Just a thanks @Creekland. Very informative. I’ve heard the scenery is incredible, and can’t be matched on a car trip, but given your recent experience, do you still feel the same? I realize it would not be the SAME scenery, but if car gives you more flexibility to stop, start, and fully see the more limited parts, I’m wondering which you would now recommend.
If @Creekland had been in a car, she’d have gotten to see a lot more scenery traveling across Colorado last week, but not Glenwood Canyon. It was closed until Saturday and is now only open to one lane (I-70) in each direction. Cars have to detour up to Steamboat or go to Aspen and over Independence pass. All nice scenery but not easy driving.
My brother lives in Steamboat and says it often takes 40 minutes just to get across town because of all the traffic. Trucks cannot go over Independence pass so they are all sent the Steamboat route.
It’s a mess.
I had a trip planned for spring 2020. I cancelled a few weeks before the travel date due to COVID. United refused my refund request at the time. They gave me a voucher to use by March 2021. They then changed it to a voucher to use by March 2022. I applied again last week for a refund and I got an email today saying I am getting one. Doing the happy dance. United was the only ticket for anything that had not given me a complete refund (this included Amtrak, hotels, play tickets, car rental, etc.) So, advice for people who have flight coupons - try again for a refund!
5 Likes
The finger lakes region is just awesome. We were there for a few days last summer around this time and absolutely loved it. Corning, plenty of wineries in the area with tastings (most of them outside), hiking, Watkins Glen state park - lots of things to do. We wished we had more time there than we did - we plan on going back sometime.
4 Likes
Australia’s Northern Territories are making plans to quarantine overseas arrivals for another 5 years.
https://www.news.com.au/national/northern-territory/authorities-preparing-for-another-five-years-of-quarantine-in-the-northern-territory/news-story/74d5cb69f710f4c538f353c6502ea563
The federal government needs to mandate proof of vaccination for all airline passengers for domestic travel. (The exception only for those for whom the vaccination is not available, ie. children under 12). Then even airport crowds, past TSA, would all be vaccinated since they are all ticketed passengers. So changing planes would not be a concern since you don’t go past security but stay in the secure area.
It is safer to fly on an international flight since vaccines are required, than to fly domestically. Canada has just mandated vaccines on its domestic flights.
My baby grandson will not be coming to see me. My daughter naturally is concerned that some unvaccinated person will infect him on the plane.
8 Likes
Absolutely. The scenery is incredible and can’t be matched in a car, but there is different scenery in a car (BTDT too in the past). You just can’t do the slot canyons or get as close to the river, nor anywhere near as close to the edges to look down and be amazed. The train and I 70 are not always on the same route.
Pros with the train:
-
No worries about other drivers, gas, lodging, food (if buying sleeper, food is included) and you can leisurely see the huge differences in the US geology from coast to coast.
-
Being able to socialize with other passengers if you want to - not required. Some did, some didn’t.
-
If in coach/business you can bring your own food/drinks on if you want to or you can buy limited overpriced food/drinks in the cafe.
-
More room in the seats than on airplanes. Quite ok to get up and walk around to stretch. No one worries about what’s in your luggage - other than the drug sniffing dogs.
Cons:
-
much slower than driving in most cases.
-
you can end up with idiots sharing the cars with you. In our case we had Boy Scouts through all of the Southwest Chief (2 groups) and teen boys act like teen boys when their chaperones abandon them (which they did for essentially the whole trip). When one passenger tried to get them to clean up their language they saw it as a challenge and doubled down dissing women, Christians, Jews, and more. Very few mamas would have been proud of some of them (not all, but the vocal ones were being loud enough to assure being heard). We were tempted to tell their chaperones that they definitely earned their “Annoying” badges, but figured they’d take that as a compliment. No employee ever corrected them, nor were they among those who took masks seriously (except for a couple individuals who weren’t mouthy). This is one anecdote. Another trip may have no Boy Scouts on them, but there can be the risk of passengers who are loud and annoying - there were others like this on our trip. It’s how I know how some feel about vaccines, politics, and more. They loudly share either on purpose or not realizing how loud they are.
-
sleeping is an experience, but it’s not good sleep. The bottom bunk is tons better than the top one whether one is in a room or roomette.
-
toilets aren’t always clean and if you are on most cars they are very small. The only car we had with a decent sized bathroom was on the Pennsylvanian crossing PA. Water in the small bathrooms sometimes likes to spray out violently getting a lot wet in the car and on people even if you’re trying to be careful. In the large bathroom it worked well.
Before our “nasty” experience we were enjoying the leisurely trip of the train even with its cons. We’re used to pros and cons of all sorts of travel. We enjoy socializing and learning more about others. We enjoy people-watching. Most of all we enjoy stunning scenery, but we also even like the prairies and seeing the differences in small towns. The train worked well for that. No one had to pay attention to the road. We could look, share whatever we wanted to talk about, and purely enjoy ourselves.
But, when we pay first class prices to not get to see the best scenery the scale totally tipped the other way for us. We’re not typically first class people. We like to wander and mingle. We aren’t super wealthy so prefer to take more trips rather than fancy ones. We’ll always choose coach over first class or business even on across the planet lengthy plane flights. Going “up” to first class for this only to be banished from seeing the sights we thought we were going to get changed everything. (That said, if we did lengthy train rides we’d prefer the rooms to roomettes and the roomettes to coach if overnight.)
What’s best for others? It depends upon their preferences. You can’t see by car what you can see by train. We’re glad we went, but expect it will be a once and done vs before that section of our trip when we were discussing doing it again and seeing if some of our boys/DILs could join us for the leisurely family trip fun. I know we missed some things we wanted to see, but there’s no real way to guarantee we will see it if we attempt it again. My best bets were to select coach for that part of the trip and/or go on off peak times when they might not banish people to their rooms. That’s the best I have for troubleshooting what went wrong on our trip.
We went through on Friday. All I can say with its being reopened is to be careful. One guy on our train knew people involved with the cleaning up/repair and said the ground in at least one area isn’t stable at all. They evacuate everyone if any rain is forecast. He didn’t have anything good to say about those who approved reopening.
In this area the highway and train are on opposite sides of the river. The train had to go extra slowly through it (according to the conductor) because sensors that let them know if anything is on the tracks (slide, animals, anything) were damaged and they had to be able to stop if they saw something since there was no forewarning. They have the track cleared, but that’s it at this point. They have more fixing to do.
Yes, they closed the highway again on Sunday for a short time because it was raining. I have a friend who lives in Glenwood but her grandchildren live in Denver. Going around adds 2 hours to their trips (and she drives really fast). They were going to close Hwy 285 (the southern access) through South Park (yes, ‘that’ South Park) but put that off until they can get I-70 fixed, and that could take 3 months. It’s a mess.
Not to mention the air quality. It’s been bad because of the fires in California and now Utah. Colorful Colorado is NOT the place to be right now.
Seems like some of them need to review the parts about being friendly, courteous, kind, and reverent. What are the Scout Oath and Scout Law? | Boy Scouts of America
1 Like
It was still pretty though. Nature can be awesome. 
Stupid people with cigarettes or other fire hazards - not so much.
They definitely weren’t the epitome of what Boy Scouts stand for. That’s been true in other areas where we’ve encountered them too - like camping in state and national parks. We grimace when we see we’ll be near them and will change plans if we’re able.
Teen boys will (often) be teen boys if left alone in larger groups. Their uniforms make it more memorable. It really annoys us that their chaperones don’t chaperone. That’s their job.
@TatinG , you make way too much sense — we have no shot of any of this happening!!! I just wish we could be smart enough as a nation…
1 Like
3 Likes
We heard nothing but praise for Canadian train lines while on Amtrak, though all pre-Covid for obvious reasons.
Personally, we’re eager to try them out when we can. Who knows, we might even choose their trip next year TBH. Reading about it, it does all of the great part of Amtrak’s and more (down into Moab) and all in daylight.
Yes, I have heard/read wonderful things about Canadian railways. Someday, we’d love to try them too.
1 Like
Can you tell me more? We had a wedding cancelled in August 2020 and are holding $900 in vouchers with United who refused to refund our money. What exactly did you do?
I signed into my mileage plus account and filled out a new refund request here - https://www.united.com/en/us/refunds (you need the itinerary number). I said I had this voucher which I didn’t think I would be able to use due to COVID as we are unable to travel since we are immune compromised (which is true my husband is). I got the email first saying that my refund request had been received and then a few days later got another email saying my refund is being processed (will be credited back to the credit card used for the purchase). This is in contrast to when I filled out a similar request last year and got an email saying my refund request was denied. Good Luck - hope it works for you.
1 Like
Hmmm…I don’t have a compromised immune system. I just can’t see us using this voucher before July 2022…
Well, I can’t tell you to lie, but you can definitely try to get a refund saying that you are unable to travel before that time. I have no idea if the immune system thing is what worked for me or not. I honestly don’t remember what I put on my initial refund request last year, I probably just said travel restrictions in place due to COVID meant we couldn’t use the tickets.