Views From Afar

One of the many fantasies that infected my young mind growing up was the idea of road trips. I can still remember wandering through the Saint Paul Union Depot when I was going to school downtown. I felt tiny among the passengers crowded around the wooden benches waiting for their trains and marveled at the sight of those large black locomotives and passenger cars pulling out of the station.

Later on, in my teen years, the appeal of the ‘open road’ got even more attractive. It didn’t help that the language, angst and music of the times only served to reinforce that iconic image. The Beats were always moving around the country. Adventurous kids my age were exploring the great outdoors and endurance events captured my imagination.

I’m told that when my sister and I were still in diapers when my mother took us out to California by train for a promised job that never materialized. Marlene got sick and our mother brought us back to Minnesota. As legend has it, I was fascinated with train travel even back then as a toddler. So much for California train travel until recently.

I’ve always had this fascination with ‘riding the rails.’ It’s one of many fantasy journeys like circumventing the globe on a tramp steamer that I never did fulfill. Sharon and I got our first taste of Amtrak travel several years ago when we took a trip from Annapolis, Maryland to Manhattan, New York. We’ve done that trip several times since then.

Switching coasts, San Diego’s Old Towne transit hub was the starting off point for our last steel-rail venture. Old Towne is the second stop for the Amtrak Surf liner that travels from San Diego up the coast to Santa Barbara. Old Towne Station presented a fascinating cornucopia of transportation modes. Commuter trains, regional rails, buses, cars, Uber, bicycles, skateboards, sore feet and of course, Amtrak, all converge on that web of tracks along with the less fortunate who gather there.

I quickly realized that the only way to travel by train is in Business Class with reserved seats. Call it an age thing but Coach Class seemed like steerage on the Titanic; a backwash of humanity and crowded quarters. It may be cheaper but it isn’t worth it.

While peering out the window I was like a kid in a candy story. Every scene that flashed by filled me with excitement. The highly concentrated coastline rolled by from La Jolla, through Ocean-side while skirting the back of towns in Carlsbad and Dana Point. Then the train swung east toward Santa Ana, Anaheim and finally Los Angeles.

By the time we got to Union Station our time schedule was way out of whack but none of us cared. L.A. was the half way mark and from there we headed northeast. It was one city melding into another; all of them forming the industrial underbelly of the region.

Finally, business and industry began to thin out and we were pushing east through rolling foothills and finally came upon vast agricultural fields of plenty. Fullerton, Van Nuys, Oxnard, and Chatsworth were all farming communities.

Then as pending fog began to creep ever closer to the shoreline we were back to the beach communities at Ventura and finally Santa Barbara.  A sleeping transient greeted us at the depot.

We only had one overnight in Santa Barbara and the now fog-bound city never revealed its beautiful beaches or blue ocean while we were there.

Rain, drizzle, fog, and dirty train windows hid the foam-splashed beaches on the way back south. It was a marvelous trip never-the-less.

We’re imagining another train trip in the near future. Traveling the length of the state sounds pretty interesting. It would mean hugging the coastline with its spectacular views and a wealth of story ideas thrown in at no extra cost. It would be retracing old jaunts through the Golden State from my younger years. Rail research that appeals to the kid wrapped inside this old fashioned traveler.

Coastal Cruise

There is something strangely romantic about the open road; vast horizons that go on forever, blurs in the distance that slowly take shape as you get closer. That kinship with travel has been captured in dozens of classics like ‘Bound for Glory,’ ‘On the Road’ and many more tales from the road.

I wrote about my last road trip in ‘The Great Escape, April 21st, 2020. It was a three day, two thousand mile exercise in exhaustion, mind-numbing scenery mixed in with a sense of adventure on the open road. Fortunately, we had a land cruiser that made the miles go by easier but it was still not of my liking.

Train travel turns out to be another experience all together and one I find more to my liking. While the pandemic has curtailed my rail travels for now, I still have some very fond memories of past travels on those silver rails.

Closer to home, California has done a great job of laying track up and down the West Coast. One can travel from San Diego to their northern borders with Oregon with few layovers and reconnections. Riding in business class instead of steerage can make for a generally relaxing and interesting way to travel.

Along its southern border with Mexico and as far north as the community of Oceanside, they have a commuter rail line called the Coaster. It’s a nice quick trip between those ocean communities and San Diego.

Conversely, Minnesota is limited in its transportation options. We have a good bus system and the light rail is fast (OK, semi-fast) and efficient way to get around (parts of) town. But it’s not like California’s Amtrak service up and down the coast or the localized Coaster service. It’s a different way to travel and I love it.

There was an interesting article in the New York Times back a couple of years ago that spoke directly to me. It was entitled: “Why the West Coast is suddenly beating the East Coast on Transportation” by Ms. Camille Fink.

“It is an incredibly exciting time to be in urban transportation,” the New York transportation commissioner, Polly Trottenberg, told a breakfast gathering of powerful New Yorkers, pointing to California’s progress. *

The Los Angeles area, the ultimate car-centric region with its sprawling freeways, approved a sweeping $120 billion plan to build new train routes and upgrade its buses. Seattle has won accolades for its transit system, where 93 percent of riders report being happy with service – a feat that seems unimaginable in New York, where subway riders regularly simmer with rage on stalled trains.

“It’s a tale of two systems,” said Robert Puentes, the president of the Eno Center for Transportation, a nonpartisan research center in Washington. “These new ones are growing and haven’t started to experience the pains of rehabilitation.” *

While I’m hardly an urban kind of guy and big cities are more my nemesis than a friend, I did find the article scored a direct bullseye on my interest level in transportation. It’s not just my love of the bicycles or walkabouts that garnered that attention. Rail travel has always been on my short list of imaginative ways to get about.

Sharon and I have done the Amtrak commuter run from D.C. to New York several times.

The views along the way are always a wonderful snapshot of east coast living at its most normal.

It’s a great way to visit the ‘Big Apple’ and leave the driving to someone else.    

We’ve ridden the rails from San Diego to Santa Barbara and hopped the Coaster for a day trip to San Diego.

The San Diego Coaster is part of a much larger Amtrak network of rails that weave their way up and down the West Coast.

The Coaster’s normal run goes from Oceanside, just south of Camp Pendleton, down to San Diego. The ride from Oceanside to San Diego costs a little over six dollars round trip and takes about an hour. One glance at traffic on highway 5 morning or evening and its benefits can’t be denied.

The run up the coast from San Diego to Santa Barbara does the same reveal on the opposite side of the country. The Coaster is an amalgamation of the two with commuters, long distance rail riders, suburban Moms on a quick jaunt into town and a wide assortment of humanity in-between. I was just there to look, listen and sneak a picture or two.

Los Angeles plans to build 100 new miles of rail – essentially doubling the Metro system, whose first rail line opened in 1990. There are now six lines and 93 stations. “I made sure we included funding for long-term maintenance,” said Dow Constantine, the executive of King County, which is home to Seattle, “so you don’t get the situation we’re seeing in New York and Washington where the systems have been neglected and it’s expensive and inconvenient to rebuild.” *

There’s even talk of a rail line extending from downtown Los Angeles to the Coachella Valley sometime in the future. Having spent some time on highway 10 going into L.A., I can only hope it will come sooner rather than later. Until then, Sharon and I want to try more train travels up and down the California coast perhaps as far as Vancouver, Canada. It’s always a fun way to check out the sights along the way and let someone else do the driving.

Works for me.

**Excerpts taken from the New York Times article “Why the West Coast is suddenly beating the East Coast on Transportation” by Ms. Camille Fink, January lst, 2019.