The private bedrooms are the best but also the most expensive. I did a mix of coach and roomettes. Private Roomettes offer the luxury of lying down but not much else. Everything can be booked through Amtrak.Ĭoach is the most inexpensive option, seats are similar to business class on budget airlines. You can hop off the train and make stops, but you'll have to book each leg separately. From Chicago I boarded the Lakeshore Limited, skirting the Great Lakes through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, finally arriving in Penn Station New York. In Emeryville I boarded the California Zephyr, a train which over three days winds through the state of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa and finally Illinois. I took the Pacific Surfliner from LA to Santa Barbara, then an eight hour bus from Santa Barbara to Emeryville, just outside of San Francisco. I started in LA and finished at Penn Station, NYC. Where did you start and end? What were your accommodations like?
To think you can fly this in five hours staring at a route map that hints of these places, but in four days you can glimpse the heart of this great country and meet some of the people that make it so. We ran six hours behind due to a litany of issues like frozen tracks and elk crossings and whatnot but I didn't care. It's a Wes Anderson-esque experience (minus the delightful color schemes, sadly) with a cast of characters thrown together, many of whom force you to reassess preconceived judgements and all the while this incredible film reel of the American West flashes past. Miles of open prairie land and blooming orange sunrises in Nebraska. 3,814 miles through eleven states winding through the Sierra Nevada, across the Rockies and over the endless plains of the Midwest. Waking up to the great red rocks of Utah peppered with snow, peering into the backyards of people you'll never meet in places you'll never know. So in a moment of madness I cancelled my return flight in favor of taking the train.įrom Pacific to Atlantic coast, the journey takes four days. It took six months to drive from New York to LA in our old bus and to unpick the rich detail of each mile in a six hour flight, to miss the backbone of America and feel nothing but a slight bump of turbulence over the Rocky Mountains, just didn't seem right. We LOVE this idea! Why did you decide to take this trip? Words + Photography by Lucy Rose Laucht of These Foreign Lands After writer-photographer Lucy Laucht took an ‘85 Westfalia from the Big Apple to Hollywood, she decided to once again explore the spectacular lands that wait for us all between the coastlines, this time heading east and this time on a train. In short, it’s the trip-and we know someone who just did it up proper. The prospect is as inviting as it is timeless a matter of finally completing the dream trip you and every other wandering mind first conjured up as a sparkling idea as a teenager. That’s why this week's #BirthdayBucketList item is the great adventure of traveling America by train. You roll by mountains, forests, lakes, fields, rivers, plains, and beaches in total awe-struck wonder. Unlike sitting aboard a plane, you can behold much more than clouds. Unlike driving a car, you can relax and daydream.
That’s because when it comes down to it, a seat by the window on a train car is honestly the best way to see this country. Riding the rails has long been romanticized in the grand lore of America.
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