Crossing America

Aug 2, 2008

So RANAD (Rob, Aviva, Noah, Aaron, Diane) is off on another adventure. A train journey across the USA! And we’re writing this blog, once again as a joint effort between all five of us, on various Amtrak trains. And, as any journey starts, we start at the beginning.

We drove to Detroit. Unfortunately we didn’t start the drive till 9:00.....p.m.. And then we hit bad traffic around London. So we only got to a hotel in Detroit at 2:30 am.
The next day we headed to Royal Oak to get on the train. We raced to get to the train station, to unload our luggage from the car, to park the car, and get to the platform and wait and wait and wait. In fact we waited over two hours. The train was apparently late because a live wire had fallen on the tracks and for some reason they didn’t feel comfortable driving over it.
The train was um remarkable mostly do to our neighbours; an obnoxious grand mother with her two grandsons. It all started with the idea that we could turn the seats to face each other. The highly agitated and easily excitable conductor was not uh interested in this plan. She was very concerned about filling every single seat before 200 more people got on. A deal was struck. The grandmother proposed that we that sit together as a party of eight. this seemed like a good plan. Four of us sat together facing each other, while Diane sat with the grandmother and her 2 grandsons it was very squishy. Diane mentioned so. Twice, the grandmother told Diane that she was “welcome to sit somewhere else”, but Diane said that she wanted to be near her family. Finally the grandmother angrily moved saying that she didn’t know why Diane “insisted” on sitting next to her. In the end, the five of us ended up squishing together in the four seater while Aviva read the book “The Lightning Thief” aloud to the family (no accents this time it takes place in U.S.).

We arrived in Chicago, took a cab to the hotel, and met up with Grand-mummy.... surprise, surprise. (We actually planned to meet her for our stay in Chicago). We then went out for dinner to Weber’s grill which is part restaurant and part advertisement for Weber’s bbq company. Oh we forgot to mention that we hadn’t eaten a meal all day other than dinky little snacks and paw fulls of bread and cheese and humus (we had no knife).

The next day Grand-mummy woke us all up in time for breakfast. After six showers, and a big breakfast, we went on a boat tour of Chicago’s architecture-that was amazing! We saw the biggest building in square footage in floor space. The tallest building in the world known only by it’s street address. And the Sears tower which was the tallest building for 28 years. On this boat ride we also got complimentary Starbuck’s paraphernalia. This is probably an apt moment to mention that Rob has been off coffee for a week and a half, and the mind bogglingly horrific migraines have just about ceased. After the boat tour, we went for a jacuzzi at the hotel; except for Noah. :( This is probably an apt moment to mention that Noah has been in a cast (well his pinky has) for about a week now, having broken it during an unfortunate portaging incident in Algonquin park. That night we went to see Mamma Mia which was quite cute. We all had barrels and heaps of fun and laughter but than the aliens came and we all knew we were screwed. The fun and the laughter was now over.:( That night, for dinner, we had Chicago’s famous paper thin pizza. Um well actually Chicago kinda isn’t famous for their paper thin pizza, that would be Italy. What Chicago is famous for is their deep dish pizza. But that was an hour’s wait and none of us even like deep dish pizza so there goes that plan.

The next day Grand-mummy woke us up in time for breakfast. After 5 showers, a bath, and a big breakfast we headed out for Chicago’s Ferris Bueler’s day off day. This is a civic holiday and no one can work. In honour of Ferris we started off at the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts and systematically destroyed each and every piece of artwork.....
Rob managed to get in as a student and Grand-mummy managed to get in as a senior and Diane managed to get in as an adult. We saw Grant Wood’s American Gothic, finding out that the two models were really his dentist and sister. We saw American and European impressionist art. And it made a big impression. We then had a half hour tour of Sunday at La Grand Jatte by George Seurat. We rode the “eL” to a Grecian restaurant in Grecian town where they rushed us out faster than we could say “Homer”. We then took the “eL” to the Sears tower and together we scaled our way to the top with suction cups. The view was very impressive. We got there just after sun set and we saw the city lights not to mention the nightly fire works by lake Michigan. The aliens returned and stole all of our souls and any pink buttons we happened to have on us. Unfortunately we had a lot.

After a send off to grand-mummy and a mad dash to the train station we are now on our way to Colorado on a train, acting quite hysterical and out of control.

Point of interest:
One of the two conductors, both of whom are named Gary, explained to us the reason for what looked like Lakes around the Mississippi between Illinois and Iowa. Turns out the levies broke on the banks of the Mississippi, causing thousands of acres of flooding this past June. Vehicles and farmhouses were still almost totally submerged. The bridge we just crossed on the train was reconstructed only two weeks ago.
Currently, we are traveling 80 miles an hour across the very flat state of Iowa.

August 6, 2008.

So to pick up from where we left off, we had our first night on a train, and we got about 12 hours of sleep...between the five of us. Actually, we each got from 4-8 hours of sleep, depending on who you speak to. Rob slept on a bench in the lounge area. Aaron fell asleep peacefully with Aviva, but then awoke at 4:30 am to roll over, but kicked against a foreign object below. Diane’s head popped up from the floor underneath the seat and both let out a yelp. Aviva played musical chairs, and floors, but won the most sleep contest. Noah was comfortably sleeping on two chairs, with his feet hanging out in the aisle, but was the first up to see the sun rise over Nebraska.

We arrived in Granby Colorado at mid-day. Strangely, we were two hours late, since Amtrak always runs on time. We picked up our rental car and headed into Rocky Mountain National Park. The drive was spectacular, amazing vistas, birds, the cutest chipmunks and even some elk. When we arrived at the camp site the ranger who checked us in warned us that there had been a bear “incident” a few days earlier. He then proceeded to tell us what precautions to take, but he said it at ninety miles an hour, so that it was almost completely incoherent. To top it all off, the second ranger we spoke to contradicted what the “motor mouth” ranger had said about what to do when encountering a bear.

On each of the two days in the park we went on a huge hike. The first day was up to Alberta Falls and Loch Vale and the second day was up to Flat top mountain, which is at 12,324 feet, and is above the tree line (we only hiked the last 2000 feet). We had our first experience with altitude sickness, which hit us all on the descents both days. We were all fine once we drugged ourselves up on Advil and Starbuck’s after the hikes. During the first hike we were a bit low on water and that was a bit stressful as we really had to pace our intake (and may have helped us with developing the altitude headaches). The views were gorgeous and both hikes were quite challenging; uphill for 2 hours on the first day, and “relentlessly uphill” for three hours on the second day.

First a little about the weather here in Colorado. It starts our sunny and beautiful in the morning. Around mid-day the clouds start to build up and then for about half an hour in the mid-afternoon it pours for about 30 minutes, including thunder and lightening. And then it’s beautiful again by late afternoon. If you’re unfortunate or stupid enough to be above the tree line during a lightening storm, you’re at great risk for being hit by lightening, and it has happened. Both days we were just finishing our descent when it started to rain. But, on the second hike, as we were reaching the bottom, and it started to rain, by some mystical force, Rob magically knew to bring us under a small shelter along the path. Less than a minute later, it started raining giant hale stones, the size of grapes. It looked like everything was covered in moth balls. Within a period of about 1 hour, the weather went from feeling like a hot summer’s day, to looking like a cold winter’s day, and back again. When it had all stopped, Aaron and Noah went out and scooped up handfuls of ice pebbles and were throwing hail balls (far away from people).

On the second night in the park, at 4 in the morning from inside our tents, out of the blue we heard these dog-like creatures howling. It started with just one and then it seemed like there were dozens of them chiming in. It sounded like a combo of howling and yelping. At first we were scared they were wolves, then we knew it was the aliens, but by the next morning we figured it was Prairie dogs....probably because we also had their two foot deep holes all over our camp ground. In fact Rob fell into one of them while cooking one time. There were also deer grazing all over the camp ground, within feet of the campers. On our last night we had a cornucopia dinner consisting of sushi, Mediterranean salad, followed up by fruit and whipped cream-topped pancakes. And just as we were finishing up, we had another burst of rain, followed by a phenomenal full-arc rainbow.

The last morning we had to wake up at 6 am to pack up and clear out by 7:30 am, which we did by 7:55 am. We made great time on the way back to Granby. On the way we stopped to fill up the car with gas, but we had a little trouble opening the gas tank. After we searched for a good five minutes, these motor-cyclists started helping us as well. We all searched all over for 15 minutes including one or two other motorists. Then the cashier came out and the first place she looked was underneath the carpet under the driver’s seat, and there it was, the button to open the gas tank! This is just one example of how remarkably friendly and helpful people have been here. People have struck up conversations with us all over the place, most recently at the Amtrak station with a man and his deaf father. The son chatted with us at length, translating back and forth for his father in ASL. Even the attendant on our train here was incredibly kind and friendly. He was clearly expecting us when the train arrived, having already prepared 5 seats for us, with a plan to re-seat us after Grand Junction so that we can have better seats. Oh and by the way, the train was two hours late.

Now we’re sitting in the lounge of the Amtrak train, writing our Blog, reading Lightening Thief and enjoying the Colorado landscape, which looks like something out of the Zoom Zoom commercials or the TV show Bonanza. We are amazed by how vast, variable and undeveloped so much of the terrain is. We’ve also managed to scare off anyone who was seated around us by our obnoxious, loud behaviour while writing this Blog. Next stop: San Francisco.