It was time for my annual trip to visit family in Oregon. Normally I would drive, hunting geocaches along the way, but this time I wanted to try something different.
I have been interested for awhile in traveling to Chicago via Amtrak and caching while there. For a day trip from Memphis it would be fun, because the northbound train arrives in downtown Chicago at around 9am and the southbound train leaves Chicago at 8pm. For this trip, though, I planned to take a train north to Chicago, enjoy a short layover, and take another train west to Pasco, WA where my family would meet me and drive me the the rest of the way to their home in Eastern Oregon.
I learned a few things while getting my reservations made. Train travel is pricey at this time of the year, because of the summer travel season. Traveling at the end of the week: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, is more expensive than the other days of the week. Still, it was cheaper than driving, and leaving the day I did allowed me to get to Oregon in time to celebrate Father's Day with my Dad.
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Thursday, June 12
I left directly from work and traveled by trolley to the Amtrak station downtown.
Because of a sinkhole behind the station and near the tracks, the train does not actually stop here at this time. A chartered bus takes you to an area the ticket refers to as "Memphis Junction". For the geocachers out there, this spot is roughly one mile southeast of Super Lame Cache by Chance Encounter (adopted by Abiectio) (GCTP6T). How appropriate.
Rather than heading north and enjoying a scenic view of the Mississippi River, we were treated to a 5-10 mph tour of the crappiest parts of Orange Mound and the Hyde Park area. I thought I had been through the worst areas in Memphis while geocaching. I was wrong. Not even close.
Oh well, by the time we got north of Memphis it was too dark to see anything. The part of the route between Memphis and Chicago (called "City of New Orleans") is done at night, both the northbound trip and the southbound trip. If I had been heading south from Memphis to New Orleans, the trip would have been done during daylight hours.
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Friday, June 13
I arrived in Chicago shortly after 9am. The south side of Chicago, from what I saw along the tracks, is much the same as what I saw coming out of Memphis.
Amtrak doesn't own the tracks it runs on, it leases them from the freight lines. That pretty much explains the lack of appealing scenery for some of the trip.
Chicago is BIG! Union Station in Chicago is BIG. After scouting around the station and checking out things like costs for storage lockers and options at the food court, I decided to step outside and do some caching. I had maps of local caches I thought I could get to during my 5 hour layover. However, when I stepped outside, I was completely blown away by the size of the buildings and the amount of people and traffic. My GPSr was having troubles with the signal and I was unusually disoriented direction-wise.
The first cache I went after was Chicago's Historic Places: Union Station by madamemoutard (GCW2W2). After dodging parking lot security, I retrieved the cache and signed the log. My next stop was Chicago's Historic Places: St. Patrick's Church by madamemoutard (GCTWXA). I DNF'ed on that one after spending way too much time looking for it.
I wanted to go after So many So many Storeys, So Little Time by bspeng (GC47A4), a virtual cache located in the Sears Tower, but I hadn't locked up my backpack and wasn't sure I could get in the Sears Tower with it, so I just stared at the huge building for a moment.
By this time, I was getting quite warm and a little sweaty so I decided to head back inside the station. After all, I still had two full days of train travel ahead and I had brought no spare changes of clothes. For those of you keeping track, yes, I logged a grand total of ONE cache while in Chicago.
Back in the station, I found a big fan in one of the waiting lounges to stand in front of. After cooling down, I had lunch at Kelly's Cajun Grille in the Food Court.
I went back to the lounge near the departure gate to wait for the train I would be traveling west on. It had not occurred to me that there was severe flooding in Wisconsin. We found out at the last moment that train service was interrupted between Chicago and Minneapolis.
To be continued...
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