On Wednesday night we said goodbye to my parents after a great two-week visit. [See below for a big selection of photos from our visit to my grandparents house in Barnesville and the engagement party that my mom and dad threw for us at their house in Columbus last Sunday]. We boarded a Greyhound bus at the Columbus terminal, bound for Cincinnati two hours to the southwest. The bus ride to Cincinnati was uneventful. We had over two hours to kill in Cinci, so luckily Union Station, where our train ride began, is a bit of an art deco masterpiece that has recently been restored and made into museums.

Sadly, Amtrak has been relegated to one small room in the back of the station due to its low utilization. Only two passenger trains come through Cincinnati every other night (both after 1 am), and as we experienced on both legs of our trip from Cincinnati to Omaha, freight has a higher priority on the tracks (none of which are owned by Amtrak), causing large Amtrak delays. But the truth is we couldn’t have cared less, because a) you don’t travel Amtrak if you are in a hurry, and b) traveling coach class on Amtrak trains is like flying business class — the seats are huge and comfortable. Actually, it’s better, because the windows are bigger, the train is quieter, and on an airplane you can’t walk down to the observation car and watch the country fly by from big panoramic windows. Oh, and trains emit far fewer greenhouse gases.

We arrived in Chicago just in time for lunch. We had a couple of hours there to walk around the city a bit and get some yummy Chicago-style pizza. Unfortunately it was very rainy, so we couldn’t see the tops of the skyscrapers.

We then boarded the famous California Zephyr for the trip through Illinois and Iowa to Omaha, Nebraska. It rained the whole way, and the most interesting part was the flooded east side of the Mississippi river, where destruction from this June’s levy-breaking floods extends for six miles. Former farm fields looked like marshland where huge flocks of white pelicans and egrets have settled. It was surreal.

We arrived two hours late in Omaha, where we are visiting our friends Rob and Avery, who just moved to Omaha from San Francisco this spring. Rob and Avery have been awesome hosts, and Omaha is a fun city, with its thriving “Old Market” downtown, which has several cool bars and restaurants (we had excellent lamb pot roast and mussels at La Buvette, and hung out at Nomad Lounge). Today we toured Omaha’s excellent Joslyn art museum.

Tonight it’s back to the Amtrak station, where we board an overnight train to Denver, Colorado.

A visit to Mark’s grandparents & Our Engagement Party

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Amtrak Adventure Part 1

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