Uncle Bill, 93, bopped down on Amtrak again today. He only left himself two hours, which sounds like plenty of time to "bend an elbow" as he puts it (have a beer with his grand nephew), but when you subtract all the driving to and from... too ambitious. He missed his Coast Starlight going back and took a Cascades instead.
The former (Coast Starlight) is the double-decker that goes from Vancouver BC all the way to San Diego. As a younger family, we got to ride in the sleeper once, from Union Station (Portland) to San Diego and back. A gift from my mom.
The latter (Cascades) is a different design, built to go faster, but Americans are having trouble with their infrastructure, as they exhaust their resources on adventures abroad.
Americans could have an amazingly fun set of tourist routes, where the point is the trip as much as the destination. But infrastructure takes money and the public sector doesn't have any. Private enterprise backs the war effort, filling the void.
A lot of us miss the old USA of course. RIP Uncle Sam.
