home again

9.26.06

I walked around Chicago with all my bags because trains into Michigan don’t allow checked baggage, and it was three dollars an hour to store my bag in a locker. I wasn’t carrying that much weight, so I just took it with me. I walked to Millennium Park and shot some photos of the cool architecture, then went to the Art Institute of Chicago. There was a couple cool photo and sculpture exhibits going on. I stayed there for an hour then headed to the train. The cool thing was that the money I got from Amtrak paid for everything. It paid for dinner, breakfast, Art Institute ticket, and some lunch I grabbed on the way to the train home. I even had two dollars to spare.

The train ride back wasn’t too bad, I watched a movie and then slept some and red some of a book and I was there! Train trip across America finished. It was worth the money, no question. I would, and maybe will do it again. The official stats for the trip ended up being:

23 states 160 hours on 7 different trains 6 hours on a bus 7,028 miles traveled

and over 1,000 photos taken (though edited down to much more manageable number).

“Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me.”

- Thoreau