At 7pm our 5:20 train is still not here. They say they're having signal problems so the train is stuck in Seattle.
Two hours late, we're finally on the train. They tell us that we'll make up the time going through Montana. Our compartment is ahead on the left.
First class, all the way baby!! They'll bring the cart with the chocolate frogs by a little later.
Somewhere in western Montana.
When we were sleeping through our stop in Spokane, our train met up with its other half that comes from Portland. The diner car came with us from Seattle, the observation car with a snackbar in the lower deck comes from Portland. Each half has coach and sleeper cars.
Somewhere in eastern Montana
Somewhere in Minesota, land of 10,000 lakes
Somewhere in Wisconsin, about 200 miles west of Chicago where we were supposed to be at about this time.
The beginning of a beautiful day in Washington DC. We're heading down to the Mall where we'll check out the museums and other sights.
Apparently some Egyptians were in town. At least it gives us a reference point for getting our bearings.
I believe this is the fellow who invented the Web about 200 years before Al Gore invented the Internet.
There was an earthquake that made this thing unsafe, but it looks like it's still standing. I'm sure I saw it get blown up by an alien race on TV so they must have shipped in a new one since then.
Stopped by to have lunch with Barack and Michelle, but they didn't come out to the gate to meet us.
A monument to the Boy Scouts.
A visit to the Museum of American History. You can spend all day in these Smithsonian museums.
This would be a lawn mower. Back before the entire world was paved over, people used to push these around their yards to keep the unwanted grasses from growing too high.
I'm sorry I didn't get a better picture of the Flinstones lunchbox on the right.
The only one I recognize is Kermit.
Outside the Smithsonian Castle.
The the Enid A. Haupt Garden and the Smithsonian Castle.
A Segway tour of the Mall. What will they think of next??
This is where the senators and state representatives vote on important issues such as by how much to increase their pay.
This is some detail of the Rayburn Office Building, south of the Capitol Building. I believe it's where the senators push papers back and forth across their desks.
Heading down into the greater DC Metro subway system.
You are “here”.
A last look of at the world of the living. If you've played the Fallout 3 video game you know that there are only zombies and mutants in the subway system.
We take a trip to the National Zoo. Our Woodland Park membership cards didn't get us a discount on the admission price, which is free, but my subscription to the Smithsonian did get us a discount on purchases at the gift shops.
How do you get down off an elephant?
You don't, you get it off an owl??
We saw lots of birds.
Oh, there's the duck!
Some sort of rock rabbit.
Warthog.
This was the only sign we saw of gorillas.
They use this patterned glass on several of the cages to help prevent birds from flying into it and meeting an untimely demise.
They have a building containing various fishes including this reef scene. It looks a lot better than the saltwater aquarium we have at home.
We could hear this fellow roaring from across the zoo.
Probably because they separated him from his ladies.
Tony.
These towers with with the cables between them allows orangutans to cross over the people pathways. I'm not quite sure what prevents them from escaping into the crowds.
Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
Oops, time to move on...
This fellow and his buddies were very interested in what the zebras were doing next door. I think they were more interested in lunch than the porno show, though.
Antelope. Or maybe they're gazelle or bok choy or something like that.
I thought our forefathers formed this great country of ours to avoid this. Now they're touting how proud they are of it on their license plates here.
We picked up our rental car and headed north to see if we could find some fall colors. Our first stop is Philadelphia to see if we can find a Philly Cheesesteak. Our GPS has us going through this part of town where it's all one lane one-way streets with all available parking on either side of the street already taken. Each intersection is an all-way stop, but we're the only ones silly enough to actually stop at any of them.
We found our cheesesteaks. The people here are idiots. The line for this place extends out into the middle of the intersection. That's apparently okay, though, as anyone in this part of town is here to get a cheesesteak from either this place or the competion, Pat's King of Steaks, across the street.
After finding no room in the inn in Bethlehem, PA, we spend the night near Easton where Darlene spent some time in her youth. This morning we're heading north through the Poconos.
If you zoom in on that sign you'll see that we're at milepost 44 and 2/10ths. I guess the states out here are so small that they have extra funds left over to put up 10 of these signs every mile. You can see milepost 44 and 3/10ths up ahead of the second black car.
I'm not sure why they call these "mountains", but the colors are pretty.
We shuffled off to Buffalo and found this spot where they left the faucet running.
Canada, eh?
Darlene is ready to take a ride on the Maid of the Mist.
There's a good view from up there.
The best part is that they let you keep the keen outfit.
It's all suds and bubbles on the Canadian side.
A good place to go inner tubing.
Heading east through New York.
We're heading up here to pick our toes.
The Big Apple is up ahead. The weather is starting to turn.
The Entire Spate Building.
David Letterman is around here somewhere.
Only in New York!!
If you look closely at the GPS you'll see we're going 68 in a 45 MPH zone. The cool part is that we're being passed by a school bus.
Hey, isn't that where Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore live??
Portland, Maine. Got some of the best chowdah here.
Spent the night in Bangor where we got two whole lobsters each for $26. I think I'm happy just having the tail portion -- there's less green goop to deal with.
Now we're heading west across the state toward New Hampshire.
No foolin'.
I believe we're still in Maine here. We went through New Hampsire, but I believe the weather cleared up a little bit more during the three minutes we were in that state.
Now we're in Vermont. Took a tour of the Ben & Jerry's factory here. Got a sample of ice cream but had to listen to some pretty lame cow jokes to get it.
Yep, this is definitely Vermont. Didn't get any ice cream on our tour of this place.
The fall colors have turned more fall-like now.
We're back in upstate New York now; heading toward Delaware.
Okay, Delaware was uneventful, now were at the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia.
Thinking about it some, it seems rather greedy of Maryland and Virginia to carve out their hunks of this little spit of land that should really all be part of poor little Delaware.
That's the Assateague Lighthouse off in the background.
A half-eaten mushroom. Looks poisenous to me. There's probably a dead squirrell around here somewhere.
The Assateague Lighthouse at the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel that takes us to Virginia Beach, Virginia.
This silly bridge has two tunnels in it. I suppose there might be some shipping traffic into the Chesapeake Bay that would make opening a drawbridge a common event.
Saw several of these "I got my crabs from Dirty Dick's" billboards here on the way to the Outer Banks, North Carolina.
It's the vast enchanted Alantic Ocean where the Pilgrims sailed across the sea in the Mayflower, the Niña and the Santa Maria and landed all three boats right here at Plymouth Rock. Oh wait, that was a little further north. This is the Outer Banks, North Carolina. Same ocean, though, I believe.
Some clown casting his fishing pole from the balcony of the Best Western here. I think he might be a little too far away from the water to reel in the big one.
Kitty Hawk where three rights made a left.
It's amazing they ever got the thing off the ground, being made of brass and all.
The moon is out this morning.
This is a pretty exciting hunk of granite that they hauled in here to commemerate two kids building a washing machine.
The Bodie Island Lighthouse on the Outer Banks, North Carolina.
The Bodie Island Lighthouse on the Outer Banks, North Carolina.
Currituck Beach Lighthouse on the Outer Banks, North Carolina.
It's almost Halloween here.
If I remembered where we took this picture I could figure out what building this is. Somewhere on the road between Elizabeth City, NC and Richmond, VA.
Back in Washington, DC. The weather has changed a bit since we were here last.
This is new since the last time I came down this way (in 1985 or so).
There's a big marble dude in this building.
Ah, there he is now.
He's got a good view of the Washington Monument and the Capital Building.
Here's the view of the Lincoln Memorial looking toward the southeast. If you look at the top left corner...
Luckily I brought my telephoto lens.
The urban cowboy.
Back on the train, on our way to Chicago.
One wicked sunrise in the fog over Devils Lake, North Dakota.
Here's our train compartment from another angle. The bench that Darlene is sitting on folds down to a "full" size bunk. The bunk above her head folds down into a "twin" sized bunk. There's a hallway down the far side of the car at this end. Our compartment takes the remaining 3/4ths of the width of the car.
There's a single seat across from the bench near the window with a folding table between them.
The restroom/shower is a bit tight but not bad. There are some larger shared showers and restrooms on the lower deck of this sleeper car. The other end of the car has a hallway down the middle of the car and then compartments with two seats facing each other on either side. The two seats fold down into a lower "twin" sized bunk while an upper bunk folds down. Think “Laurel and Hardy movie”.
An old steam engine on display at Havre, Montana.
And they ride off into the sunset...