Pasco, WA to Detroit Lakes, MN

Saturday, August 30, 2003
Train Travel

We have started on our 2003 great adventure. Today we will board the train in Pasco with Becky, Gary, and Ann and began the journey that will include a bicycle ride from the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Minnesota and end in New Orleans, Louisiana. It will end with a train ride from New Orleans to Los Angles, CA and finish in Pasco, WA. However, things are not going well. Our train is supposed to leave at 8:57 PM. We had a sleeper reserved so we could go to bed as soon as we got on the train. At 4:00 PM we received a telephone call from Amtrak, which informed us that the sleeper car that starts in Portland, OR would not be on the train and we would not get a sleeper berth until we got to Spokane, WA. Instead of going to bed at about 9:30 PM we would now be going to bed at approximately 1:00 AM.

Well everything continued to go downhill. The train was 20 minutes late getting into Pasco. The good news was that all four bike boxes got on the train and I saw exactly where they were placed in the coach baggage compartment. This train starts in Portland, and is joined to another train in Spokane, that started in Seattle. The Portland, section arrived in Spokane on time. The Seattle, section was late. We were all trying to sleep in the coach seats when we were woken up and told that we were getting into Spokane. We began to get ready to move to the sleeper section when we were informed that it would be 45 minutes before we would be moved. Now we were awake but we tried to get some more sleep. None of us was able to go back to sleep. It was over an hour before the Seattle section reached Spokane. It was another 30 minutes after that before we were moved to the sleeper car so we did not get to sleep until approximately 2:00 AM. 5 and ½ hours later we got up so we could eat our free breakfast. I was very tired because I did not sleep at all until I got into the sleeper car.

Sunday, August 31, 2003
Train Travel

Today was not bad. We enjoyed the scenery as we crossed the Rocky Mountains. However the smoke from the forest fires was so heavy that my throat became irritated. We continued east into the eastern Montana plains, then North Dakota. However, the train from Seattle was late because of the derailment of another train, which hit the dining car and caused considerable damage to the dishes etc. Therefore, we ate on paper plates in the dining car and had a box lunch of cold chicken. We had to wait until 9:15 PM to go to bed because we had to inform the conductor who worked the Detroit Lakes area about the bicycles and since we are got off the train at 3:15 AM we had another night without much sleep.