all aboard!

Trip planning is an area where I leave little to chance. Even when I don’t have reservations chiseled in, I will almost certainly have Googlemapped the locations of several Paneras and Chipotles along the route, allowing for some flexibility as to which address I’ll later tap into the GPS, depending on timing and traffic.

I’ll admit, there is an aspect of adventure that is lost when multiple channels of information become available, but I’m not sure I’d go back to the old way...Hungry adults, cranky toddlers, tooling in a southerly direction down a Virginia interstate...must stop! Blue sign, up ahead says (not promisingly) “Colonial Family Restaurant.” But, having passed miles of exits of nothingness, we decide to take our chances. Well, this was not the WORST overcooked pasta a la runny ketchup dished out in an ambience replete with burned out bulbs, sticky tabletops, and the happy patter of a fly family reunion...actually, yes, it probably was the worst. We may never have topped the Colonial Family in terms of abject disgust factor, but we’ve come close.

My first impulse, while planning our upcoming Fall railroad adventure, was to leave some loose room. Get on at point A. Get off at...point B, C, or D, depending on what I felt like. Get on again, when we’ve seen enough. But then I learned that Amtrak bedroom compartments book up months in advance, and sleeper trains were an important feature of my travel notion.

Consequently we are, more or less, planned to a fare-thee-well. Not a bad thing either, considering all thinking on the fly must be performed by one brain for two bodies, one of which tends to balk when asked to move too quickly. In October we will board the Capitol Limited, and chug from Washington D.C. to Chicago, through the battlefields of Harper’s Ferry West Virginia, and along the south edge of Lake Erie. In Chicago, we’ll change to the Southwest Chief and nearly complete a cross-country odyssey, traveling across expanses of the plains I’ve only ever flown over. We’ll get off in Santa Fe, and spend 2 days and nights testing to see whether the town really is as touristy as they say, before we return to the Chief, and travel several hours farther to Flagstaff. I have only ever seen the Grand Canyon by air. (Once, while flying from Baltimore to Denver, I changed planes in Las Vegas. I realize this makes no geographical sense whatever, but the sky was clear and the view of the Canyon was unparalleled.) So now, I will visit in person, and I hope that our Fall timing will keep us out of the worst of the mass-of-humanity crunch.

So now I have reservations of the booking kind, and a few of the emotional kind. How will Jeff do walking the jostling aisles of a locomotive? Will disorientation cost us too much sleep during our 2 nights aboard? (This, I hope, will be simplified by the tiny size of the bedroom compartment, and the convenient location of the potty an armstretch away. At least I won't have to get far out of bed to provide guidance.) And I predict that the adventure will be, all in all, well suited to his needs and current life preferences. Jeff likes to watch the world go by, ask strangers where they're from, eat, and sleep. A train trip, with meals and bed included, might be ideal.

Now excuse me. In the spirit of overplanning, I have The Rough Guide to the Grand Canyon, and a Moon Handbook guide to Santa Fe, and they want me to read them, highlighter poised and ready.