yarrow
Engineer
last week at work i was trying to think of a way to get to the mountains on my days off. why not the empire builder to glacier park? my wife agreed to stay home and take care of the garden and our animals so yarrow, jj and i made coach reservations from spokane to west glacier. i must say the coaches, both going and coming home, were the cleanest and best functioning i have seen. also the crew was attired in the offical amtrak uniforms and looked and acted very sharp and proud of their train.
we were a little over an hour late leaving spk as the portland section of the eb was late for reasons not known to me. this was ok as i got to see the route in daylight along the kootneai river in idaho. very nice. gn used to schedule the builder to go through this section in daylight because of its beauty.
we were leaving whitefish and the conductor announced we were going to do some switching to take along 2 private cars. it was fun watching the switching and even more fun to see the cars were from the olympian hiawatha and included a skytop lounge/parlour car.
got off at belton station(west glacier), shouldered our packs and spent two glorious days hiking in the logan pass area. aided by glacier park's new, free shuttle system on the going to the sun road.
got back on the eb last evening for a pretty ride back home. it stayed light until we entered the flathead tunnel and was dark after that even after we left the tunnel. we are very, very tired and very, very happy with our glacier park adventure. thanks glacier park and thanks amtrak.
we were a little over an hour late leaving spk as the portland section of the eb was late for reasons not known to me. this was ok as i got to see the route in daylight along the kootneai river in idaho. very nice. gn used to schedule the builder to go through this section in daylight because of its beauty.
we were leaving whitefish and the conductor announced we were going to do some switching to take along 2 private cars. it was fun watching the switching and even more fun to see the cars were from the olympian hiawatha and included a skytop lounge/parlour car.
got off at belton station(west glacier), shouldered our packs and spent two glorious days hiking in the logan pass area. aided by glacier park's new, free shuttle system on the going to the sun road.
got back on the eb last evening for a pretty ride back home. it stayed light until we entered the flathead tunnel and was dark after that even after we left the tunnel. we are very, very tired and very, very happy with our glacier park adventure. thanks glacier park and thanks amtrak.