Fly to Denver and then catch the Zephyr to Chicago.
But we'd miss the best scenery!
But seriously, there are so many options...
Amtrak has had STELLAR customer service for us. They're willing to rebook us on just about anything; we just have to figure out what works best for us.
For those keeping score at home, we decided we both really had to hold up our promises to show up at work on Wednesday, but we found a routing that maximized our time on trains, minimized our time on planes, and minimized our additional out-of-pocket expenses quite nicely.
I spoke with the Portland Stationmaster this morning who said he was personally seeing to this and would make sure Guest Rewards covered all of our Amtrak travel under the original redemption. (The plane is, of course, our additional expense.)
So, let's see, how does it balance out?
POSITIVES:
a lovely hotel and dinner in Portland
half a day to see Portland
another ride in the Parlor Car
a bedroom on the Starlight
a surprise opportunity to see a friend in Mountain View
lounge access in Boston Tuesday morning
a bedroom on the Lake Shore
arriving in Springfield a few hours
earlier than we'd originally planned
... where our checked bags should be waiting for us, since they went out on the Southwest Chief
NEGATIVES:
one JetBlue non-stop red-eye flight, SJC-BOS ... which was somehow only $260 on one day's notice
Does it suck that we're each out an extra $260? Yeah, it kinda does. If we could've spared an extra day or two, we would've, both to save money and to enjoy the additional days on the train! And Amtrak would have been very willing to make that work, too.
But there are a lot of positives here, and I think they far outweigh the negative. Most importantly, several Amtrak agents have been absolutely magnificent at handling this.