The Empire Builder Continues
Although I was not quite ready to leave Montana, I was excited for what the next 29+ hours of the Empire Builder had in store. While waiting at the station for the train to arrive, I engaged in some polite conversation with the man next to me. He informed me that he had previously taken the Empire Builder route in full. I asked him what the scenery was like the rest of the way to Chicago and, much to my disappointment, he replied that it was non-existent, at least until we reached Minnesota. Fortunately, it turned out that this man’s understanding of scenery was wildly inaccurate. In fact, the scenery up until Minnesota was of the highest order. For approximately 45 minutes after departing East Glacier Park, the train travelled parallel to the imposing Rocky Mountains. As I watched the scenery roll past, I listened to one of my favourite albums – MewithoutYou’s ‘Ten Stories’. The album tells the story of a deliberate train derailment on a winding mountain trail somewhere in Montana in 1878. Fortunately, there was no derailment on my trip over these same tracks in Big Sky Country.
For the following 6 hours, I enjoyed watching the changing colours of Northern Montana’s grassland plains.
Mountainous terrain again appeared as the train approached the Montana-North Dakota border. In North Dakota, the train travelled alongside the Missouri River and passed the Devils Lake which my guide book informed me is the largest lake in North Dakota and the home of the Devils Lake Monster. After enjoying the sunset through Stanley, North Dakota, I fell asleep before being awoken by alighting passengers in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota around 3:15am. I was disappointed I had slept through the train’s stop at Fargo an hour earlier as I would have liked to glance at the city that I would have visited if it wasn’t for the train’s early morning arrival.
The scenery through Minnesota and Wisconsin was extraordinarily underwhelming. Trees lined both sides of the track, with the highway occasionally visible through the foliage. There was nothing even remotely interesting to view. My experience on the Empire Builder was thus the exact opposite of what my East Glacier Park train station friend had promised. Indeed, I was perplexed to discover that my guide book similarly referred to the portion of the Empire Builder’s route between Minnesota and Wisconsin as ‘one of the route’s most attractive stretches’. In reality, the scenery was extremely disappointing after the spectacular first 28 or so hours of the Empire Builder’s east-bound route. At one point during the day, the cafe attendant on board the train closed the cafe for 30 minutes while he provided commentary in the observation carriage. Many of my fellow passengers seemed excited when we passed through Red Wing, Minnesota which is famous for its shoes. Another point of interest was Lake Pepin on the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin where water skiing was invented.
Other notable points en route included St Paul, Minnesota (my guide book spoke of the hundreds of lakes and parks in this city), and the crossing of the Mississippi River which marks the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The latter was close to the only scenic moment on this portion of the route.
The Empire Builder arrived in Chicago, Illinois in the late afternoon. As I had already spent a number of days in Chicago prior to embarking on the Southwest Chief route, my second stop in the city was a short one. The following day, I made my way back to Chicago’s Union Station, ready to board the California Zephyr. Widely considered to be the most spectacular of all the Amtrak journeys, you can read about my experiences on this route in my next few blog posts.