(Go East young man!) In thinking about the rest of the adventure, I had considered going east. What I found out that there were several choices that could be made. Since I had done the western leg several times I had an idea of what to do but the eastern legs were total unknown since I had only made one trip from New York to Chicago and that was a long time ago. ( When I came back from Europe, the transition was so fast I could not plan so I just grabbed the first train out of Grand Central Terminal, which was the 20th Century Limited, which used to be the premier train of the New York Central, much to my surprise it had become a “milk-train” stopping at every village and cross-road and was now oft times very late!) Now I had some ideas, one was the Chicago to New Orleans to Washington DC. and back to Chicago trip which looked possible. ( Originally, I had looked at going to New York but Amtrak kept wanting to book me to Washington DC!) So plans are still liquid and even though my intents were to do this whole thing in the calendar year of 2016 it looks as if it will take me more time than I originally planned. Here I thought, some what naively, that I was retired and had no schedule, come to find out that I do have a very tightly schedule that needs attending!
As mentioned before, one of the triggers of this whole trip was the potential of Amtrak coming to Moline! It would make some of the trips much easier if I could just catch a train to Chicago and then proceed to other points from there. One of the hang-ups in planning is getting to and from Chicago in a timely manner that allows for transfers to other trains without staying over night. I guess we will just have to see how all this pans out and hope for the best.
(Getting my act together!)
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