Finally caught up with DW -- but not with the rest of my life

[carbonel]

I've been back for a week and a half, and I finally caught up with reading DW. I'm still behind on Ravelry, and will probably have to declare bankruptcy on a number of threads, which I really hate to do.

I was on the long-planned cross-country train trip with Pat WINODW. We started in Chicago (having driven down there from Minneapolis) and took the Southwest Chief to Los Angeles. It wasn't as spectacular as the California Zephyr (which goes through mountains) would be, but it allowed us to take the Coast Starlight up the California coast to San Francisco, which was spectacular. After a couple of days in San Francisco, continued on the Coast Starlight to Portland. From there, it was the Empire Builder to Glacier National Park (the original inspiration for the trip), and then continuing on the Empire Builder back to Minneapolis. (Pat's father drove her car from Chicago to Minneapolis.) It was an amazing trip, and I'd love to do something similar with the California Zephyr and maybe the cross-Canada train. But next year, my mother wants to do a road trip to South Dakota and Yellowstone, so that will have priority.

Because of the train trip, I only got to the Minnesota State Fair once this year, as opposed to my normal two or three times. The day before I left was my only day to drop items off for the Creative Activities competition, which I did. I entered four skeins of handspun in the four classes: fur/hair, wool, silk, and art yarn. I won first place ribbons in the fur/hair category (a skein of white lace weight cashmere plied with white silk) and the silk category (a gradient skein spun from hand-carded silk). I also won the Weavers Guild "best fine yarn" award for the silk skein. The wool and art yarn skeins won fourth and third place ribbons, respectively.

I'm hosting our tea group this Saturday, which was probably a mistake because I haven't had time to do the amount of cooking I'd really like, what with catching up with everything else. I'm about to head out to go shopping, and will see what TJ's and Cost Plus World Market can save me from preparing myself. Thankfully, I did plan ahead sufficiently to have the monthly cleaning person in yesterday, so while the place is sadly cluttered, it is reasonably clean. I'm hoping we're still doing this four years from now when I'm retired, and (at least in theory) will have time to spend the week preparing.

And coming up in a couple of weeks is a three-weekend-in-a-row marathon: the Minn-stf fallcon, Scintillation (convention in Montreal), and a spinning retreat in Alexandria, MN. I'm really looking forward to all of them, but not to the recovery period afterward.

Comments

[boxofdelights]

Congratulations on your ribbons!

[mrissa]

Congrats on your State Fair wins! I was a 4Her so this is big news for me.

[dorinda]

Woo hoo, well done on the handspun!!

[pameladean]

That's quite a collection of ribbons! Hooray!

P.

[pameladean]

Forgot to say, I hope somebody who went on that trip has photos of Glacier National Park.

P.

[carbonel]

I have a couple of dozen photos -- more as aide-memoire than souvenirs, but I'll be happy to show them off. The Glacier Park ones are unfortunately pretty hazy because of the smoke.

[dreamshark]

I'd love to hear more about your trip. Did you get a sleeping car, or did you actually spend 2 weeks sleeping in coach seats on the train? Is it possible to book a trip like that as one long trip with stopovers, or did you have to book each individual leg on the train? I would love to take the Empire Builder to Portland with a stopover in Glacier, but that seems to require separate reservations for each leg of the journey, which is complicated and expensive.

[carbonel]

It wasn't actually two weeks on a train. In all, there were five nights spent sleeping on the train. (ETA: We didn't get sleepers for the day spent traveling up the California coast, because that didn't have an overnight portion.) We did book individual roomettes, so we each had our own little place to retreat to, though we booked them across the aisle from each other most of the time, so we could chat. We did it that way because Pat needed a lower bunk and I wasn't sure I could manage my CPAP in an upper bunk. It was the most expensive domestic trip I've ever taken. The train was around $1,700 for each of us. We still need to settle up with the hotels (there were nine hotel nights), but that will be at least $1,000 per person.

The train portion would have been much less expensive with just coach tickets (we could have bought a two-week pass, for one thing), and about a third less if we'd shared a sleeper, but we've been planning this trip for at least two years, and decided to go the comfort route.

As for booking: yes, I had to do each individual leg as a one-way trip. It was expensive, but not particularly complicated. We figured out the itinerary we wanted well ahead of time, and I booked the tickets when they went on sale (just under a year ahead) because they're cheapest then. There are discounts for over 65 (Pat) or AAA member (me), but those only apply to the base train fare, not to the sleeper car upcharge.

For the trip you're thinking about, it would probably make sense to do it as two round trips: Minneapolis to Glacier (and back) and Glacier to Portland (and back). I'm not sure if there's a savings for round trips, but if there is, that way you'd get it.

If you have more questions, I'm happy to answer them. I learned a lot about train logistics in the process of arranging and taking this trip.

[bibliofile]

Thank you for asking these questions! (I have a cousin near Glacier who I've been meaning to visit for a decade or three.)

Congrats on all the ribbons! Will you be showing them off at the fallcon?