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caravanman

caravanman

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Joined
Mar 22, 2004
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Location
Nottingham, England.
Hi Folks.

My earlier posting asking about whether anyone had tried a combined long distance train and bus journey, together with overnight stops in hotels didn’t elicit any examples of such trips..

So, with a view to comfortable nights in a hotel bed, albeit with some early starts, this is my example Amtrak and Greyhound “Zephyrish” route.

Amtrak: 3.15pm Chicago to Kansas City 10pm fare $50

Overnight hotel $100

Greyhound: 6.30am Kansas City to Denver 5pm fare $44

Overnight hotel $100

Amtrak: 8.30am Denver to Salt Lake City 11pm fare $65

Overnight hotel $100

Greyhound: 11am Salt Lake to Winnemucca 5pm fare $36

Overnight hotel $100

Amtrak: 6.30am Winnemucca to Emeryville 5pm Fare $60

I am guessing at $100 a night for a hotel, and have pretended I am going in August, so a 21 day advance booking Greyhound fare is shown.

The totals for the above add up to $655, without any food costs..

Naturally, it will take much longer to complete the journey, but the travel is pretty much all daylight, plus one has the hope of a comfortable bed!

The basic Amtrak coach only fare for Tuesday 11 August Chicago to San Francisco would be $145 plus a roomette at $634, so a combined rail fare of $779, including all meals, but much less off peak, only around $400.

As this is an Amtrak railfan website, and I am a rail travel fan myself, I am not expecting too many people to abandon Amtrak for Greyhound buses, but it shows that there are options to see America in daylight, play trains, and have a proper bed for the night.

I imagine a combination of train and bus would be quite interesting where one took trains east and west, and bus north and south.

I think for myself, I would look for cheaper hotels, and spend an extra day exploring each stopover.. mind you, I am not sure Winnemucca warrants two days there!

Ed :cool:
 
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caravanman said:
I think for myself, I would look for cheaper hotels, and spend an extra day exploring each stopover.. mind you, I am not sure Winnemucca warrants two days there!
Ed :cool:
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Ah, you saved yourself a blistering retort with that last line, I was going to take you down over that stop! ;)

Interesting idea though. I'm up for a stopover once during a trip; on our way from Calif to Connecticut, we'll bail in Buffalo to visit relatives and take in Niagara Falls. Less than a month from now! :)

But I don't think we'd do every night in a hotel as you suggest, we like the train too much.
 
Why in the world would you suffer like this --- to save $779, including all meals less - $655, without any food costs = $ 124 NOT including meals

And who said the lower bunk in a roomette or bedroom was other than comfortable. I sleep very well there.

And by train only, one does not have to worry about missing a connection, planning for meals, and the constant moving from one transport to another.

No thanks. I would spend the extra $$$.

Now, I could see a train / bus / train / bus combo trip moving between different AMTRAK routes, but not following the same route
 
Are there $100 hotels close to these Amtrak stations or are you going to have to take a taxi? That is a added expense. When you add taxes and other fees they often add to the price of a room you would need to be like looking for maybe $85 room rate. Seems like a lot of things to take into consideration but if you like a challenge and you are not picky about your hotels it might work. I can see a slight advantage at maybe seeing a bit of the towns you will be sleeping in and trying different restaurants if you have the time. That is assuming everything works out the way you want it to with all these connections. Certainly not a trip for everyone. Personally, I would not like the Greyhound Bus part of the trip but that is just me.
 
I don't know. If I wanted to travel as much during the day, I would probably take a car and set my own schedule.

It just seems like a lot of effort to coordinate multiple Greyhound and Amtrak trips. It could be fun albeit a little risky.
 
I haven't used Greyhound since I was 12... I discovered Amtrak. DO they still make meal stops or do you have to pack your own food?
 
You're describing, caravanman, two very different experiences - traveling by bus and traveling by rail. You've presented an apples to oranges comparison. You forgot to consider renting a car for all or part of the imaginary journey of yours - and at least traveling by auto would offer more flexibility than traveling by set-route bus. If the train is not an attractive mode of transport to you, than don't take it. The alternatives are very easy to figure out.
 
I haven't traveled by intercity bus for 10 years...the last time was from Rutland to Burlington, VT to connect from the Ethan Allen to the Vermonter. I stayed in a hotel in Burlington a couple days. The bus was fine for a short trip like that but I would not even consider it for anything longer. As others have said, I would rent a car to drive through areas that Amtrak doesn't serve. The seats on buses are usually cramped and there are some very unsavory carachters traveling by Greyhound these days. People here complain about Amtrak restrooms, but I have never seen a train restroom as nasty as the few intercity buses I have traveled on. I won't even consider a dedicated Amtrak bus that is bustituting for a train thats more than 2 hours. If the train gets annulled when I am on it with a bus for a long distance, I find alternative transportation via plane or rental car to get to another train or to my destination. To me a bus is nowhere near the comfort of a train.
 
Longford said:
You're describing, caravanman, two very different experiences - traveling by bus and traveling by rail. You've presented an apples to oranges comparison. You forgot to consider renting a car for all or part of the imaginary journey of yours - and at least traveling by auto would offer more flexibility than traveling by set-route bus. If the train is not an attractive mode of transport to you, than don't take it. The alternatives are very easy to figure out.
Click to expand...
Ed never said the train wasn't an attractive mode of transport. In fact, he ended with the fact that he's a railfan.

He's just proposing a way to cross the country wholly in daylight so as not to miss any part of the scenery of this great land. (Of course, I don't know that it's necessary to see the scenery between, say, Kansas City and Denver, but then again, for one who has never driven across the great plains, it can be an interesting experience to look in all directions and see for hundreds of miles and yet see nothing in that vast distance.)

Until Amtrak institutes at least twice-per-day service on all of their routes, such a proposal is really the only way to do it.

Like some of the others who have posted, though, I'd choose a rental car over the bus. You can't stop and see such treasures as the Cathedral of the Plains, the historic town of Nicodemus, KS, Nevada's former tallest building (the Hotel Nevada in Ely, NV), or even natural wonders such as Zion or Bryce by train--you really need a car to get to those places.
 
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I would also go with the rental car option-- because you're likely going to need a taxi to get to and from the hotels anyway.
 
Hi Folks,

It was not to save money that I imagined the above trip, nor to avoid driving, it was just to show that it was possible to combine a love of train travel with overnight stops and see pretty much the whole train route, and also to compare the approximate costs.

Two years ago I found I couldn't use my Amtrak railpass as expected, so I rented a hire car in Chicago, and drove to San Francisco and back. This was a fantastic journey for me, I was astonished at the lack of traffic I found by taking secondary roads, and visited Monument Valley, Grand Canyon, Hoover dam, etc. I did not forget about the self drive options..

USA road trip pics..

I have about 40, 000 miles aboard Amtrak under my belt too, both in coach and sleeper, so comments about me not liking the train seem a bit wide of the mark.

Travel for me is not always about Amtrak, and things going smoothly, and I now accept my efforts to open out these discussions is pretty much misplaced on an Amtrak railfan site.

Ed :cool:
 
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caravanman said:
It was not to save money that I imagined the above trip, nor to avoid driving, it was just to show that it was possible to combine a love of train travel with overnight stops and see pretty much the whole train route, and also to compare the approximate costs.
Two years ago I found I couldn't use my Amtrak railpass as expected, so I rented a hire car in Chicago, and drove to San Francisco and back. This was a fantastic journey for me, I was astonished at the lack of traffic I found by taking secondary roads, and visited Monument Valley, Grand Canyon, Hoover dam, etc. I did not forget about the self drive options..
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Ed, I find your ideas interesting, even while I would not myself take a trip using buses which parallel the rail lines as you put together. Someone posted the idea of using trains east-west and buses north-south to connect them, which I might find appealing, for instance. But more my style is something combining the train and driving. Using a car for one-way day trips, along the lines of what you proposed, is likely to be extremely expensive (far, far moreso than the bus) as rentals where you return the car in a different location from where you picked it up have tremendous extra costs. But I quite like taking the train to a faraway place, then renting a car for a week and driving around a wide territory and returning. And doing a single one-way rental can be worth the cost (instead of three or four of them to parallel a train route), if it allows you to take a different train home.

For instance, in 2007 my family and I took the CA Zephyr to Grand Junction, then rented a car for a week and drove around the entire state of Utah (visiting six national parks/national monuments) and then into New Mexico to Santa Fe (from which I took the SW Chief back east). That was a wonderful trip! Last summer, I considered taking the Cascades/Canadian from Portland to Jasper, then renting a car there for a week; but I wound up just renting the car in Seattle because the trip was half the cost that way due to Canadian rental fees and the high cost of VIA (and limited schedule flexibility). But the idea of this sort of trip appeals to me, and in the future I'll probably look for ways I can take different train routes out and back with a road-trip connecting them.

As for the Great Plains on the CA Zephyr, I very fondly recall taking an early breakfast to watch morning twilight and sunrise over the Great Plains as we rolled through Nebraska. That was a very beautiful hour in the diner! And it was enough of the Great Plains experience for me.

I too dream of the day when there are two trains per LD route, offset so you can enjoy stopovers more easily. But I doubt we'll see that day for twenty years or longer.
 
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The sleeping car is the only "hotel" I know of where you can go to sleep in bed in one city and wake up in another about 500 miles away, IF the train is scheduled to leave one in the evening and arrive in the other in the morning. The dining car is the only sit-down restaurant I know of that can "offer" about 79 miles further on their "menu"-- while you dine at a table with linen, oftentimes metal and glass tableware and freshly prepared, restaurant-style meals. Showering, several lavatories, lounging and strolling are also included on the train while on the move.

Trains are also quite survivable by many if not most or all, even in the event of a major mishap-- not that mishaps are any more likely on a train. With the way so many "passengers" are in the driver's seat on the highway, doing it the way they want rather than the safe way it has to be done, I'd rather be on the train!
 
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