Windy City

We started our great road trip with car caravan to Milwaukee. One of the cars had some um... navigational challenges. But in the end we were all settled in our hotel for a short night and a very early departure for the Milwaukee train station. As we navigated the rush hour traffic in the dark, Jeff discover his IPhone was not working properly and his GPS was not functional. After a few tense moments we found our way to the train station where a very amused Amtrak employee printed out all 80 tickets we needed for our two week long adventure for nine of us.

After a short train hop we got off in Chicago for a few hours of site seeing. I really wanted to take a boat trip which described the architecture and history of Chicago. The difficulty lay in the fact that our main luggage was checked so we could only take as many warm clothes with us to Chicago as we actually wanted to carry with us on the train. In the end we decided to chance the boat ride. It was a wonderful way to get an overview of the city. And fortunately the sun came out and we were just barely warm enough. For those less interested in architecture and history we also got to navigate through a lock onto Lake Michigan as part of the tour.

Trying to keep warm on the boat ride gave us a huge appetite and we headed back to the train station for Chicago style hot dogs before boarding the Texas Eagle. We spent the evening hours rolling past endless farm fields. The fall colors in the fading sunlight made a dazzling display. We fell asleep just after seeing the beautifully lit arch in St. Louis and woke up in time to see the Bill Clinton house in Hope, AK and dive into a breakfast of bacon and eggs in the dining car.