours left in the trip before I’ll be able to get to sleep.

7:37 am
Friday, June 17
Aboard the Lake Shore Limited

I’m not usually awake at this hour, but the rest of the world is. The sun already seems well up in the sky, no longer casting the sharp shadows it did half an hour ago. I woke up for good from my fitful sleep just after 7 am as we rolled through Ohio. We are now making our stop at Bryan, Ohio, our last stop here before moving onto Indiana, and then Illinois. Wonders of wonders, the train seems to be on schedule. We’re bound for Waterloo, IN, Elkhart, IN, and South Bend, IN before rolling into Chicago, IL just before 10 am.

We’ve been going past giant rambling fields of hay for the longest time now. Everything is as flat as a pancake, and every house seems to have its own grain silo. Welcome back to the Midwest, I guess. Some random observations: People seem to have a lot of dogs here. When we went by the Waterloo station, I saw a woman opening up her yard sale at 8 am. It was cool to see because I haven’t ever gotten up early enough to catch a yard sale when it first opens.

Last night’s dinner was somewhat disappointing, since I got seated at the very end, and had a table all to my lonesome. I had mac and cheese and a very good piece of cheesecake with graham cracker crust to console myself, and then went back to my seat. Soon, we’ll be in Chicago, and I look forward to seeing Anthony and Blenda, the friends we are staying with, and a really hot shower and a nap!

Afternoon on the Lake Shore Limited.

USA, , ,

3:49 pm
449 Lake Shore Limited
Between Springfield, MA and Pittsfield, MA

Western Massachusetts is green in the early summertime. I’ve watched our train wind through woodsy forests and wide grassy fields. The trees here are not pines or stately trees that outline boulevards but wild and tall oaks. I spent a few minutes trying to determine why they looked so different from the trees in North Carolina before I realized that most of them were not wrapped over in kudzu, that Japanese vine that has so invaded the South. In Durham, some trees along our usual walking route were so covered with kudzu in the spring and summer that they resembled the largest green topiary dinosaurs and structures. Here, the afternoon sunlight shines brightly as we glide past green, verdant hills.

Since I haven’t written here since Durham, I’ll summarize our travel plans. In mid-May, we moved out of Durham, and absconded to Greenville, SC where we stayed with Steve’s family for a few weeks. Last weekend, I bid a fond farewell to our wonderful Stella, and came to visit my mom in Boston. It’s been a great week here of hanging out with her and seeing some friends, but now I’m off to Chicago. Tomorrow, Steve will join me in Chicago with all of our luggage, and after a weekend of gathering with friends in Chicago, we will fly out on Monday to Taipei. I start a new job working for a social enterprise in early July, so this is a very exciting time for us.

This afternoon, I hugged and kissed my mom goodbye at Back Bay, where she dropped me off. Back Bay is one of the origin stations of the Lake Shore Limited, the Amtrak train line that runs from Boston to Chicago. Since getting on the train just before 1 pm, I’ve mostly read and napped to rest up. I was woken up a little while ago when we ran through Springfield, and a most rambunctious pair of children (what look like four year-old twins) sat in the seats in front of me. Though I was hoping for a longer nap, it was impossible not to smile when I heard how excited they were to be on the train and how amazing they thought it was to be moving so fast. It reminded me of why everyone loves the train, and shares their wonder.

The Lake Shore Limited is hardly one of the more vaunted train lines in Amtrak history, but I still like the chance to ride it when I can. In fact, many years ago, this was the first train trip I took. In tenth grade, my friend Isaac and I took the Amtrak west to Columbus, and then switched to Greyhound, to go to Cincinnati during spring break to visit some good friends there and take part in a Latin quiz bowl competition (but that’s another story…). I had never taken Amtrak before, but Isaac, a lover of trains, masterminded it all for us. I don’t remember the trip out well, but on the trip back, the connection for the train in Columbus was hours late. As an apology, they put us in the Viewliner roomette, the two-person bunk cabin that came with free meals. Both of us fell asleep immediately, exhausted by the travel, and I woke up to Isaac enthusiastically extolling the virtues of the meal car.

Going west on the Lake Shore Limited is a little bit less exciting than going east. Though we hug the coast of Lake Erie and then Michigan as we move westward, we do most of that in the dark. The Boston part of the train, which I’m on now, will arrive in Albany around 6 pm, and then we connect with the part of the train which has come up from NYC, and around 7 pm, we set out for the rest of the trip. Though it’s summertime, dusk will still fall around 8 or 9 pm, so we won’t be able to see much soon. I expect to have a good hearty meal on the train car and meet some good dinner companions, and then set to working on the computer some more before going to sleep for the night. I’ve packed an eye mask and ear plugs, and suspect that I’ll be able to keep spreading out to the other seat next to me because this doesn’t bear any resemblance to a fully-sold train ride. The train is supposed to arrive in Chicago’s Union Station at 9:45 am the next morning. I say supposed to, as a realistic and yet optimistic fan of Amtrak. It may be a bit late, affording us better views of Indiana and Lake Michigan than anticipated, so there will be a silver lining. Thanks to Amtrak Connect, there’s actually wifi on this train, enabling me to type my usual train entries for Circumnavacation on the website instead of into a Word document! Amazing. I look forward to writing more later.

Connie

A happy return to Kaohsiung.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan, , , , , , ,

Written on the 781
Kaohsiung-Taitung
Sunday, July 27, 6:13 pm

It is the evening, and we are seeing our first sunset over the mountains. We’re most of the way through our rail journey from Kaohsiung to Taitung, winding a slow counter-clockwise arc around the southern tip of the island and emerging on the eastern side of Taiwan. Many of our evenings in Taichung and Kaohsiung on the west coast have featured splendid sunsets over the water and a city, but in Taitung and Dulan on the east coast, we will be chasing sunrises over the water and sunsets over the mountains.

The hillsides here are fairly rugged, and the train zips long much closer to the water. For some parts of our trip, we were darting through mountain tunnels to emerge on a narrow railway with the water and a precipitous drop on one side and on the other high mountains that we had to lift our faces to greet. The view is definitely worth it. On the right, the sky fades from a pale distant blue to light pink clouds, and then back to the blue-grey of the ocean. On the left, mountains barely a dozen meters from our left will loom close, and then give way suddenly to large expansive green valleys. Deep in the heart of the valley, we can see the lighter and mistier shapes of more distant mountains, and finally beyond that, the clouds themselves, gilded and illuminated with a deeper richer tone by the sunlight that has already sunk beneath the mountains. It is really strikingly lovely. Continue reading A happy return to Kaohsiung. →