I'm taking another Amtrak adventure. Also, seeking tips for Glacier National Park

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’ll agree. While perhaps not pertinent to this thread, I’ll add that if you find yourself in southern Alberta, a trip to Waterton Lakes National Park should be in order. Many hiking trails, ranging from “short and easy” to “extremely challenging; for experienced hikers only.” Wildlife are abundant; I’ve seen grizzly bears on the road to Cameron Lake (from the safety of my car, of course), and bighorn sheep wandering through the town. Our OP should not be surprised to find the same things in Glacier NP—after all, animals ignore national boundaries.

As for the Prince of Wales Hotel, here it is:

It’s a unique structure. Walk through the front doors (on the other side of the photo), and the lobby stretches all the way up to the roof. Every room has a view. There is a pleasant lounge with great views of the lake and town (I’ve had a few lunches in there), and a dining room where you can enjoy afternoon tea, then dinner. Everywhere in the building, the emphasis is on the view. Well worth visiting if you’re in the area.

Okay, let’s end this hijack. However, OP, I hope this gives you a reason to return someday, and take the Red Bus tour that takes you to the Prince of Wales.

22

So I am writing this from the Crowne Plaza hotel in Portland. Today’s Coast Starlight was over two hours behind schedule, so I missed my connection to the Empire Builder (or its bus replacement).

I am rebooked on the Empire Builder for tomorrow. Unfortunately this means I will miss the Big Sky Circle tour since I’m arriving a day late. I tried to reschedule it but it’s sold out the other days I’ll be there. Maybe I’ll try to see if I can get on standby for one of the tours in case there are any last minute cancellations.

On the plus side, Amtrak puts you up in a pretty decent hotel when you miss your connection. And they gave me a to go meal from the dining car before we got to Portland.

Oh, and I found out why the bus replacement for the train. According to our hotel shuttle driver a building caught fire near the tracks, and they are afraid it could collapse onto the tracks. Therefore those tracks are closed and the trains that use them are cancelled.

23

When I took the train from San Diego to the Tri-Cities in 2002 to meet a girl I’d fallen for online, the Coast Starlight was running two hours behind by morning, so in Klamath Falls they had those of us catching the Empire Builder disembark and get on a bus which got us to Portland on time to make the connection. I’m surprised they didn’t do anything similar for you, but at least they’re taking care of you.

If you have time tomorrow, there’s an arcade called Ground Kontrol a few blocks from the train station that’s got lots of vintage and modern games and a huge pinball collection. Good way to spend an hour.

24

I kinda chuckle at this. The one time I took the Coast Starlight north from SLO to Salinas from the end of a bike trip thru Big Sur, I noticed out the window that vehicles on Hwy 101 were generally going faster than the train we were on - it was a bit frustrating at times. I since learned that riding Amtrak’s connector bus from SLO to San Jose is much, much quicker than taking the Coast Starlight train, and there are more departures northbound each day as well - much more convenient and efficient, and have done that instead of the train since.

25

At Klamath Falls they did announce that for people taking the bus to Medford, they were holding the bus. I guess either they don’t have the connector bus to Portland anymore, or at that point we were so far behind even the next available bus wouldn’t have gotten us there in time. IIRC at that point we were over three hours behind and made up some time on the way to Portland, but obviously not enough.

ETA Yeah, I just checked Amtrak’s schedule from Klamath Falls to Portland, and the only option it shows is the Coast Starlight. So I guess that bus service doesn’t exist anymore.

26

This really depends on the track. On a straight section the train can go ~80 mph — when I took the Zephyr a few years ago we were flying along across the Nevada desert faster than the traffic on I-80. But on curvy mountain sections like the one north of SLO the train has to go quite slow, which probably cancels it out.

27

Sorry for the triple post, but it appears I’ve been upgraded to a full bedroom. Score! Presumably there were no more roomettes available. But unfortunately still the bus service to Spokane, so I don’t get to actually use the bedroom until we get there around midnight.

And @Smapti, thanks for the tip about Ground Kontrol. I’m hanging out there now with a beer and nachos. Turns out I suck at space invaders. I’m decent at Tetris.

28

I don’t think it was a scheduled route so much as a bespoke bus they set up specifically so we could make our transfer. This was 25 years ago, of course, so I can’t check.

The last time I was there I won so many free replays on Terminator 2 that I had to walk away because I was getting tired of playjng it. :slight_smile:

29

On the walk between the train station and the arcade I crossed Flanders Street. I couldn’t help but say “stupid Flanders” as I crossed. That is all.

30

On this note, they just delivered a bunch of meals to the Metropolitan Lounge for us sleeper passengers who are going to be on the bus. It’s just stuff like packaged deli sandwiches and salads, not like dining car fare, but we do get food.

31

Ned Flanders is in fact named after that street. Matt Groening is a Portland native.

(There’s also a Lovejoy St nearby, as well as a Quimby St., Terwilliger Blvd., and Evergreen Terrace.)

Did you happen to spot the historic Hung Far Low sign?

32

Sometimes when I’m going from Emeryville to Riverside in southern California I find it more convenient to take the San Juaquins (now called Gold Runner) to Bakersfield then the connector bus to Riverside over the Grapevine. A couple of weeks ago on the return journey the bus got stuck in traffic over the hill and was too late for the last train for Emeryville, so they put be on the train to Sacramento and had me get off in Stockton and then they drove me the hour and a half right to my door in Oakland in the crew shuttle!

That was very cool.

33

My route was actually somewhat convoluted. I took the Pacific Surfliner from San Diego to LA, but instead of getting on the Starlight there, I took a bus to Bakersfield, then the San Joaquins to Sacramento, and got on the Starlight there.

At that time the San Joaquins had a full service dining car, but it was “flexible dining” like the east coast trains use (I.e. premade meals that the crew just heat and serve) instead of being made to order like the west coast trains have, and you got a table to yourself instead of having to share with strangers. I had stuffed shells in marinara sauce.

From looking at the Gold Runner website, I see they no longer have that but are currently serving free snacks and drinks onboard and are eventually going to be serving hot meals to passengers at their seats.

34

I was on one of the San Juaquins that had a rack of free snacks, but the rack was unsupervised. I was one of the first ones on the train, so I got my single bag of potato chips, but – some people being what they are – the rack was pretty quickly emptied, and never refilled by any staff. Arggh.

35

Yep, I knew that, and that many Simpsons characters are named after Portland streets.

I didn’t see it. If I passed it I didn’t notice it.

36

It’s in the same area as the arcade and the train station. It originally advertised a Chinese restaurant that closed decades ago. It means “red flower restaurant” in Cantonese. It stayed in place long after the restaurant went under, and the community eventually restored it and maintains it because everybody loves fourth-grade humor.

37

I had to look up where you might be referring to. I know you’re generally in Portland OR now, but this was then. I gathered your destination was probably in one of CA, OR, or WA.

Anyhow, Tri-Cities - Wikipedia says there’s three areas going by that moniker in California, one in Oregon, and one in Washington. And there’s a bunch more by that or similar names scattered across the country. I bet you meant the one in Washington.

But I had fun exploring them all. Thanks for opening that rabbit trail. :grin:

38

Washington is the correct one, yes. Nice little middling-sized metro area in eastern WA where three rivers meet, where a big part of the Manhattan Project was based back in the day.

39

So, let me tell you about my odyssey getting to Glacier. I already told you about how I missed my connection from the Coast Starlight to the Empire Builder, got put up for the night at the Crown Plaza, and then spent the afternoon playing vintage arcade games and drinking craft Hefeweizen (which seems like such a Portland thing to do).

And I already mentioned that due to a fire just north of the Portland station all trains using that track were canceled, so we got a bus to Spokane instead of a train. Us sleeper passengers were given food in the Metropolitian lounge and we boarded our bus on time for an uneventful ride to Spokane, which probably got us there faster than the train would have. The bus dropped us off at the Spokane train station around 11:00. That’s when we learned the section from Seattle was 4 hours behind schedule, so instead of boarding our train at maybe 12:30 or so, we wouldn’t get on the train until after 4:00 am. And we were stuck at the train station in Spokane until then. So while I’d been upgraded to a full bedroom due to missing my connection, I didn’t actually get to use during most of the night. Instead, I was stuck trying to nap in the train station. Finally we boarded the Empire Builder train around 4:30 am, and I went to my bedroom and went straight to bed. I got maybe a couple hours of sleep at most, got up too late for breakfast in the dining car. But hey, I got lunch on train, which I wouldn’t have gotten if we’d arrived at glacier on schedule.

So once I arrived at East Glacier I pretty much spent the rest of the day trying to book a new Red Bus tour since I’d missed the one I was supposed to be on that day, and then napping since I’d gotten so little sleep the previous night. I did manage to get on a different Red Bus tour on Friday, except it left from St. Mary, rather than from the Glacier Park Lodge where I was staying like the Big Sky Circle tour would have. So then I had to find transportation to St. Mary. The lodge’s shuttle would have gotten me there too late, so I had to take a taxi which cost more than the tour itself.

Thursday I did the Two Medicine boat tour as planned, and yes I did do the hike to Twin Falls, which I enjoyed. It wasn’t a guided hike, though. Normally it would have been but the company was down a man, and it was too smokey.

Friday, which originally was supposed to be a free day, I did my replacement Red Bus Tour up to Logan Pass. That was enjoyable and I’m glad I did it, although it was so smokey the views weren’t as good as the could have been. Then back to the lodge, did some souvenir shopping, and had my prepaid dinner. Then back to the train station for my return trip.

Tracking the train on Amtrak’s app, it looked like the westbound Empire Builder was actually on schedule that day. It departed the previous stop only 15 minutes late, which for Amtrak is pretty much on time. And then the train had to stop at Browning for an hour and 40 minutes due to a signal outage. Not really Amtrak’s fault (I assume the signals are BNSF’s responsibility since it’s their track), but they were doing so well, and were on time for the whole run, until just before they got to my stop. Finally we boarded and I settled into my Roomette and went to bed. And once again we had to get off the train in Spokane and board a bus in the middle of the night, so once again I didn’t get to make full use of the sleeper. At least the buses were on time so we weren’t stuck there for hours this time.

The bus got us to Portland on time, again probably earlier than the train would have gotten us there. I went to the Metropolitan Lounge and from here the journey was pretty uneventful. The Coast Starlight was right on time the whole way. Ironically, this was the one train that mattered the least to me if it was on time. In fact I was kind of hoping this one would be delayed so I could get a little more sleep rather than arriving in Sacramento at the scheduled time of around 6:30. But no, we actually got to Sacramento early, and our car attendant came and woke me up around 5:00.

Honestly I found this trip a little disappointing, mostly because thanks to that delay and missed connection at beginning I had so little time to actually spend at Glacier. What little time I had at Glacier I did enjoy, I just wish I had more of it. The actual experience onboard the trains was pleasant as always, but the delays sucked. And the bus replacement sucked, but I can’t really blame Amtrak for that since the fire that necessitated the cancellation of the train wasn’t their fault.

ETA: At least I did buy travel insurance, and I am filing a claim to try to get some compensation for my missed day.

40

Thanks for the trip report,@WildaBeast! Sounds like you made the best of it!

I think that’s why I hesitate to take the train for anything longer than from Sac to/from the Bay Area - if a connection (to anything) is involved, there is high risk that your whole plan may crumble and you will have to re-adjust on the fly - which you appear to have done really well. The longer the trip, the more opportunity for something to go wrong. Being flexible is key. I also note what you said about the buses appearing to get you to destinations faster than the train would have. Traveling on long-distance trains is an adventure, but not always the one advertised.