June 7 Portland OR

Yesterday in Santa Barbara some idiot lay down on the railroad tracks to take a photo of the train coming into the station which totally freaked out everyone.  Then last night we were delayed in Oakland because some joker got his car stuck on the railroad tracks.  Where is Darwin?

This morning and afternoon we've been traveling through northern California and Oregon.  Stunning vistas, forests, streams rivers, mountains...so calming.  The mountain tops are covered in snow.

We even got in our yoga stretches and I got a photo of Norm in his warrior pose!

We arrived in Portland at 4 pm expecting to connect to the train to Chicago at 4:45 pm.  I flagged down the redcap and said I wanted to go to the Empire Builder.  He said, no can do, that train left at 1:40 pm.  After an hour of talking to various levels of Amtrak employees, a solution was at least partially found.  We are spending the night in Portland then taking the train at 1:40 pm tomorrow.  The trains to Chicago and from Chicago to New York are totally booked but the top supervisor found a room to Chicago that was closed because of a water leak and he had a plumber working on it so we will get that room tomorrow (coincidentally it's the exact same room number we had from Santa Barbara to Portland.)

The hope is that there will be a room cancellation for the trip from Chicago to New York and the big honcho is monitoring this over the next couple of days but if that doesn't happen, we are booked on the train to Washington DC and then on to New York.  What this means though is that instead of 3 days in New York, we may only have one so we will have to cancel our plans for the 9/11 Memorial.  Bummer!

Of course, we are in a hotel in Portland and given meal money until tomorrow so it's not a strain at all.  The worst thing would have been for us not to be able to get New York unless we flew there. We luckily had a cushion of days and could have rented a car and driven from here to New York in order to catch the Queen Mary 2 if we had to.  In our mind, getting onto the ship is priority number one.  So, not a catastrophe, just another adventure, hence the grin at Portland Union Station below.  The Amtrak staff here has been so fabulous; we can't thank them enough.

Sending love R/P