4,000 Miles, 6 Small Towns: A Whistle-Stop Tour of America

27.08.2024 - 17:24 / nytimes.com

“See America,” an old Amtrak slogan promised, “at See-Level.” And if you ride the railroad’s Empire Builder route from Chicago to Seattle and back, as I did recently, you’ll watch the scenery evolve, from city to suburb to small town to north woods to sweeping grasslands to Great Plains to sandy buttes to snow-capped peaks to sagebrush meadows to pine-lined streams to small town to suburb to city.

But are you really seeing America? Literally, perhaps: You are seeing it zip by. After a while, though, that can get to feel as if you are wearing a virtual-reality headset, and it may occur to you that to truly “see” America, you have to get off the train.

So I bought a $499 USA Rail Pass, good for up to 10 trips of any length in 30 days, and selected a half-dozen stops along the route. Since the Empire Builder runs once a day, I could, theoretically, have 24 hours in each place; 144 hours to actually see America — specifically, parts of it that look, and feel, nothing like the places most Americans live.

I knew there would be challenges. I wouldn’t have a car. The train was scheduled to arrive in some places at an ungodly hour. The trip runs more than 2,000 miles one-way; without delays, that takes 46 hours and 24 minutes.

But there are, inevitably, ubiquitously, delays. The earliest I arrived at any stop was 20 minutes late. The latest was more than seven hours. That particular segment ended up running 23 hours and 30 minutes.