Amtrak...

This February we went home for Monster Jam and instead of the usual mode of travel (car or plane) we decided to take the train. Yep, the train. I got online at amtrak.com and looked up prices and destinations and found it would cost less to take the train from New Orleans to Carbondale, IL with a family bedroom on the train than it would be to fly all four of us to St. Louis. We drove to New Orleans, LA on Tuesday night after school and stopped in Ocean Springs, MS and stayed the night. (We could have gone all the way through, but we weren't in a hurry, since the train didn't leave until 1:30pm the next day) We woke up Weds. morning and drove by our old house that was hit by hurricane Katrina and then drove onto New Orleans, LA. We parked the car, checked in, got lunch at the station and hung out.

Then it was time to board the train. The kids were so excited. When I first mentioned to them about taking the train, they looked at me like I was crazy. I could see in their eyes "people actually do that". Yep, they do and we did!!!

We left New Orleans, LA at 1:30pm Weds afternoon so we hung out in the room and got it ready for bedtime. We went to the lounge car and got a snack and sat down and enjoyed the scenery, read books, played games and actually had conversations.

Our tickets included a dinner (it was awesome by the way) and then it was off to bed for the kiddos. We arrived in Carbondale, IL at 3am Thursday. Now, i will say that the times of arrival were a little to be desired but it was an adventure for all of us and we had a BLAST!! Mom and Dad dropped the car off for us in Carbondale and mailed the key so we had a car waiting for us. We got to the house at about 6am after stopping for breakfast and then we crashed hard for about 3 hours...LOL