So a few months ago, Amtrak had a sale on USA Rail Passes. Rather than the regular $499 rate, they were $299. I bought one on impulse. I was not sure if this was the best or worst idea ever. I am still not sure.
You can find the details HERE or you can read on where I explain it in my own words.
So you have a pass that is good for 30 days. You can take 10 train rides. Since my pass was a special offer, I had a very clear use by date. Normally, it is good for 120 days after purchase (30 days after first segment is traveled).
Thing I did not know before booking: Amtrak does not have WiFi west of Chicago. So my plans of working from a train were foiled. I had to be a bit more creative. I also needed to make sure I could be online completely during working hours. Not like arriving in a city at 4:00 am and not be able to check into a hotel / not be able to find somewhere open to work from. Same with checking out of hotels. I didn’t want to take trains that left at like 3:00 PM if I had to check out of a hotel at 11:00 AM. Most of my work is video calls, I didn’t want to be making these from a train station. Most sit in places, such as Starbucks, have their dining rooms closed because of Covid.
I only wanted to sleep in states I had never slept in before. I wanted to go to New Orleans. That was really all I needed to get started.
Leg 1: New York City to High Point, North Carolina
Going from NYC to New Orleans, I had to decide where to stop along the way. I tried to work in South Carolina but it would have used up extra legs on my pass. So North Carolina it is. Honestly, my main goal was to just cross this state off the list of states I have not slept in yet. So I just needed to find a stop I would arrive at after work hours since I would be working on the train. This left my options pretty limited so I ended up in High Point, North Carolina. It was the right timing, hotels were the right price, and BONUS – they have the world’s largest chest of drawers. Who wouldn’t want to see that?
You can read about that leg HERE.
Leg 2: High Point, NC to Birmingham, Al
Guys, I wanted to go to Tuscaloosa because how much fun is it to say TUSCALOOSA. There was really nothing I would want to see in any town in Alabama so I might as well get to say TUSCALOOSA. But Birmingham had cheaper hotels and most work-from-train friendly schedule
Leg 3: Birmingham, Al to New Orleans, LA
I have never in my life been to New Orleans. This is the stop I am most excited for on my trip. I purposely did not book Harrahs so I would not end up gambling the entire time
Leg 5: New Orleans, LA to Memphis, TN
I have been to Memphis but I have never slept in Tennessee. This was the perfect time for me to do so. This is why a Rail Pass is great. I would likely not travel to Tennessee for any reason, but the Rail Pass gives me an opportunity to stay there. My only plan on this one nighter is to walk from Tennessee to Arkansas over a bridge.
Leg 6: Memphis to Omaha, NE
Again, this is what is so great about a Rail Pass. I am never going to travel to Nebraska, but now I get to sleep there and cross it off my list! I also have a 6 hour layover in Chicago. I am going to go see The Bean.
Leg 7: Omaha, NE to Denver, CO
I have never been to Denver and this seems like the perfect time to go!
Leg 8: Denver, CO to Salt Lake City, UT
Hello Mormons!
Long Distance Sleeper! Salt Lake City, UT to Las Vegas, New Mexico!
Taking a break from my Rail Pass here to veer back in the direction I came from. My train choices from Utah bring me to California where I can go north to Washington or Oregon. But I have already slept in all 3 of these states and the goal is to get more states off my list. Since Amtrak doesn’t do well at going north and south once you are west of Chicago, I decided to zig zag and go from Utah to New Mexico, which means going back towards Chicago. I booked a sleeper and paid for it since you cannot upgrade your Rail Pass. I decided on New Mexico and could not stop myself from doing a one nighter in Las Vegas, NM
Leg 9: Las Vegas, NM to Albuquerque, NM
Why Albuquerque? Why not?
Leg 10: Albuquerque, NM to Flagstaff, AZ
I picked Flagstaff on purpose because it is close to Grand Canyon (I’ve never been) and Antelope Canyon. I planned to get an Air BnB for a month.
Where to go next?
I don’t really have any reason to go back home. I am working remotely, I can keep going forever. But I got stuck on where to go next. I don’t want to go to Las Vegas (well I do but…) so I could just keep travelling on the train and knock some more states off my list. I can easily take the train to Montana and North Dakota. But it will be November by then and I don’t want to pack a coat for this. I also don’t want to pack hiking shoes for Arizona. Those things are heavy and I don’t want to carry them for a month or 2, just to wear them for 2 or 3 days. I put a lot of back and forth thought into this and ended up cancelling my plans for Flagstaff and booked a flight home from Albuquerque. RIP the 10th leg on my Rail Pass.
Now that I am all booked, how to pack?
Same way I pack for any longer trip! Pack enough stuff for a few days and wash clothes and replace toiletries along the way. It was very hard to break my brain here. Normally on longer trips where I travelllllllllllllll (meaning going to new city/state/country/continent every few days), I am not in America. So I normally need to pack well and bring products you cannot find outside America. I did not need to do this for this trip but I could not make my brain comprehend this.
Yes, snacks for the train rides is a great idea! No you do not need to pack enough for 30 days to bring with you.
In the end, I packed:
2 pairs of shants
1 pair of stretch pants
3 t-shirts
3 pairs of pajamas (yes, more pajamas than clothes)
1 pair of socks so people don’t have to see my bare feet when I go through airport security (you’re welcome)
1 box of disposable masks
I brought one extra pair of cheapo Mary Janes “just in case” as I started doing after getting trapped in a massive rain storm in Germany one time and I didn’t have a dry pair of shoes to put on after.
Enough toiletries for a month? Yes because I could not stop myself. Nothing full sized other than deodorant though. I didn’t even fill a full quart bag of liquids.
I also packed a hoodie in case I ran into Autumn anywhere along my rides.
Technology wise I brought my work laptop, my phone (obviously?) and an MP3 player because I refuse to use my phone for this.
Up next, I will recap my first week and hope to report success with traveling around America on a train while simultaneously not losing my job for traveling around America on a train.
OMG! I’m so excited to read all about this – I’ve been waiting (im)patiently. The itinerary sounds pretty amazing.
Also question re: “shants” – are these like pants with zip off bottoms that turn into capris/shorts? Inquiring minds want to know. I admire your minimalist packing skillz.
Hey Eliza!
Shants are a hybrid of shorts and pants, except longer than shorts and shorter than pants. No zipper required! Technically the same thing normal people call capris, but I prefer saying shants.
I am pushing my packing style to the limits next year. I’ll be traveling for 12 weeks in Eurasia. I am in the process of giving myself permission to buy a bigger bag because my hiking shoes take up 1/4 of the space. BUT the rule is that I can only bring what fits in a carry on + my hiking shoes. I hope this goes well.
Hi. So did you take or are you still in the process of taking this trip? When could we be expecting a trip report? I made three NY to Las Vegas (NV) trips on Amtrak, so I’ve been looking forward to your TR to compare notes. My trips were all years ago.
Do you have a Vegas trip coming up? I remember you like being in Vegas for the holidays.
Hey John! The trip is over and I have been terrible at posting. Your comment motivated me to get up the first post though! A few more to come.
When you went to Vegas, did you go through Arizona or Los Angeles? It bothers me that you cannot fully get to Vegas.
And yes, I am going to be back in Vegas next month! Planning that trip now. Kind of depressing to not have a brand new American Casino Guide to go through.
When I made my train trips from NYC to Vegas, Amtrak still had the Desert Wind. That train began its run as The California Zephyr in Chicago and traveled through Midwest farming states to Denver, then through The Rockies to Salt Lake City, UT.
In SLC, some of the cars split off from the California Zephyr in a one or two hour midnight layover and those cars became “The Desert Wind.” The Desert Wind then ran through Utah to Vegas and then continued to L.A.
All of my NY to Vegas trips were eventful and not in a good way. Stuff happened.
On one trip, during a freezing night in the middle of the winter, the NYC to Chicago train, the “Broadway Limited,” very, very slowly came to a full stop in the middle of nowhere. The emergency lights came on, and the car I was in became very cold, very fast. The train remained stopped for two hours. No explanation was available. The staff were all asleep. Eventually, the car was jolted by a some big bumps. Then the train resumed its journey.
It turned out that the part of the train I was on had “decoupled” from the part of the train that I wasn’t on. The bumps were caused by the reunification of the two parts. I always wondered how long it took for the engineer to realize that he was no longer pulling part of his train.
On another trip, the train broke down about 50 miles out of SLC. They said the train had a new, highly computerized engine, and they didn’t have the manual in order to know how to fix it. They said buses would come to take us onward. This was in the middle of a vast dry lake bed South of SLC in the middle of the night. Eventually a pick up truck pulled up alongside the train. The truck had brought the manual on how to fix the engine. The engine was restarted, and we never had to switch to buses, but we did arrive in Vegas about eight hours late. (We were already several hours behind schedule before the breakdown.)
But it was worth it. Arriving just behind the Union Plaza casino is the way to arrive in Vegas. So much better than the airport. The Vegas train station *was* the Union Plaza. To get to the street, you had to walk through the casino, and there you were at the head of Fremont Street after dark, pre the ridiculous canopy of the “Fremont Street Experience.” Beautiful.
My hotel honored my reservation even though I was hours late, and they didn’t have a room in my category (cheap). They gave me a better room on a high floor with a spectacular view. The room had a through-the-wall heat pump air conditioner (my favorite) where I could make the room as toasty warm as I wanted in a couple of minutes (or as cold in summer)) and the bathroom had a large shower. After three or four days on the train, that room was nirvana.
It was also the universally dumped on Circus Circus, but in those days, their tower building West of the main building had rooms that were like a good to somewhat higher end motel’s with large, clean rooms and bathrooms.
Once registered, you could go to the tower building by walking down a side street alongside the casino and never see the inside of the clown-themed facility. The high rise’s lobby looked like a newer East Side (Manhattan) apartment building’s lobby. Not classy, but not kitschy. The elevators were fast, and I rarely saw a soul around. I loved it.
I was very disappointed when Amtrak stopped its Las Vegas service. I hear they *may* resume it at some point. The snafus (and there were other ones besides the two I described) made it an adventure, something you could write about 20 years later in someone’s blog.
What great stories! I really hope Amtrak resumes to Vegas again. I would love to pull up in a train. I’ve already done plane and bus.
Pingback: Amtrak Trip: From New York City to High Point, NC - i put my life on a shelf
Pingback: Amtrak: High Point, NC to Birmingham, AL On the Toilet Train - i put my life on a shelf