8/22-8/25: The Long and Rugged Road (Or Train Ride)

“And it’s a long and rugged road

and we don’t know where it’s heading

but we know it’s going to get us where we’re going

And when we find what we’re looking for

We’ll drop these bags and search no more

‘Cause it’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home.”

- Heaven When We’re Home; The Wallin’ Jennys

After preparing for many months, the journey to Tucson begins! It’s been a blessing to have a friend from EMU, Jessie Landis, along for the following year. When we both realized in February we would be in Tucson together with Mennonite Voluntary Service, one of the first things we researched was how we could get to Tucson by train…so here I am: currently writing from my train seat. Although Amtrak is not the quickest, we wanted something that would allow us to see a lot of landscape and a time to adjust from our busy summers to our next chapter… and something environmentally friendly!

We hopped on the Amtrak train at 4:05pm Monday August 22nd. We were in high spirits, as both Jessie and I had never taken the train, let alone across the country. Both of us were excited for this new adventure as a way to start our new chapter in Tucson. According to the website, the train ride would be 76 hours which is an amount of time I’ve never truly grappled with. I prepared myself with many things to do, but also accepting the fact I would probably get bored. While on the train, I’ve been rotating between reading my book, listening to podcasts, knitting, journaling, and talking to Jessie.

Our first train segment (Capitol Limited) was from DC to Chicago, and we arrived there around 9:00am Tuesday morning. It was refreshing to explore the city with another college friend that is doing her MVS placement in Chicago. We walked (or crutched for Jessie) around the blocks and admired the buildings of downtown Chicago. Sadly, we only have a few hours in the city because our second segment would leave at 1:45pm on Tuesday.

The Texas Eagle goes from Chicago to Los Angeles, stopping in Tucson on Thursday evening at 6:45 Arizona Time. For Jessie and I, that’s a 55 hour trip. We spent most the time looking a the midwest cornfields and were excited to see the St. Louis Arch Tuesday evening. We had the opportunity to get off for an hour in St. Louis and stretched and laid horizontal on the sidewalk (our only time on our 3 day journey).

Wednesday we woke up in Texas and went to bed in Texas. We experienced more delays because of freight trains getting the priority of the railroad tracks. We were blessed to have such flexibility with our long train ride because there have been time where the train schedule catches up. Wednesday we didn’t have any long service stops, so we utilized every short stop to go out and stretch our legs and enjoy some sunshine.

Wednesday night in San Antonio between 12am-2:55am, the Texas Eagle (our train) and the Sunset Limited from New Orleans merged. There was a shift in crew, some train cars were added and some left behind, and more passengers joined. We woke up Thursday morning learning that there was finally an observation car that we could see a panoramic view! Jessie and I took full advantage and spent all of Thursday morning there instead of our coach chairs.

One of my favorite parts of the trip has been the gradual change of landscape: from the Appalachia mountains, to the midwest corn fields, to the cattle graze lands of Texas to the desert mountains of New Mexico and Arizona. This journey has given me time to process my previous chapter of college and school and look forward to the next chapter of being integrated into a new community and doing voluntary work. Very soon, as in a few more hours, we will be welcomed in Tucson and the journey it entails!

Thank you to those who have written words of encouragement and cheered me on to this point; I have felt your prayers through this transition. I look forward to using this blog as a space for sharing my journey and staying connected with others! Feel free to leave comments and questions below! Also, subscribe below to stay updated for when I post again!

Blessings!