On the train through the Great Plains

Brad in the sightseer car
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Our train out of Chicago today wasn’t until 2:00, so we started the day with a long walk with more photography. Chicago is really a beautiful city with so many green spaces and parks. Brad really enjoyed it and kept saying we could live here until I reminded him that it is less charming under three feet of snow it the winter.

We checked out of our hotel and went to have a leisurely lunch at a little French restaurant. We sat outside and had baked brie and salads. We also had something called gruyere and onions flambé. It was a thin crispy flat bread with baked onions and cheese on top – delicious!

The plains
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Around 1:00, we made our way to the train station. It was very crowded, but we got on our train with no problem. (Another other for Carla, we had a fair amount of luggage but decided to carry it on instead of checking it. This worked well. There is a ton of space to store bags on the train and then you can get to stuff if you need it. If you can’t carry all your bags easily, there are “red cap” porters who can help.)

This leg of the train trip is on the Empire Builder. It’s a very nice train with a friendly crew. In the sightseer car, they have a team of national park people doing commentary on the areas we’re passing through. We enjoyed this on our southwestern train trip and were happy to have it on this one too.

A passing freight train
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Sleeping on the train this time was much better. We both actually managed to sleep most of the night.

The land in North Dakota was very appealing. Large flat expanses of beautiful land with very few people. We saw some houses in the middle of nowhere that we thought would be great to make home.