Weekend Driver San Diego

Well, this one is way out of town… it’s at the other end of the country, at least for us here in San Diego. And it’s not the east coast, it’s the northern border: A trip around Washington State in a great road car, the Lincoln MKT sport-utility. Hard to believe it’s been a year [...]

A few years back I spent a several weeks working in Moorhead, Minn., and as things go in the interstate twin cities of Fargo, ND and Moorhead, my budget-priced hotel was across the Red River in Fargo. Wandering around one Sunday afternoon, I headed west to where Fargo runs out and Interstate 94 makes one [...]

Fatigue is setting in and you’ve been motoring eastbound (or north-, south- or west-bound) all day on Interstate Whatever. Up ahead at Exit 134 is a major-brand motel and, even though you find the parking lot choked with Family Trucksters, the somewhat worn out desk clerk says they’ve got a room. Sure, there are a [...]

A friend’s upcoming visit to Washington, D.C. brought back memories of my six weeks there back in 2001. Yes, that 2001, it was when I was working for FEMA and was called to headquarters after the September 11 attacks. The city was pretty quiet when I got there shortly after the FAA decided that airline [...]

Here’s another video from the Coast Starlight, tunnel to tunnel in the Cascades. From Feb. 9, 2011.

From my Starlight trip, a blog entry I wrote but didn’t post. Enjoy… Around Mt. Shasta, Feb. 10 After a decent night’s sleep, those of us on the Coast Starlight today awoke to blue skies as we looped around Mt. Shasta. The big rock is covered with snow and glistened in the morning sun. I [...]

After the bus trip to Portland, it’s been a nice ride down the west coast. My dinner last night was a fine piece of halibut in the dining car. Dining on a train is a great experience; watching the world go by and the waiters managing to work from a tiny prep area and never [...]

So a few things I learned about GPS on the train and when I got to Seattle. First, I left my trusty Garmin Nuvi at home, thinking I would rely on the GPS I expected to have in the car I would drive, plus the two (count ‘em, two) GPS systems in my Android phone. [...]

Back in 2000, I took one of Amtrak’s tour packages, the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle, with a stopover for a few days at the historic Glacier Park Lodge in East Glacier, Mont. In 2010, wanting a bit of a rest, I decided to again take the train a long distance, this time from [...]