More From the Train

Some stations along the route of the Empire Builder are just tiny outposts.

If you're in a sleeping car, you can stow unchecked luggage downstairs in these open shelves. That's our travel cooler on top.

What's in your travel cooler, Pippi? Glad you asked. Raw fruits and vegetables--enough for 3 days--plus Traderspoint yogurt. Oh, and limes for the random cocktail.

Nice for a snack in the observation car, a favorite place to watch the world go by through the large windows.

People here write, read, eat, gaze, make photographs, chat, or just relax.

Watch Your Step

Understatement, given that this is the last car on the train.

Plus, mixed messages much? PRESS (to open)...

Fresh-Air Stops on the Amtrak Journey

A very few times per day the conductor will call a fresh air stop or, if you prefer, he says, the opportunity to partake in some fine tobacco products. These are the only times you're permitted to leave the train, unless you're disembarking. When the sun is shining as it is in the picture above, taken from the moving train, these stops are brief chances to soak up some clear light.

Often, though, the longer stops occur at night, as in this shot. This station had radiant heating under its platform to melt the light snow that was falling. It’s always worth bundling up and stepping outside to take some air regardless the weather, and on this ride it’s downright cold and often snowing along the way. 

Mr Technology (aka Art) has stuck a GPS receiver on the window of our sleeping compartment and connected it to his Mac. Here it shows (click to enlarge) the train's progress alongside the mammoth Glacier National Park, tracks following the road, shown in green.

I learn a lot of local history on these stops from Joe, our sleeping car attendant, and delve deep into the personal struggles of fellow passenger Francis, who shares stories of his life as an industrial designer and why he believes he’s been placed on a government job blacklist due to reporting one of his employers for selling to a forbidden country in the Middle East. 

Joe and I nod sagely, taking in the night.

Midafternoon Wine and Cheese

So in between lunch and dinner, if you’re in the sleeping car it’s off to the wine and cheese tasting if you choose.

Can’t a girl catch a break and read her Henning Mankell in peace?

It was a small group for the tasting—frankly it’s a far less crowded train than we’ve ever seen--and as a result at the end they had a lot of leftover wine, which they awarded based on answers to silly quiz questions. Hey--I won.

Our boothmates, from Washington State, are musicians who play the fiddle, mandolin, and guitar. He teaches engineering at the university. She manages a radio station. If you were a writer and needed character backgrounds, you couldn’t do better than to ride Amtrak.

Dinner--are you kidding me?

I send Art off to dinner alone, unable to ingest one more food item that isn’t a raw vegetable or interact with a single extra person with a fascinating life story.

Lunch on the Train

After a life working in Boston, they returned home to Oklahoma. “Our state is very red,” Jim said. “Redder than Texas even.”

What a smart and charming couple, he a research MD at Joslin Diabetes, she a nonprofit financial person. They were off to Seattle, back to Portland, and south to San Francisco and multiple desitantions before closing out their 5-week trip to see friends, children, and grandchildren.

We had quite the animated conversation, ending with a story from Susan about a Missouri welcome station attendant who, when asked a question about the weather, promptly claimed there was no such thing as climate change while citing the Bible.

That set us off on a conversation (Art adds “thus far avoided”) about non-science-brain people.

Obama and Plan B anyone?

Amtrak is feeding us far too well. The hangar steak last night was excellent. Today I had a wedge salad with bleu cheese, plus the creampuff.   

Talk about your yin and yang. Jim had rice and beans with sausage. Not likely we’ll need dinner, but we just reserved for 6 pm.

With conversations like this, how could we miss it?

So Where Are You Heading, Where Are Your From?

Good morning Minot, ND 

When you wake up on a train, you never really know where you are until you ask.

One of the non-negotiables in Amtrak’s dining car is community seating.  And when two people slide into the booth across from you the first questions usually are: so where are you heading, where are you from? With a cup of coffee to acclimate, you never know where the conversation will lead. 

This morning at breakfast we learned that a 3-bedroom house in Williston, ND, rents for $6000 per month. You’re wondering how this could be? Here are the two ex-Marines from Louisiana we breakfasted with who are working the oil fields in Williston along with tens of thousands of others.

 

They told us they liked the money, but that this new-oil town of originally 15,000 was a wreck, unable to accommodate the masses driven here by the enormous dollars being paid by Halliburton and other oil companies that now dominate the landscape. The oil’s always been there, but a new technology called directional drilling, along with fracking, made it a propitious time to exploit Williston.  

And exploit is just what the oil companies do, according to our most conversational breakfast mates. Limited housing available for the tens of thousands flocking here to earn what they can make nowhere else. People sleeping in tents, campers, and cars fill the Wal-Mart parking lot. Wal-Mart out of food because they can’t keep it stocked to meet demand.

One of the guys said anyone who cuts hair could make a million bucks.  But he also warned any woman who might take her scissors to what they called the Man Camps would be crazy. A very dangerous place for a woman to go alone. But fear not—our ex Marine on the left informed us you could buy not only a handgun, but also a kit to make it semi automatic…and finally a silencer. All legal here in ND. 

The Man Camps

A repeat of the gold rush, Art opined, and they agreed. City fathers enriched by oil money have little regard for the enormous changes wrought on the town itself. Oil chiefs pretty much get whatever they want. Clearly the people who make the most money are at the top of the food chain. But next in line comes guys like these: housing paid for, transport from their homes in Louisiana paid, working crazy long hours before returning home for a two-week sabbatical.

Williston, ND, from the train

Gazing out the window with me after we dropped off a bunch of people in Williston, our cabin attendant says there was a tiny town here just a couple years ago. Today, McDonalds reportedly pays $21 an hour just to keep staff,  WalMart about the same. When you can make $130,000 annually working the oil fields, even Williston cops are leaving their posts.

These two were openly disgusted by what the oil companies do to these small towns, and also by what they called the high rate of death on the rigs. They pointed to companies who put kids there without much training.  Death seems a high price to pay for accidentally lighting a smoke too close to a natural gas vent.

PS to Rob: you were right--no Sprint broadband connection out here.