The Empire Builder

The train was amazing. It was really relaxing and fun. The Mr. drove me to the Seattle King St. train station, which is a beautiful station. It was designed by the same person that designed Grand Central station in New York. It is in the middle of being renovated to restore it to it's original beauty. Here are some photos. I am going to uploading a lot of photos into this post, so I will make them all small, and please feel free to click on them and view full size.

I read 1/2 of the book "When Iron Gates Yield" written by Geoffrey Bull, a British missionary to Tibet who was imprisoned when Chinese Communists conquered and occupied Tibet in 1950. It is very interesting so far. Then I met a woman named Emily who ended up being a very good friend (Hi Emily if you are reading this!!!) We had common interests of semi-precious stones, beading, and art/coloring) My train ended up being delayed for 2 hours. They first announced that there was something wrong with a sleeper car. The second announcement an hour later explained that the first problem was fixed but that now there was a problem with a toilet. I don't know what could go wrong with a toilet that would take a whole hour to fix, and personally I would have just placed an out of order sign on the door and got the show on the road! It was so nice to have Emily to talk to, we really hit it off.

Once it was time to board the train, we stood in line and talked with two others, one who Emily actually knew from her home town high school in Wenatchee, WA. Her name was Jamie and she was on her way home after taking her daughter to Hannah Montana. The fourth girl in the group was Christy (sorry if that is spelled wrong.) I found out later that she is also 25 and married to a husband who comes from a family of 8 children. Jamie saved seats for us so we all got to sit together and talk until we reached Wenatchee. After the 4 of them got off it was time for me to sleep. There were only about 4 other people in my entire train car, so it was very quiet. I think I only got a couple of hours of sleep, but it wasn't stressful at all for me. It was relaxing laying there listening to the sounds of the train and being rocked to sleep.

When I woke up, I opened the curtain to see THIS:

It was so amazing and beautiful. It was perfect to wake up in the moutains with steam coming off the little streams and rivers. The sun was rising.... sigh.

Fresh air stop:

You can either eat in the dining car, or buy snacks at the lounge/cafe on the bottom level of the sight seeing car, but I opted for snacks. Breakfast:

My train car... empty:

A scarf for mom:

Fresh air stop:

Deserted prairie town:

Looks like Saskatchewan:

My parents were there at Wolf Point to pick me up and I was so excited to see them. I arrived safe and sound!