This past week, as I said, we were taking the train down to Ft. Worth, Texas to attend a wedding. I was able to write some but was not able to get the wedding post done. Instead, it’ll be an update on how our trip went.
One post I have planned is a more detailed “how-to” on taking the train with a 1-year-old. Before we left, we were having a hard time finding info on how people travel with a 1-year-old. Where and how do they sleep? We found a solution, and I plan on writing more about that experience later.
Traveling by train is great. For the most part, every one of the Amtrak employees was great. This includes those at the ticket booth and those onboard. It’s a much different and smoother experience than flying.
We boarded the train in Bloomington, Illinois about 4 pm. We had a family room. It was the smaller size of the 2 types of family rooms. I’ll cover these more in the more detailed Amtrak post later on. This “smaller” room had two beds, a toilet/shower combo, and a sink in the room. I wished we had gotten this room on our return trip.
It took Rosalie some time to get to sleep. Her normal bedtime is 7:30-8:00 pm. She was not tired, so we kept her up a little longer. Then, we tried to do our normal routine hoping she’d instantly get that bedtime feeling and fall asleep. We were wrong in thinking that. After putting Rosalie down in her bed, Leanne and I were laying down in the bottom bunk watching an episode of Abbott Elementary, both of us with an Apple Air Pod in an ear. After about 5 minutes, we see a tiny face pop up from the side of the bed. Once we noticed her, Rosalie gave off the short chuckle she does when we notice her. She stuck her arms up, wanting to be with us.
We ended up all three watching the show. After it was over, Leanne headed up to her bunk and I stayed on my lower one, holding Rosalie. She was in sleepy mood by this time. She likes to play with her hair when she’s tired. He motions got slower and slower until her arm slowly fell back and stayed. At this point I wasn’t sure how I’d move her to her bed and if it would wake her completely up. Then, Rosalie tried to roll over onto her belly. But she was stopped by my chest. She gave out a short cry. But I could tell she was still asleep. I then decided to put her down in her bed. I put her down, and she didn’t move at all for at least a 1/2 hour. She was out. She slept through the entire night, even with the bumps, rocking, and train horns. Leanne and I weren’t so lucky with our sleep. We were both having a hard time falling asleep.
We got into Ft. Worth the next day around 2:30 pm. Grabbed our bags, set up the stroller, and walked the 5 blocks to our hotel with all of our 7 bags. Big suitcase, my duffle bag, Leanne’s duffle bag, a bag for of food for Rosalie, my camera backpack, the diaper bag, and Leanne’s purse. 7 bags. We counted them every time we moved, stopped, and entered or exited places.
Friday night we attended the rehearsal dinner. Rosalie had so many admirers. She was held and passed around. She loved it. During the toasts, Rosalie decided that she wanted to also do some talking. I quickly picked her up and took her to the back. She was just chatting it up. I walked around with her and I discovered that also on this rooftop mezzanine, they had a cinema club. That was a really cool setup. An outdoor movie screen playing Beetlejuice, a ticket booth, a bar, and snacks are built inside of shipping containers. Wish we had something like that around here. Looked like it would have been fun.
Saturday, the wedding day, we decided to walk around the downtown area of Ft. Worth. We were out longer than we probably should have been. Rosalie had fallen asleep in the stroller. She didn’t get a great nap and wouldn’t go down for her afternoon nap. This was a poor choice in hindsight.
Leanne was asked to recite a poem at the wedding. We got to the wedding about 1/2 hour early and sat in our assigned seats in the second row. Rosalie is always a well-mannered girl. She’s never fussy. When we take her places, she’s just along for the ride and never complains. That is, unless she’s missed 2 crucial naps. As soon as we sat down, she started showing signs of not being happy. Then she started to have some outbursts. I ended up taking her to the back of the room and sat with the husband of one of Leanne’s friends and their 10-week-old. Rosalie saw the baby and quieted down, for a brief period. After one more outburst, I took her out the back where we entered and were greeted by the entire bridal party waiting to enter. If I had waited just 2 more minutes, I would have been walking right in front of the party entering the wedding.
Rosalie and I missed the entire wedding. This was the plan if it came down to it. It was more important that Leanne experience the wedding uninterrupted. But was sad that we didn’t get to see her recite her poem.
The reception dinner was nice. They had a live band. And again, Rosalie made a new friend, Shannon. Shannon was introduced to Rosalie before the wedding after we sat down in our assigned seats. She was sitting right next to us. She was also sitting next to us at the reception. During the meal, she took Rosalie and started dancing with her. Rosalie LOVED it. Shannon was going to take a break and passed Rosalie back to Leanne. Rosalie didn’t want to stop dancing and lunged back at Shannon. And off they went again, dancing.
After the cake arrived, I decided to take Rosalie back to the hotel and let Leanne catch up with her friends. This was about 9 pm. The stroller we had on this trip allows for it to recline. Assuming Rosalie was going to be tired and wanted to sleep, I laid her down as far as the seat would go. On our walk back to the Hotel, she was not ready to sleep. She tried to sit herself up, but being buckled in, she could not. I stopped and propped the seat upright, and her tiny hands plopped onto the crossbar in front of her and she was ready to see what all was happening downtown.
Lots of neon lights. Lots of nicely dressed people heading out to the bars. There was a lot of energy and Rosalie wanted to see it all. We passed a few people who would point out Rosalie and I’d hear them make cute comments about her as we walked by.
After getting to the hotel, I changed her and got her pack-n-play ready. I had to sit her on the floor while I did this, and this is when she broke down from being too tired. Mommy arrived shortly after and put her into bed, and again, Rosalie was out for the entire night.
Sunday we had some time to kill before our train back home. We ended up finding a place outside to have lunch, where Leanne helped Rosalie practice her walking. We got to the train station about an hour before our train was supposed to arrive. Turned out that the train ended up being 2 hours late.
That night was harder to get Rosalie asleep. We had a “larger” family room. No toilet, shower, or sink. Floor space seemed even more minimal, and was hard to maneuver when the beds were pulled out. Again, we put Rosalie to bed, and shortly after, in the dim light peeking through the shut blinds over the windows, we see the top of a tiny head crawling across the floor. Hoping that the last trick of lying with Rosalie would work, I laid down with her. She did not want to lay down. She wanted to crawl all over me. I ended up putting her between me and the wall. I checked the area for anything that she could hurt herself on. I didn’t feel anything, so I let her crawl all she wanted. She started playing a game where she’d get on her knees and fall face-first into the pillows. She kept getting further above my head each time. Then her last time, I heard a terrible thump. I grabbed her and held her tight because I knew in 30 seconds she was going to let loose with that delayed cry that kids do. And boy did it come. Rosalie went to fall into the pillows but instead fell head first into the armrest.
She’s fine. It took her a while to calm down and fall asleep. Mommy took over after that. But once she was down in her bed again, she was out for the entire night, even with the rocking, bumps, and horns.
Once we got back to Bloomington, we counted our 6 bags while we got off the train. 6 bags because we checked our biggest bag. I went to go get our car and pull it up into the loading and unloading zone and then went to the baggage pickup window. At first, they gave me a blank look saying, “Nothing was unloaded this stop.” But once they realized something should have been, they sprung into action. Our bag was continuing it journey to Chicago. One of them called the train to let them know that they did miss a bag that should have been unloaded and let them know which bag that was. The other person called the Joliet stop to let them know that they’d need to put a bag from the Northbound train onto the Southbound train and send it back to Bloomington. This would be the intersection point of the two trains. They told me that that train would be back in Bloomington in 4 hours. The problem was, we were on our way back to Indy 3 1/2 hours away. They said they would end up FedEx’ing it to us. That’s fine. Other than the suit that I got married in, there wasn’t anything of real importance in there.
We did a final count of our 6 bags and loaded them up in the car and started our journey back to Indy. About 10 minutes into the drive, I got a call from the Amtrak booth guy. He asked if we were still in the area and that the bag would be back at the station in 30 minutes. 30 minutes? Down from 4 hours? We turned around and headed back to the station. We sat in the waiting area, and sure enough another Amtrak train arrived. Leanne asked if we should go out there. I said no, we’ll just be in their way. They know there should be a bag that gets off, we’ll let them take care of it. As those who had just gotten off the train were coming into the station, I saw the lady who I initially talked to walking among them. There was a waist-high wall, so I couldn’t see if she had our bag. She was looking right at us and coming our way. Once she passed the wall, I could see that she had our bag. I asked how that train had gotten here so fast. She said it was another train that goes to Kansas City and just happened to be at the very next station at the same time. She said that normally doesn’t happen, but since our train was delayed by an hour getting in, the timing just worked out. After counting our 7 bags and re-loading the car, we were back on the road after only an hour after arriving in Bloomington.
Again, although Amtrak made a mistake, they all knew they had an error they needed to correct. They could have easily just taken the information of “make the exchange in Joliet and FedEx the suitcase.” But instead, they figured out how to fix it faster. The baggage car person had to let the other train know. That train accepted the suitcase and knew where it needed to go. Then the booth people went out personally to make sure it got into our hands. A bad experience turned into a good one. What other service would do this?
It was a fun week and a fun trip.