To complete our time in the Pacific Northwest we headed down to Seattle from Vancouver. The drive was longer than expected due to the border crossing but it was still manageable.

Pike Place Market
We spent a little time attempting to walk through Pike Place Market on a Saturday afternoon but that probably wasn’t an ideal time. To say the market was crowded would not suffice.

Damn the Weather
Damn the Weather was one of the cooler places we stopped on our time in the Pacific Northwest. Great cocktail list, if we had time we surely would have eaten there.

Harbor Tour
Much like in Vancouver we did a tour of the Seattle Harbor to get a good view of the city and the port facility.

Hillard’s Beer
On our last day in town we met up with some friends in the Ballard neighborhood where we had lunch and then walked over to Hillard’s Beer which I think is a relatively new space in the area. The beer was a good, the BBQ food truck was probably better. A really cool space.

Fremont

Our friends took us for a walk around the quirky Fremont neighborhood where we got to see the Lenin statue and the bridge troll among other oddities.

Overall we had a great time on our trip out West.

This past July I headed out to the Pacific Northwest via train with Julie and her family with a stopover in Glacier National Park. The first leg of the trip was roughly 30 hours from Chicago to Glacier Park East and the second leg was close to 16 hours from Glacier to Seattle. We had a roomette throughout the trip on the Empire Builder line which includes meals and access to shower facilities.

 Derailment
We were a little over two hours delayed on our first leg of the trip due to back to back derailments earlier in the week with in a 5 mile radius outside of Culbertson, Montana. A day earlier and we would have been in some serious trouble.

Accommodations
We stayed in a Roomette for our trip which is basically a small private room with a two seats, a window and a single electrical outlet. The seats convert into a bed and then a top bunk pulls down from the ceiling. I slept on the top bunk both nights on our trip, there isn’t much room to maneuver up there but depending on the age of your car it can be vary from rickety to sturdy. I experienced both. The seats though I found much more comfortable than sitting in the cafe car or the observation chairs. The room is very quiet once the sliding door is closed.
The meals on the long run Amtrak routes such as the Empire Builder are included with your Sleeper or Roomette. Your car attendant will check in with you before meals to choose a reservation time. I would suggest taking an earlier reservation as the farther along you get on your trip the more likely they are to run out of various options. The food was acceptable, the chicken for lunch was good and the steak for dinner was cooked to order. Generally speaking if you have less than four in your party you’ll be seated with other guests. This is the most social aspect of the trip.

Glacier National Park

We stayed overnight at Glacier Park Lodge to break up the trip. We ended up arriving at the lodge in the evening after dinner on the train. The lodge has a bar open until around 11pm and there are a couple of restaurants in town as well. We pretty much called it a night and then headed out to Two Medicine Lake in the morning. With only really having one full day at the park we decided to do the boat across Two Medicine Lake via the Glacier Park Boat Company and then a short hike on the other side.

Our departing train was four hours late arriving at the lodge on Monday evening. It was scheduled for 6:45pm and we didn’t board until about 11pm. For me this wasn’t a problem as it gave us another four hours to hang out on the back porch of the lodge as the sunset. The bar was open, much better than being stuck on the train for four extra hours.

We did miss seeing the train travel through the park as it was dark by the time we boarded but I think this made the second leg of the train ride go much faster. We arrived at King Street Station in Seattle a little after 1pm. Overall I thought it was a great experience. I got to see parts of the country that I’m doubtful I would have seen any other way. Glacier Park was pretty amazing and the food was pretty good.

Side Notes:
* Beer served at the Cafe Car included domestics and one regional craft beer, which on the Empire Builder is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.