As part of my “go to all 50 states” initiative, I spent the last two days on the Empire Builder train from Chicago to Seattle. You travel over 2000 miles through Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and then through Washington to get to Seattle.

As you travel out of Chicago, there is nothing really striking until you get to Milwaukee. There were a lot of old brick buildings, some of them abandoned. Then you see Brewers stadium - such a contrast with it’s modern design. As we headed west through Wisconsin, there were quite a bit of farms, but no obvious dairy farms, which I thought was kinda weird. Wisconsin was the first place we saw abandoned cars in fields, but it was not the last. Seems that they don’t have junkyards for cars, they abandon cars in fields. Quite a sight to see cars from decades ago just rusting away in a field. By nightfall, you are in Minnesota and stop in St. Paul for a bit. Then back on the trail west where the next major stop is Fargo. Once the sun rose in North Dakota, you were able to see the remains of all the flooding they have experienced. Some photos for reference:

(flooding near Devils Lake, ND)

(more flooding near Devils Lake, ND)

(Rugby, ND - the geographical center of North America)

We made a maintenance stop at the closed Minot station, which they were still cleaning up. Lots of mud all around and you could see the water lines on the houses around the station.

Next was Montana, which was beautifully boring. Miles and miles of farms and grain silos. Plus cell phone reception was super spotty, a problem we did not have before then. I was really bummed that our train was running so late because it meant that we would not see Glacier Park. Instead I slept and saw the shadows of huge mountains out the windows whenever I woke up.

(somewhere in Montana)

(somewhere else in Montana)

We travelled through a small sliver of Idaho and then by sunrise we were in Spokane. The route takes you along the Columbia River to the Rock Island Dam and then along the Wenatchee River (and Wenatchee, the Apple Capital of the World) through the Cascades. As you head west, you pass under the Cascades at Stephens Pass through the Cascades Tunnel, which at 7.8 miles is the longest in the U.S. After the tunnel, the train follows the Skykomish river, then the Puget Sound north of Seattle through Everett and Edmonds. The end of the line is King Street station which is adjacent to Seattle’s baseball stadium.

The train is definitely not for everyone, but I rather enjoyed the experience (even Montana now that I’ve had time to think about it). I don’t think I would take the same route again - though I would seriously consider the California Zephyr (Chicago to Northern CA) or the Chicago-Memphis-NOLA route.