To Bed at the Mississippi River - Breakfast in North Dakota

Our sleeping birth on the Empire Builder is tight but manageable.  Almost the entire train is two stories.  Most passenger accommodations are above.  Only about a quarter of the travelers have sleeping quarters,

The most popular car for daily travel  and sightseeing is the dome car that you see below:

This car is also the tallest on the train and thus - sways the most on occasional rough tracks.  We saw an elderly lady fall down up here.  That brought a small group of emergency techs to pick her up and dust her off.   We learned that it is best to take train trips before one gets too old!

Here is an Amtrak map that we saw at Union Station in Chicago.  The red line at the top of the map shows our route from Chicago.  At Spokane Washington the train splits in two with half going to Portland and half going to Seattle. We are going to Portland.

North Dakota and Eastern Montana showed us plenty of sights like this of the open plains and grain fields.  We did see occasional cattle and a small herd of Antelope as well.

 By nightfall we were approaching the Rocky Mountains so the landscapes changed dramatically.

Our fares include meals and we have found the Amtrak meals to be very good..  All passengers need a reservation to be seated in the dining car for dinner.

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