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more photosHidden Lake in Glacier National Park is visible from a trail that starts at the Logan Pass Visitor Center. It is near the top of the Continental Divide and is a popular fishing spot.
America on rails
Family vacation via train makes pit stops at Glacier National Park, Chicago and New York City
By Penny Nakamura / For The Bulletin
Published: September 27. 2009 4:00AM PSTLet the odyssey begin, I thought, as the Amtrak conductor yelled “All aboard!” at Portland's Union Station.
Yes, they actually still shout “all aboard.”
So my family and I took our surprisingly comfortable, wide seats, which would later turn into our beds, and looked out the train windows knowing this was probably our last family vacation together.
The ultimate objective of our trip was to deliver my 18-year-old son, Weston Koyama, to Bennington College in Vermont.
My husband, Hal Koyama, had a eureka moment when he got this idea: a train trip across the country on Amtrak, a 3,000-mile epic journey with stops in Glacier National Park, Chicago, Albany and New York City. The Empire Builder ends its route in Chicago, and from there we planned to switch to the Lake Shore Limited to continue on our eastward trek.
To be perfectly honest, I wasn't thrilled with the idea of riding a train for a total of 65 hours, but after some coaxing from my son and his younger sisters, Kiyoko, 14, and Taye, 11, I thought perhaps this would be a fun adventure.
Comfortable and clean
Amtrak's double-decker Empire Builder is an impressive, sleek silver train that was both comfortable and clean. This was a nice surprise to me, after having traveled by trains throughout many parts of the world where they aren't always clean or comfortable. To make matters even better, for sleeper car passengers, Amtrak provides full-size showers.
Leaving Portland's Union Station made us feel as if we had stepped back in time. The train station, built in 1896, has a nostalgic feel from the oak benches and ticket booths to the neon signs.
The train station is also more relaxed than most airports, with no security X-ray machines or long lines. Another plus for the train: You can check three 50-pound bags at no extra charge.
We left Portland at 4:45 p.m. and passed through beautiful, scenic areas, including the Columbia River Gorge.
I've driven Interstate 84 along the Gorge a number of times, but I'm always concentrating more on driving than sightseeing. So this laid-back approach on the train, with the conductor at the helm, was an eye-opening experience to really see the Gorge and all its beauty. It would be this way throughout the 16-hour journey to Glacier National Park.
For 360-degree views of the passing towns and landscape, passengers can go to the observation car and climb up to the top deck of a windowed lounge car.
As our train passed into Washington, a steward brought us complimentary champagne and a boxed dinner, which proved to be much better than airline food. Our steward gave us three options for our meal and explained the dining car wouldn't hook up with our train until we reached Spokane sometime around midnight. From then on, our meals would be aboard the dining car.
After we watched a gorgeous sunset from the observation deck, we decided to turn in. We simply pushed the yellow button in our cabin, and the steward came to change our seats into beds complete with linens and blankets.
When I woke up, I promptly opened up the curtain, and the view was nothing short of spectacular. Yes, Oregon's a gorgeous state, too, but Montana is called “Big Sky” country for a reason: expansive blue skies, unbelievably rugged mountains and the clearest blue rivers and lakes you've ever seen. I think I woke up somewhere near White Fish, which meant only about two hours until we reached East Glacier Station. We still had time for breakfast.
Breakfast in the dining car offered a range of choices from French toast to omelets. All meals in the dining car are included when you reserve a cabin in the sleeper cars. If you choose to reserve coach seats, you have the option of buying meals in the formal dining car or from a snack bar located below the observation deck.
The elegant beauty of the scenery made the final hour pass quickly. We watched in awe as the landscape unfolded and our conductor gave us some interesting historical anecdotes and geological points we were passing.
Glacier National Park
Before there was Amtrak, there was the Great Northern Railway, which, according to park records, had a huge hand in legislation that established Glacier as a national park in 1910.
James J. Hill brought his railway across the prairies and mountains and called this route The Empire Builder, a name that has endured.
Next year, the park will be celebrating its centennial, and information is available at www .glaciercentennial.org.
The campaign to lure tourists began in earnest when Great Northern Railway began its 1920s marketing slogan, “See America First.” It targeted wealthy Americans who might have been inclined to travel to Europe first, but with the lure of this luxury train and first-class accommodations, Glacier was being dubbed, “the American Alps.”
There are seven historical hotels, chalets and cabin-type accommodations throughout Glacier National Park.
Some are five-star hotels and others are more basic, rugged cabins, but all of them are located in gorgeous areas, close to hiking trails and lakes.
When we stepped off the train at East Glacier Station, the first hotel we saw was the grand Glacier Park Lodge, which is located a stone's throw from the historic train station. This lodge opened in 1913 and has been hosting tourists ever since with first-class service.
The Glacier lodge has Oregon roots, as it was modeled after the Forestry Building that was constructed for the 1905 Portland Lewis & Clark Exposition.
“Sixty trees were used in construction of the mammoth lodge, which the Great Northern hauled from Washington and Oregon — only one or two per flatcar since each weighed about 15 tons,” wrote Susan Olin in her book “Insiders' Guide to Glacier National Park.”
At the time Glacier lodge was built, officials wanted tourists to see all the glaciers capping the mountains that serve as a backdrop to this grand luxury hotel. But sadly, most of those glaciers have melted away. A slight sliver of white graces one outcropping, but from this vantage point, the glaciers that were once so prolific are no more.
The official Glacier National Park plaque at the station reads: “Of the 150 glaciers that existed in the area in 1850, only 26 remain today, and those glaciers are expected to be gone by 2030.”
Before any more melted away, we needed to see them.
Hotel staff members told us people often book rooms in the historic hotels and chalets up to a year in advance, and with next year's centennial, many of the rooms are already filling up. We managed to get the last cabin at the Rising Sun Motor Inn, which had its own quaintness and rustic charm.
The inn was built in the 1940s to support more visitors traveling by car. With the increasing popularity of motoring, Glacier National Park was no longer the sole domain of the upper class. Cars allowed the park to become more accessible to more people.
My husband pulled up to the l940s-era cabin, and though it was spartan, we knew we wouldn't be spending much time in there. There were trails to hike, boats to ride and car touring to do in this beautiful million-acre park.
I confess, my favorite part of our stay was the fact that we didn't have cell reception or Internet service. We were, for the first time in a very long time, completely unplugged.
Back on the rails
Our four days in Glacier National Park ended all too quickly, but there was still more of the country to see and explore.
Our next stop would be at the end of the Empire Builder route — Chicago — 29 hours later.
Soon after boarding, our steward encouraged us to join the wine and cheese tasting to be held after lunch in the dining car.
The cheese tasting included Oregon's Rogue Creamery blue cheese along with a host of other cheeses from the Midwest. Six wines, both red and white varietals, hailed from Oregon and Washington vineyards.
We passed through stretches of prairies, cornfields and ranches as we meandered through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and finally Illinois.
The conductor pointed out Pepin Lake in Wisconsin, which he said was where water-skiing first began.
This area, according to the conductor, is also renowned for Laura Ingalls Wilder, who grew up in Pepin, Wis., and based the setting of her first book, “Little House in the Big Woods,” on this area.
At long last, we arrived at Chicago's Union Station and were met promptly at 4 p.m. by our friends.
We checked some of our luggage into the lockers at the station and explored downtown Chicago, including a trip up the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, which was at one time the tallest building in the world.
The new, cantilevered skydeck, known as “the ledge,” allows visitors to seemingly step out onto air and look straight down 1,343 feet to the street below. It's a scary feeling to take that first step out into the clear glass boxes, where it feels as if there's nothing but air between you and the sidewalk 103 floors below. According to the Willis Tower guide, the actual height of the building is 1,450 feet, making it the tallest building in this country, but only the fifth-tallest freestanding structure in the world.
After visiting with our friends in Chicago, we left the Windy City and headed to Albany, N.Y., which was another sleeper car and 17 hours away.
We arrived in Albany, the capital of New York, in the afternoon and rented a car for our 45-minute drive to Bennington, Vt., where we delivered Weston to Bennington College. After making sure our son had all he would need for the school year and saying our goodbyes (a tearful one for me) we headed back to Albany for our last leg of the trip: New York City.
City that never sleeps
We boarded our final train at about 10:30 a.m. and rode into Pennsylvania Station in midtown Manhattan about 2½ hours later. From Penn Station, we took the subway down to our hotel near the financial district and a few short blocks from the sobering World Trade Center site, where a memorial museum displays thousands of artifacts from that day of destruction.
For three days we took in as many museums and, of course, shopping districts as we could. We also managed to get Broadway tickets to see this year's Tony Award-winning musical “Billy Elliot,” and we also procured tickets to “Jersey Boys” the following night.
The one museum we had never visited until this trip was the Tenement Museum, which was an incredibly interesting living history museum, with actors playing parts from life during the turn of the century, when new immigrants were arriving by the shiploads at nearby Ellis Island.
A stark contrast to the Tenement Museum is the Frick Museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where a wealthy Henry Clay Frick collected an unbelievable array of artwork throughout the world to adorn his beautiful 5th Avenue mansion. Both the palatial home and artwork are worth the visit to this somewhat lesser-known museum.
Back to Bend
So after having traveled and toured by trains, boats, subways and cars, it was time to take the plane back home.
While I loved our trip across the country, and yes, it was 100 percent better than I had anticipated, it was also nice to be in a plane knowing that in six hours of flight time we'd be touching down at the Redmond Airport, with only one plane change in Salt Lake City.
There's something to be said for fast jet-air service, but thinking back, there's also something very satisfying and gratifying about seeing America on the rails.
When all was said and done, the train ride across America proved to be an experience of a lifetime. Still, I don't think I could have done a straight haul from Portland to New York without our “tourist breaks” in Glacier National Park, Chicago, Bennington and New York City, all beautiful places in a beautiful country.
Penny Nakamura can be reached at halpen1@aol.com.
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