Train chasing, and other fun stuff
Last weekend (the extended 4 day July 4th weekend - I took Monday off), I traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico's historic capital, with Janaki, a high school friend who's doing a PhD at Berkeley. She's into Amtrak trips, and convinced me that the right way to get to Santa Fe was to take the train out, though we'd have to take the flight on the way back due to time constraints.
Thus it was that I found myself driving down to the Emeryville Amtrak station on Friday morning, trying to catch a catch a train that I believed was departing at 8. The reality was that the train was to leave at 7.40. The plan was for us to meet at the station at 7.15, but as usual I was late, believing that it'd be perfectly fine toe there a little later since the train didn't leave till 8.
I managed to reach the station by 7.35, got the parking permit and put it on my car, and by this time it was like 7.39. We hear the sound of a train, and Janaki tells me that this is our train. We quickly make our way to the platform, where we see the train, but we also see a mass of people on the platform. She tells me that we have to wait to board, which makes perfect sense to me since I am still planning for an 8 am departure.
Anyway, to cut the long story short(er), we were horrified an instant later to see the train depart. We rushed to ask the ticket agent about the next train, but apparently if we took the next one, we'd miss our connecting train in LA and then our entire tightly planned weekend would be messed up.
So we decided to chase the train down!! After all, my car was parked right outside. By this time we'd already wasted 10 minutes arguing with the ticket agents. Our target was Stockton, 75 miles away.
So we drove like crazy, assisted with nifty directions from google maps on my phone, and managed to arrive in Stockton 10 minutes before the train, effectively going faster than the train by 20 minutes despite the hassles of getting on and off the highway, and mixing up our directions.
But the story ain't over yet!! At Stockton, we discover that the Amtrak station doesn't have overnight parking! I rush to ask around, and finally decide to drive out from the station to a spot a few mins away, which allows public parking.
By the time we run back, we can see the train again leaving in front of our eyes. Despite our heroic efforts, we've missed the train twice!!
However, all is not lost. The Stockton stationmaster, a friendlier soul and a more knowledgeable person than the Amtrak reps in Emeryville, figures out that we could take the next train and take the connection to Barstow, CA instead of going to LA. This is not a "guaranteed connection" (i.e., the train to Santa Fe wouldn't wait for us if our train to Bakersfield or our bus from Bakersfield to Barstow got delayed). But it seems like a reasonable chance to take, and we end up changing our tickets to go to Barstow.
Turns out that the Amtrak station in Barstow is totally godforsaken - once a bustling station, it's now been converted to a Museum, and is totally unmanned outside of Museum hours. So we found ourselves alone at the platform (pics below)
Our only companion during the next several hours was a gentleman by the name of William, a retiree, who happened to be into trainspotting. We eventually got the train which arrived a little more than an hour late, and in the interim learned a fair bit about the history of Barstow from William.
Santa Fe was great! The adobe houses and the Spanish architecture, and the spicy New Mexican food make it a memorable city.
But even more interesting for us was the trip to the Taos Pueblo, believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States.
On the way there, we stopped at Chimayo, home to a Church whose soil is believed to have magical healing properties, Nambe Falls, and the gorge in the Rio Grande near Taos. We camped at the Rancheros Campground, which was conveniently located a few miles away from the heart of Santa Fe.
All in all, a fun trip made more interesting by missing the train, and meeting some interesting people. Couldn't have asked more of a 4 day trip. Save to Del.Icio.us Digg This Submit to Reddit Stumble this
Thus it was that I found myself driving down to the Emeryville Amtrak station on Friday morning, trying to catch a catch a train that I believed was departing at 8. The reality was that the train was to leave at 7.40. The plan was for us to meet at the station at 7.15, but as usual I was late, believing that it'd be perfectly fine toe there a little later since the train didn't leave till 8.
I managed to reach the station by 7.35, got the parking permit and put it on my car, and by this time it was like 7.39. We hear the sound of a train, and Janaki tells me that this is our train. We quickly make our way to the platform, where we see the train, but we also see a mass of people on the platform. She tells me that we have to wait to board, which makes perfect sense to me since I am still planning for an 8 am departure.
Anyway, to cut the long story short(er), we were horrified an instant later to see the train depart. We rushed to ask the ticket agent about the next train, but apparently if we took the next one, we'd miss our connecting train in LA and then our entire tightly planned weekend would be messed up.
So we decided to chase the train down!! After all, my car was parked right outside. By this time we'd already wasted 10 minutes arguing with the ticket agents. Our target was Stockton, 75 miles away.
So we drove like crazy, assisted with nifty directions from google maps on my phone, and managed to arrive in Stockton 10 minutes before the train, effectively going faster than the train by 20 minutes despite the hassles of getting on and off the highway, and mixing up our directions.
But the story ain't over yet!! At Stockton, we discover that the Amtrak station doesn't have overnight parking! I rush to ask around, and finally decide to drive out from the station to a spot a few mins away, which allows public parking.
By the time we run back, we can see the train again leaving in front of our eyes. Despite our heroic efforts, we've missed the train twice!!
However, all is not lost. The Stockton stationmaster, a friendlier soul and a more knowledgeable person than the Amtrak reps in Emeryville, figures out that we could take the next train and take the connection to Barstow, CA instead of going to LA. This is not a "guaranteed connection" (i.e., the train to Santa Fe wouldn't wait for us if our train to Bakersfield or our bus from Bakersfield to Barstow got delayed). But it seems like a reasonable chance to take, and we end up changing our tickets to go to Barstow.
Turns out that the Amtrak station in Barstow is totally godforsaken - once a bustling station, it's now been converted to a Museum, and is totally unmanned outside of Museum hours. So we found ourselves alone at the platform (pics below)
Our only companion during the next several hours was a gentleman by the name of William, a retiree, who happened to be into trainspotting. We eventually got the train which arrived a little more than an hour late, and in the interim learned a fair bit about the history of Barstow from William.
Santa Fe was great! The adobe houses and the Spanish architecture, and the spicy New Mexican food make it a memorable city.
But even more interesting for us was the trip to the Taos Pueblo, believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States.
On the way there, we stopped at Chimayo, home to a Church whose soil is believed to have magical healing properties, Nambe Falls, and the gorge in the Rio Grande near Taos. We camped at the Rancheros Campground, which was conveniently located a few miles away from the heart of Santa Fe.
All in all, a fun trip made more interesting by missing the train, and meeting some interesting people. Couldn't have asked more of a 4 day trip. Save to Del.Icio.us Digg This Submit to Reddit Stumble this
Train chasing, and other fun stuff: posted by Vijay at 6:27 PM
4 Comments:
Interesting story! Looks like you had fun in chasing trains. This reminds me of a time when I missed the train at New Delhi Railway Station.
Did you see the Nambe Falls or just the picnic area? I'm from Nambe Pueblo.
Debbie, good to hear from you. We saw the falls. Picture here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/70072014@N00/2657643708/
It's a beautiful country out there.
Ankur: I need to hear the story of you missing the train. And I'll post about my misadventures when traveling to Bhutan: missing 2 flights and then finding out at the Bhutan border that there are no ATMs in the country and credit cards aren't accepted!! (needless to say, we were short of cash). It ended up being a great trip, but that's for another long blog post.
Nice read!
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