No-Nonsense Travel Forum

There's an actual Southwest-only road trip coming up later

The point of the trip is the Midwest part...the rest is just to get back home.

OK, I changed the name a bit. Is everyone happy now?

It's your trip-call it what you want. I'm just looking forward to it.

I promised you all a twist for this road trip and here it is...we're planning to take Amtrak's Southwest Chief to Chicago! Honestly, we're not expect this to be the most luxurious way to get there (or the cheapest), but at the very least it will give us something to talk about. Of course, all of this is subject to change. The details of our itinerary will be posted in the blog in a few days.

I looked at the Amtrak web site and saw the dining car menu. Grilled cheese, hot dog, pizza, chicken tenders, and macaroni and cheese. I had to double check to make sure this wasn't the children's menu. In the movies, trains always look more elegant than that. It still sounds like fun though.

Enjoy the train trip!

Amtrak's on-time record is abysmal, so you may spend the daylight hours looking at something other than what you were originally expecting, but that's the way you guys roll anyway, right?


The previous poster was indeed looking at the children's menu (page 4), and should have scrolled down to the regular part (pages 2 & 3):

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... 201109.pdf

Meals are included if you book sleeping car accommodation.


Amtrak has a route guide for the Chief:

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... f_2009.pdf


The Southwest Chief is the successor to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe's Super Chief, one of the great glamor trains of the past. It used to arrive at Dearborn Station, which still exists, now used for retail and offices. You will arrive at Union Station. Both listed in the architecture guides, of course!


Was happy to see on the blog that you are adding a day in Mark Twain country.

The route guide is already posted in the blog, I just haven't uploaded the new page yet. I have the menu ready to post also.

We don't expect much of anything, so it would be very difficult to be disappointed based on our expectations. I've read all the horror stories, which to me makes it all the more interesting to give it a try.

I might have to shave a few days off the schedule. It has ballooned to 5 weeks, which is pushing the amount of time we are comfortable being away from home. We don't get tired of traveling, but being away for that long is hard on everyone at home, including the dogs.

HostDave wrote:... We don't expect much of anything, so it would be very difficult to be disappointed based on our expectations ...

Train rides are fun, and the passengers generally a sociable bunch.

... I might have to shave a few days off the schedule ...

Since you are planning a later, more focused Southwest trip, you might ditch some of that part, and take Amtrak part of the way back. Maybe the Sunset Limited from El Paso or even Houston.

Oh wow. I love trains. This will be fun and interesting. I have to admit I never dreamed you would travel from San Diego to Chicago by train. That is a surprising but great twist.

This is sort of an experiment to see if it is a reasonable way to get to the eastern parts of the US without flying. I don't like to fly, but I'm willing to. Just that when we're starting a road trip we take different supplies along and hauling that stuff on a flight isn't going to happen. Unfortunately, the schedules going east to west don't work for us, so we have to drive in that direction all the way home. Otherwise we end up in LA or Palm Springs and have to get home from those places at rush hour (8am-ish). We COULD take the train from LA to Oceanside (our closest Amtrak station), but then we're still not quite home (we're an hour north of downtown San Diego, just FYI). In other words, too much effort at the end of a road trip . We like the road trips because they just end and we're home with no additional hassles other than returning the car the next day.

I've padded the schedule with an extra day even in places like Roswell. This is just in case we get stuck somewhere along the way. It makes it easier to catch up by cutting a day or two off of the less important stops like I had to do during the Pacific Coast RT.