I’m back in California and the ancestral Garrett Family homeland for the month of December. Neighbors, the alarm company, and all the remote gizmos I’ve installed are watching the house for me. During the winter and summer months it’s really nice to be able to remotely monitor the house and control the thermostat. 

I took the train this trip. Probably after I retire for the second time, and have more free time to myself, I might do more road trips out to here, but the other side of that coin is the political situation and my Maryland license tags might make that somewhat dicey if I have to go through places like Texas and Oklahoma. Plus ICE on the roads. I would never have believed when I was younger that someday I might need to have my passport with me when I go on a road trip.

Initially I was going to take the Amtrak Cardinal from Baltimore to Chicago, but I got bumped off it, despite having made my reservations many months ago. I didn’t get any notifications and only found out about it when I was double checking my ticket for departure time, and saw I was on the Acela not the Cardinal. That was confusing (the Acela doesn’t go to Chicago), so I looked closer and saw that the Acela was taking me to DC Union Station so I could connect with the Floridian.

The Cardinal is a small train with only one sleeper car and it only runs three days a week. The thinking among the Amtrak crew I talked to was they’d overbooked it and I, being a solitary traveler, was easy to bump. But Amtrak made it up to me. When they put me on the Floridian they gave me an upgrade to a full bedroom, and refunded me nearly 500 bucks. So…okay…not complaining about having to make an extra connection to DC Union Station. Also, the Floridian is a bigger train that takes a much quicker route to Chicago.

The snow storm in the midwest worried me. Last train ride back home the Southwest Chief had to turn around in Albuquerque due to a big snowstorm in Kansas and instead of getting to Chicago I went back to Los Angeles and back up the coast to my brother’s house. I didn’t want to get turned around back to Chicago because then I might just as well have gone back to Baltimore and cancelled my December visit altogether. But the weather cleared up quickly once out of Chicago and I made it all the way to Oceano with no trouble.

The three day three night train ride is a lot of fun…at least I think so. Provided of course you get at least a roomette. With a sleeper ticket you are a first class passenger and your meals in the dining car are included, and you get to use the first class lounges in the connecting Union Stations. (The one in Chicago is Super Nice!) One other nice thing about going to bed on a rocking moving train is I don’t have to worry about my self winding watch, winding down when I take it off for the night.

It’s nice to be back in the land of my birth, with family that gets me, Old Juan’s Cantina, and that lovely Pismo Beach to walk.