All Aboard!

The journey to Montana deserves a post...all by itself.  :)  As mentioned in the previous post, we decided to take a train this time to Montana, since Sophie isn't a free plane ticket anymore. 

Our journey began bright and early June 27th... our friend Nick dropped us off at the Crawfordsville Depot...a very little train depot might I add.  Here we are... all set to go.

Sophie had her hands over her ears most of the time while waiting for the train...she was afraid the whistle would be too loud.

It arrived on time and we climbed in.  Eric and I were extremely surprised at how nice the train was... we had been on the Indy to Chic train years ago and didn't remember it being nice at all.  The train attendant found us a 4-seater where the seats faced each other- it was perfect for our first leg of the trip. 

The kids were absolutely perplexed at this point.  As soon as we started moving they were glued to the windows, watching everything go by.  Our trip up to Chicago took us through tons of farmland, little towns, and a few rivers.  I had to catch myself a few times saying, "Boy, I feel sorry for these people who live right by the train tracks." (Uh... I, myself, grew up next to the tracks and you almost forget they're there!)

Eric rigged up Sophie's headphones so they fit better- genius.  The kids listened to the Cars soundtrack for a little bit but were mostly entertained by just watching out the window!

We arrived in Chicago about 10:00 (CT) and our big train that would take us to MT wasn't leaving until 2:00.  We had lunch at Potbelly Sandwiches, walked around downtown a bit, and took a water taxi to Navy Pier.  It was fun, but the kids were super tired at this point.  And so were we... we were pretty anxious to just get on the train.

There was an ENORMOUS line to get onto the train but they had anyone with small children go to the front... we were so lucky!  We had first dibs on seats and had 4 seats, side-by-side.  As soon as we were settled in, the kids took a nap- unprompted!  They were exausted.

A few things about the train:

• From Chicago to Whitefish we travelled about 2,000 miles.  The train has a max speed of 110 mph but the average speed is about 55 mph.  In the wide open spaces of the country we went about 80 mph.  Here's something crazy though- on our trip back, due to the heat, we were under a heat restriction which meant we couldn't travel faster than 60 mph.  Apparently the heat makes the rails expand a bit- honestly I don't know how this effects the train but it must be concerning enough to slow us down.  Needless to say, we were over 4 hours late on our return trip- mostly due to this restriction.
• On the train there is so much room!  It's like airplane seating but the seats go back a lot farther, and there's quite a bit of space between you and the seat in front of you.  This was particularly great for Eric.
• There is a foot rest that extends from your seat as well as a foot rest the drops down from the seat in front of you!
• Lots of room for luggage.  We never checked bags and we had access to everything the entire trip.
• The cars had two floors.  The bottom floor of our car was restrooms and luggage space.
• We were in the coach car.  There's also a sleeper car (for extra $).  We hope to go that route next time we take the train.
• There's also a cafe/observation car.  The top of it is covered completely with windows (the sides AND the ceiling!) so you can see all around you.  There's tabletop seating in this car as well as some bench-type seating.  As I write this I have NO idea why I never took pictures of the different cars! Ugh! The bottom of this car was a snack car with more seating and a snack bar filled with pop, crackers, candy, sandwiches, soup, etc.  Side note:  They had single-serve hotdogs packaged with a bun and everything.  All you had to do was pop it in the microwave for a minute and voila.  It wasn't too bad- the bun was a bit chewy... naturally.
• Two cars in front of us was the dining car.  We only ate breakfast in the dining car because we felt it was the most important meal of the day and we had packed things for the other meals.  There are 4-top tables with a kitchen in the middle.  There were servers and at some meals you had to make reservations.  The food was actually really good.  The kids had pancakes and oatmeal.  Eric and I had the omelet special for the day.  

The kids were absolutely awesome throughout the whole trip... considering we were on the train for 36 hours.  We only needed to put on two movies the entire 2-day trip out- impressive!  They chose Cars and Berenstein Bears.

Dining Car- breakfast!

Going through North Dakota-- can you tell?

My mom made a really cute bag for each of the kids that we could tie to the back of the chair in front of them and I would put toys/activities in it throughout the day.  The kids loved it and looked forward to something new to do.  (Find out more HERE on Mom's blog)

Playing with Silly Putty- big hit!

Pipe Cleaners

 Lots of books- here the kids are getting ready for bed.  They did great sleeping beside each other.

 Mom also sent along some really fun projects for the kids including a super cute activity book that she made (find it HERE on her blog)- complete with dry erase crayons so they could do them over and over again.

 The tabletop seating in the observation car was hot property.  We often tried to get seats and they were filled.  After much perseverence, we got seats!  It was fun-- this was when we were getting into Montana so it was awesome seeing complete flatland from all directions to mountains- BAM! There seemed to be no hills- just flat land to mountains.

 There was a volunteer for the Trails and Rails program that talked about Glacier National Park and the history in Montana.  It was all very interesting!  We did get to drive right around the southern boarder of Glacier and it was absolutely amazing.  We followed the Flathead River most of the time and at some points I thought I was going to lose my lunch it was such a huge drop off next to the train!  We traveled up through Morias Pass (at the elevation of 5,200 feet) and also crossed the Continental Divide.  It was just dark enough that the pictures didn't turn out but we could see everything- it was amazing!  We went through lots of tunnels and also snow sheds, which is a metal awning built out from the mountain and the train travels under it.  It's built so that the snow falling down the mountain won't effect the train.

 Someone was tired of getting her picture taken.

The kids passed some of their time at the very end by playing boxing with the backs of their seats.  Eric and I kept getting after them because it was the best part of the trip- but they were too busy "punching".

We made it into Whitefish, Montana almost 2 hours late so it was dark (hence no pictures outside) and it was about 10:30 PM (12:30 Indiana time!).  For some strange reason the kids were WILD.  I can't tell you how crazy they were in the train depot.  While Eric was getting the car rental squared away the kids ran in circles around me.  We got our car and drove about 90 minutes to the cabin and were greeted by Grandpa and Grandpa!  Home Sweet Home!



Pics of Montana coming...