One Baby, Six Trains
Summer is the perfect time to hit the road and explore America with your family – unless you have a one-year-old and your destination is a thousand miles away.
Our boy turned one in the spring, and my husband’s family on the east coast began clamoring for some ‘new baby’ time. I explained to my husband that there was no way we could go a thousand miles in a car while stopping every few minutes for sanity or for me to nurse a giant baby with an insatiable thirst. At this point our one-year-old was already a strapping Iowa farm boy, with Huckleberry Finn’s irascible nature and Tom Sawyer’s wily guile.
In my mind, there is only one way to move a child across half a continent in a reasonable amount of time with your wits intact – by train. We decided to introduce our baby to the international brotherhood of rail-riders. Amtrak be forewarned!
The route was a dream. We followed the sluice trails of the ancient Illinois canals from Rock Island to Chicago. After a few hours in Central Station (where they shot The Untouchables), we hopped the overnight to Pittsburgh. After another transfer gave us a few hours of exploration in the City of Rivers, we caught the Capitol Express to our final destination, Washington, D.C., where our son met an anxious delegation of unknown relatives.
Our baby loved, and continues to love, trains. His eyes got wide in the arched terminals, and he screamed with delight at the departure whistle. Nursing was relaxing in our private sleeping car, the clickety-clack rumble put him right to sleep at night. Believe it or not, a sleeper car is still called a ‘wagon-lit’ on Amtrak. As we bumped along, it was easy to imagine the reverse journey our ancestors made by wagon train from the colonies to the Wild West.
My husband and I have shared many road trips along countless highways in our rambling lives: burning down Maine to Miami on I-95; skipping along the endless, meandering Route 66; driving deep into the bayous on Route 20; and bowing before nature’s majesty of the Pacific Coastal Highway. I can tell you without hesitation that nothing is dearer to my heart than the trip I spent strapped in a sleeper bunk, my baby softly snuggled up to me. Although many view trains as an old-fashioned way to travel, I say don’t knock it until you try it. It could turn out to be one of the best rides of your life!
Amy is a Mamapedia reader with a zest for adventure, and a lifelong love of train travel. She lives in Davenport, Iowa, and is the mother of an adorable baby boy.
