Strom Travel Diaries

Day 14—Thursday, December 30, 2021

One nice thing about train travel is that you don’t have nearly the lines you do at the airport. So you don’t need to be at the station more than 30-60 minutes in advance, and that’s mostly if you need to check a bag or if you’re worried about traffic. Did that stop Mom from wanting to get to every station with at least 90 minutes to spare? No. So we got up about 7, finished the last of our packing, went to the Walgreens next door to get a little snack (no free continental at any of our hotels: boo!), and checked out. I ordered a Lyft and apparently, it wasn’t allowed to pick us up at the hotel. So we had to go down the street to meet it and wound up blocking traffic a bit when we were getting in. Oops!

When we got to the train station, we found out that there was a waiting area for sleeping-car or business class passengers, we just hadn’t seen it when we’d come in on Tuesday night! So we felt comfortable eating our little snacks—the waiting room even had packaged muffins and cinnamon rolls! I also took the opportunity to get some photos of the murals around the station.

The train left pretty much on time, around 9:15, and our sleeping-car attendant came around to offer breakfast. We decided to forgo breakfast on the train since we’d had the muffins in the station. On the way out of town, we passed the ritzier of the New Orleans cemeteries: Metairie Cemetery. It was pretty fancy: very green and manicured.

The morning passed quickly between naps, word puzzles, reading, and admiring the scenery. The train between New Orleans and Charlotte isn’t a double-decker, so we had more headroom and a small toilet area in the cabin (both good and bad!). This also meant that the train didn’t have a dedicated observation car. So we just chilled in the room the whole time.

One of the most memorable moments of this leg, besides going through Laurel, MS, and looking for Ben and Erin from “Home Town,” was seeing a huge group of vultures sitting in several trees beside the tracks. I looked it up and there are a few collective nouns for a group of vultures: a volt, committee, or venue. Huh.

We had a very late lunch. Something had gone wrong in the dining car and they were running very behind, so despite ordering our lunch around 12:40, Kevin, our car attendant, wasn’t able to bring it to us until almost 3. We were more than a bit hungry by then—the muffins from the station were a distant memory!

The rest of the afternoon and evening passed in much the same way. We did have Kevin make up the beds so we could get a little sleep before getting into Charlotte. We knew that there was going to be a bit of a delay, but we both woke pretty early so that we’d be ready. The train pulled into Charlotte at about 5:35 on Friday morning and we couldn’t believe our journey was nearly at its end. A short Lyft ride and we were home. Of course, we had some tea, dropped our bags, and took a nap! By the time we woke up a little later in the morning, it already seemed like we’d never left. It’s strange how such an adventure can turn into a memory so quickly after the return to your routine.