Still learning how to use this blogger app on my phone. This will be my second attempt at posting this day as I got about halfway through the first attempt and accidentally deleted it.
Sleeping on a train is not exactly the easiest task to accomplish. After tossing and turning most of the night I was finally able to get a few hours of sleep. When I woke up I looked out the window and saw way in the distance by Lake Erie an amusement park. So at least I knew exactly where I was. It meant that we were coming into Sandusky, Ohio and that amusement park was Cedar Point. I had worked there for two summers in college. In the summer of 1997 I worked on the giant ferris wheel there and in the summer of 1998 I had my first serving job at the Silver Dollar Saloon. It seems like a different lifetime ago at this point.
I grabbed some coffee from the lounge car and sat back and relaxed as I watched the midwest coast on by out the window. From Sandusky it was on past Toledo (picture bellow) and then past South Bend Indiana. As we got closer to Chicago we crossed time zones and I knew I was getting close.
We were running about an hour behind schedule as we finally started to go through Chicago suburbs and into downtown. We passed US Cellular field on the way into town which is home to the Chicago White Sox.
Finally arriving at Union Station it seemed exactly the same as I remembered it over 20 years earlier when I had last visited it. I always remembered the staircases up to Canal Street which is where the end shootout scenes from the movie The Untouchables was filmed.
At this point I had about 4 hours, so I knew I wanted to get out and see the city. It was a little hot, but the way I looked at it I better get used to it. The moniker of "Windy City" actually proved to be very true today and helped alleviate some of the heat.
(I do not endorse the previous picture.)
So I knew it was lunchtime and I was hungry as hell so on a suggestion from Jester (a hiker I have known from the AT and PCT on previous trips) I headed to the elusive Billy Goat Tavern. This tavern has been around since 1934, but it really became famous as a result of the famous Cheezborger skit with John Belushi on Saturday Night Live. I'm not sure what I was really expecting when I got there but this place was awesome. So much history of Chicago and of the Cubs and the Billy Goat curse all over the walls, as well as a pretty damn good burger (get the double).
With plenty of time to get back to the station I just kept walking and walking around the city finally making my way back down to Willis Tower (the old Sears Tower). Though I would have loved to go up into the tower and do my best Ferris Beuller impression, I'm pretty sure my pack was not going to be allowed so I took a couple more pictures and headed back to the station.
3:00 finally came and I boarded my next, last, and longest train. The Southwest Chief runs once daily from Chicago to Los Angeles. The total time between cities is just over 43 hours. The cool thing about the trains once you get west of Chicago is that they are all double decker, and in addition to a small lounge car they also have full service dining cars, and giant observation cars. In these observation cars the seats are turned out towards big picture windows, so you can directly watch the countryside roll right by.
This might not look like much but this is me crossing the Mississippi River. I will try to get some pictures tomorrow of the rest of the train, as I will be spending the entire day on it tomorrow.
Patch
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