Day 3 or our Amtrak Rail-Pass Trip

Sunday January 17th

We felt the temps drop throughout the night after leaving Minnesota last night but didn't realize the train had developed some problems due to the extreme cold. It had dropped to about 20 below zero near Fargo North Dakota and some things on the train weren't able to cope. It was probably in the 50s in the upper coach where we slept but when I went down stairs to the restroom there was frost/ice from door to door and obviously the temperatures were cooler than it was in our seats.

Our first stop in the morning was Minot North Dakota. We stepped off the train for a photo op cause the temperature has risen to a toasty -2 degrees above zero and the sun was supposed to begin shining in a couple hours.

The Lounge Car opened at 6:30 but their water lines to the coffee maker had frozen solid and they were unable to offer coffee. We set up the Don't Ask Don't Tell operation and proceeded to gear up to make millions in instant coffee sales until they announced that the Diner Car coffee service was operational. We went from a euphoric millionaire-hopeful high to a downward spiraling funk like we had done earlier in the week when our Powerball tickets didn't pan out. Still, we quickly recovered when the caffeine kicked in and we're over it now. Shawn says I need to add a photo of me so I can prove I was on the train with her;-)

You're gonna love Amtrak's Empire Builder train they said. The views of the snow covered mountains are awesome they said.....We've been on this train for 2 days and 1 night and haven't seen a mountain yet!!! There are plenty of the small Montana Million-acre Wheat fields like this though.

Because of the frozen pipes and cold on the train this morning they have announced that they are going to provide us a complimentary lunch. That announcement was made about 11:00 am. It's now 1:00 pm, no lunch has appeared and no further announcements have been made. There is one unsubstantiated rumor going around the Observation Car crowd that seems more popular that the rest. The rumor is that the meal will be a bunch of Subway sandwiches that will be picked up in Malta Montana which is another hour further down the tracks. Since there is nothing much to do on the train except speculate about things, no one is in a hurry to find out exactly what will actually happen. So....here are riding the rails in the middle of Montana speculating on when and if a complimentary lunch will ever appear, and if so what it will consist of. We just pulled into Malta and as we pulled up to the station I saw several large boxes of what appeared to be boxed lunches. The large boxes were loaded in less than 2 minutes and the train pulled away from the station. We were all watching out the Observation Car windows. We don't think the boxes said Subway on them and they looked more like the kind of boxes you'd get a chicken dinner in so the speculation has run wild as to what is in them. In any case, they were sitting beside the tracks in near zero degree weather so it's in agreement that it won't be a hot lunch.

 A feeding frenzy broke out when the boxes were brought up to the Observation Car.

And the winners are....these ladies won the bet with their pick of sub sandwiches but not Subways subs. They may have cheated since they live in Whitefish a few hours west of Malta and take the train through here pretty often to visit relatives an hour back down the track. Some of us suspect they knew Malta wasn't big enough to have an actual Subway franchise.

Good food and happy folks on the Empire Builder this afternoon.

We made it to Havre Montana before it got dark but were delayed there by the Amtrak Train coming the opposite way. Unfortunately we will be passing Glacier National Park in the night time.

My iPhone normally does a great job of taking awesome pictures even though I am less than capable when it comes to using it. Unfortunately all I can get from it when I take pictures of where I think the awesome snow covered mountains are is this reflection in the Train Car window. I'm sure it would figure out how to send a flash 50 miles or so in the dark and photograph those awesome snow covered mountains if I only knew how.....