Tag: amtrak
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Pacific Coast Highway Day 1: Seattle to North Bend, Oregon (Aug. 11, 2021)
Initially, my cross-country route had included a rail trip from Seattle to San Francisco, but about a month before I was scheduled to leave, the Lava Fire in Northern California burned the Dry Canyon Bridge, stopping service for Amtrak’s Coast Starlight train south of Klamath Falls and causing major backups clear to Colorado from diverted…
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Seattle, Day 2: Open Books, Pike Place Market, Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum, and The Bureau of Fearless Ideas
(August 10, 2021) My second day in Seattle, I focused on my business mission for the trip: exploring the bookish side of the city for inspiration on what I could accomplish with Longleaf Press, a literary nonprofit I had acquired in the spring. The press was founded in the late ’90’s by my undergraduate mentors,…
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Couchsurfing in Seattle
(August 9) Traveling overnight on the Empire Builder train from West Glacier to Seattle, I slept most of the way. Normally after sunset, I take my inflatable sleeping pad to the observation car and stretch out in the narrow space between the seats and the windows, but on this particular stretch, I was so exhausted…
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Glacier National Park Without a Car, in the Rain
(August 8, 2021) I woke up this morning around 5 AM to the sound of heavy drops splashing against the rainfly of my one-person tent. It’s the same tent I took on my solo, cross-country train trip in 2017, but that time, I somehow managed to get from Atlantic to Pacific and back without having…
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Shuttle to the Sun: Glacier National Park Without a Car
The beauty of traveling alone is that it facilitates meaningful connections with people you may not have gotten to know otherwise, but paradoxically, it can also make you feel your solitude more acutely. Sometimes both things are true at once.
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Navigating East Glacier and the Blackfeet Reservation without a Car
With the current rental car shortage, I wasn’t sure whether a stop at Glacier was going to be feasible, but after some research, I discovered inexpensive public transportation options in and around the park (more details on that later in this and the next post). As I was planning the trip, I also heard an…
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How to Travel on Amtrak with the USA Rail Pass: 4 Brief Lessons
The concept of the Amtrak Rail Pass is simple: for $499 (or less, if you happen to catch a sale), you get “10 rides… over 30 days to your choice of over 500 destinations.” Planning your route is slightly more complicated, but this post will give you some basic knowledge and tips that should make…
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Choo-Choo!
It’s been several years since I’ve kept up with my website in any kind of meaningful way, but since so much has changed for me in the last year–and since I’m about to embark on yet another epic train trip (this time to try and decide upon a new place to call home)–I thought this…
Shannon Camlin Ward 