A 33 hour train ride? What were we thinking?
Cheap.
We were thinking cheap.
But why?
The MacGuffin
Have you ever heard of MacGuffins? If you have, I can probably name your college major.
In movie slang, McGuffins are:
...a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. The specific nature of a MacGuffin is typically unimportant to the overall plot. The most common type of MacGuffin is a person, place, or thing (such as money or an object of value).WikiPedia.org
Our McGuffin was a Class B motorhome. It was in our price range. It looked to be in good shape. It had recent mechanical work and some upgrades. It had sleeping for 3.
But.
It was in San Diego.
And we were in San Antonio.
The plot thickens.
Planes, Trains or Automobiles?
1300 miles between us and our goal.
MsBoyink investigated renting a car and buying airline tickets. Amtrak was an afterthought. We are from Michigan - Amtrak only ever made sense for the short hop down to Chicago.
In this case, Amtrak was the cheap alternative. Two of us could ride from San Antonio to San Diego for ~ $400. Half the cost of flying.
But 33 hours in a seat? Could we handle that? We’ve done some long pulls on the road in RV mode, but never that long.
Amtrak offers sleeping cars. But not at that price. A sleeper car would more than double that cost.
An adventure presented itself. A new challenge.
We booked the tickets.
And I went into research mode.
Amtrak Tips for Newbies
I found pages like this one and this one that offer tips to Amtrak newbies.
Many of those tips didn’t apply to us. We didn’t have the luxury of choosing when to book, etc.
Here’s what we did learn:
No TSA
For all of the gyrations you go through to prove you aren’t a terrorist at an airport, Amtrak remains a “show up and get on” service.
No questions. No scanners. No pat-downs.
I hate traveling without my Swiss Army knife. I brought it onboard the Amtrak with no issues. We brought forks and knives to eat food with. We brought several packets of food that would never make it through airport security.
Bring All the Things
We traveled with 2 duffel bags and two laptop bags.
No one measured our bags. Or counted how many we had.
I’m sure we could have brought at least one more bag or cooler each. While our assigned car was relatively full of people, there was plenty of unused overhead luggage space.
Food
Our train offered two sources of food - a dining car and a lower-level cafe.
Our research showed that the dining car prices were expensive so we ruled out eating there. The cafe prices were better but still more than we wanted to pay over 33 hours.
So we prepped our own “Amtrak Survival Kit” and dedicated one of our duffel bags to it.
The photo of everything is below, but we packed food including:
- Peanut butter
- Jelly
- Tortillas
- Apples
- Cheese
- Crackers
- Cereal
- Beef jerky
- Cliff bars
- Trail mix
- Canned meats - corned beef, dried beef, salmon, tuna, etc
Drinks
We brought instant coffee and tea (along with instant rice and Ramen noodles).
The cafe car will provide hot water for free - so that was our way to avoid buying $2 cups of coffee.
We brought water bottles and some flavor packs to put in them.
We never did eat the food that required hot water.
How Did We Do?
We bought a single candy bar. Otherwise we successfully fed ourselves for the entire 33 hours on the train.
Once we got to California a big ole’ burger or burrito sure sounded good!
Seating
The conductor assigned us seats. We didn’t get to choose.
Amtrak seats are big. They recline. There have adjustable footrests. And there are supports that raise up behind your shins (we discovered these by accident, since the controls were unlabeled and no one else was using them).
Each seat has power plugs. I brought a 6’ cable for my phone which allowed me to route it out of the way of our legs.
The windows have curtains, with a single spot of velcro at the bottom to hold them shut if you wish.
I was quite surprised to read in one of your previous posts that you were able to get Amtrak tickets more cheaply than flying. Every destination I’ve checked (albeit only out of either LA or Atlanta), Amtrak has been significantly more expensive. Except for having to spend so much time in a seat it sounds preferable to flying – especially the Skyview car.
We very recently almost bought an RV located in Florida, and I was extremely anxious about traveling to get it because flying seemed to be the only realistic alternative. My aversion to being “handled” by TSA is as likely to get me arrested as it is to get me where I’m supposed to go. Hopefully we have dodged that bullet.
Your almost-RV wasn’t a true MacGuffin, if you ask me. You clearly had/have a purpose in pusuing it, and this particular candidate was just an unfortunate part of the process. Somehow it will all come together for you guys – hopefully without much more angst.
Thanks Teresa! We were a bit surprised by the prices too. We’ve spot-checked Amtrak over the years and between the cost and time-table it never made sense.
We’ve got a lead an another RV, so we’ll see where that goes. We are also considering taking a speculative road-trip back to Florida where there are more of what we are looking for.
Thanks for sharing the trip! As kids, trains always seemed magical, and I still enjoy the occasional ride when the timetable and pricing work out. But they’re usually way less than 33 hours, so I appreciated your perspective on a longer trip.
P.S. I love the picture of you working in the Skyview car.
Thanks Don!
I love Amtrak! Love the trains in the UK and Europe even more ;). I prefer to spend the relatively small amount more to get a guaranteed first class seat - more room, quieter, some perks like free soft drinks and water. Lots of room and plugs. The big downside to Amtrak travel for me is the climb up into the train - I’m partially disabled, and it can be tricky - especially with luggage. I love the not having to do security searches! Parking at the stations I use is free too ;). Another nice perk.
There is definitely lots to like about train travel - thanks for the comment!
Hi, Michael - I’m glad that you gave Amtrak a try, and that it passed muster with you.
If President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget passes as currently written, Amtrak will be de-funded and shut down - no longer will it be possible to take long cross-country train journeys in these United States. I’m hoping that the U.S. Congress (House and Senate) has the good sense to retain Amtrak’s funding. It will be a huge loss to no longer have the option to travel by train. Imagine doing your trip on a Greyhound Bus? What’s really sad about this budget cut is that Amtrak’s annual federal subsidy is MINUSCULE compared to the enormous waste of dollars routinely spent on other far more questionable government ventures.
I wish you had had enough money to afford one dinner in the Dining Car - it’s an experience to have decent food served the way it’s done there. The Café Car’s offerings don’t begin to compare to the quality of the food served in the dining car.
If Amtrak isn’t eliminated, and in the future you and yours have enough “moolah” to spring for a long-distance Amtrak trip in the sleeping car instead of coach, ALL your dining car meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) are included in the extra fare you pay for sleeping-car accommodations.
As for your cliffhanger, may your fifth wheel sale conclude successfully, so that it is finally out of your life and you can focus on your future plans!
I love reading your account of life on the road, unchained from suburbia. You and your family have really hung in there through thick and thin, earning kudos from me! More power to you and your beautiful family and, above all, safe travels!
Eric
Thanks Eric - appreciate the comments.
MsBoyink and I might consider traveling sleeping car mode in the future. Some decent sleep and a hot meal would have been nice! Maybe after some time in the Class B the sleeping cars will seem palatial..;)
For this trip it more than doubled the price and flying would have been cheaper.
But yea - if Amtrak persists we’ll look at it again down the road.
Just recently discovered your website while researching RVing @ Walmart parking lots. Love your writing. We decided to take a short Amtrak trip from San Marcos to Dallas for the experience. We really enjoyed the trip up (albeit we were a couple of hours late). We stayed in Dallas and caught the train back two days later (round trip tickets $69 each if I recall). It didn’t seem as much fun and was ready to be home. We were again about two hours later. Our son is a San Marcos police officer and met us at the station (he’d already warned us not to leave our car there due to frequent car burglaries). Sure enough a poor elderly lady had the window of her vehicle smashed. Overal it was a good experience, but much shorter than yours!
Russ,
Thanks for sharing your experience. We didn’t think we’d enjoy the return trip, either, so we rented a car. ;)
I’ve only taken Amtrak twice—once from NYC Penn Station to Montreal and back in 2000, and once from Trenton, NJ to Miami and back in 2002 or 2003.
The Montreal trip was in October, the train was about 2 hours late each way, and I had nowhere to doze off except in the seat. If I recall correctly, it was under $100 round trip, but very uncomfortable—like being on a bus. We had a cafe car with very limited snacks, and the only opportunity to get off was for 5 minutes in Albany, not enough time to get something to eat.
The Miami trip was for work. I didn’t make the reservations, I traveled with a big group, I had a bed each way, and meals were included. I was in a bedroom on the way down, and a roomette on the way back. On the way down, we had to wait for 3 hours in what looked like utter wilderness, but was actually in the middle of Philadelphia, for a signal to be repaired. We still made it to Miami less than an hour late, though. I had earplugs, but still the train made a lot of stops, and even at stations where we didn’t stop, we would rock back and forth as we went through switches, and occasionally we’d travel, I figured, on secondary tracks that weren’t continuously welded, with lurches, rocking, and loud clickety-clacking for a few disruptive minutes. Plus, although this was only a problem with my trip, it was a problem—since I was in a bedroom, which had two toilets, my colleagues who were in the toilet less roomettes on the same car thought nothing of knocking and entering to use the bathroom at 4 am.
The meals were much better than I expected. The dinner rolls, salad, eggs, steak, even the milk and orange juice, were very tasty. It was equivalent to a first-class airplane meal, but with more choice, more generous portions, and much more elbow room.
On the return trip, we had to wait for track repairs, and the train drove more slowly because it was really hot, which meant we had to be wary of heat buckling, or “sun kink” as the announcements said, much to the passengers’ worried amusement. Maybe those few miles of clickety-clack over the expansion joints weren’t so bad after all. We were 6 hours late on the return trip. I was glad I had my roomette—I didn’t sleep there a second night, of course, but I had somewhere to retire to during the hours of waiting.
All in all, Amtrak is not so bad, but you’re stuck on a railroad track in the middle of nowhere if something happens, and it’s definitely worth it to have a bed on a long trip.