Notes: 

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• Bolded words are defined on the Thru-Hiker Dictionary page, which you can find here.
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I was going to do an hour by hour account of my time on the train, but it wasn’t that exciting. Here’s a state by state account instead.

Amtrak Station, Cleveland, OH

My brother was kind enough to drop me off at the Cleveland Amtrak Station in the middle of the night. We got there sometime around midnight and I hung around, waiting for my train to arrive. While I waited, I attached all of my belongings to my body in some way or another and took a nap across some chairs. I’ve been on a bit of a Tana French kick lately, so I also listened to The Tresspassers, a book I’m pretty sure I’ve read before, but it’d been so long that I’d forgotten the ending.

The train came and I boarded, taking my bag in its duffel onto the train with me. It fit nicely in the overhead bin. It was a beautiful sunrise over Lake Erie. I didn’t feel anything on that train other than sure that I was where I was supposed to be.

Indiana and Eastern Illinois

I slept through Indiana. I listened to audiobooks and watched out the window through Illinois.

Union Station, Chicago, IL

Union Station was everything the Amtrak station in Cleveland wasn’t. It felt like a cross between an airport and subways I’ve seen from the movies. There were people in suits that looked like they were headed to work, people in pajamas carrying suitcases clearly headed somewhere for a while, and a mix of everyone in between. The Amtrak station and some of Chicago’s public transit run out of the same building.

I found my gate and sat outside it. All the PA announcements were garbled and very difficult to hear, so I sat by a woman with better hearing than me who was repeating the announcements loudly for the benefit of the rest of us.

I saw two other people carrying ultralight packs with ice axes strapped to the outsides, trekking poles, and USPS flat rate boxes. I know a thru-hiker when I see one, and I got super excited again. We ended up meeting in line for the train. They were also SOBO CDT hikers, and we exchanged the usual information (where are you from, trail names, other long trail experience, etc). Their names are Footbags and Dairy Queen. It was so, so nice to do that exchange again, to be reminded of what I was heading back to.

On the train, I sat next to a girl from Missouri who was visiting a friend in East Glacier. It was both of our first time on the train. We got situated for the long ride.

Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota

It was slow going until we got to Milwaukee because we were stuck behind a Metra train. The dining car attendant had walked off the job in Chicago, so there was no way for us to buy food. Fortunately, thanks to my gluten intolerance, I had packed enough food for the whole ride. They opened the dining car for the sleeper rooms later and let us eat out of there.

This train was two stories tall, unlike the previous train. It swayed much more on the tracks, and the swaying took some getting used to. Throughout the afternoon and evening I listened to audiobooks, ate snacks, and watched out the window. The train takes a scenic route. There were vast rolling hills, rivers, and forests. The weather was lovely, and at times we could see for miles out the window. The sun set over Wisconsin and I slept through most of Minnesota.

North Dakota

I woke up just before we crossed into North Dakota. It was an entirely new state for me, and reminded me of a flatter, greener New Mexico. You could see for miles in any direction and it felt very remote.

I watched the sun rise over the plains and kept listening to books. A couple of older men were talking about how climate change is fake very loudly a few rows behind me, so I turned my headphones to noise canceling mode and kept watching out the window. I am and always have been a sucker for the scenery.

We stopped a couple of times for smoke breaks, and a bunch of us got off to stretch our legs. I hung out with the other thru-hikers and before we got back on and kept moving.

Montana

I listened to audiobooks and ate snacks while watching out the window. Montana out the window was beautiful and felt more remote than North Dakota. Between towns we saw plains, forests, and wilderness. Thanks to noise canceling, it was quiet and serene.

A few hours before we arrived in East Glacier, the train attendant for our car informed us that there had been a derailment in Missouri. I texted and posted to make sure that if headlines weren’t specific to the location, nobody had a moment of panic thinking that it might’ve been me. I was reminded, again, of how much of this life is out of our control. It is an eerie thing, when a tragedy just misses you. All any of us could do was hope that the reports had it wrong, that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. All we could do was not take our lives or our relative safety for granted.

East Glacier, MT

We rolled into East Glacier in the evening. I got off the train and met back up with Footbags and Dairy Queen and we headed to Looking Glass Base Camp, a hostel specifically for long distance hikers.

And so, again, it begins.

Total Days	0
Miles walked	0
Bears seen	0
Moose seen	0
Mountain goats seen	0
Rattlesnakes seen	0
Showers taken	0
Pairs of boots worn out	0
Toenails lost	0
Rain storms	0
Zero days taken	0
Nearo days taken	0

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