GO MISSISSIPPI:It would have been a whole lot easier to take the plane from Minneapolis- St Paul to Chicago, but a leisurely ride on an Amtrak train – much of it along the great Mississippi river – proved too tempting for GERRY SMYTH
WHAT COMPELS A traveller to take a seven-and-a-half-hour train ride instead of a quick one-hour flight? Usually it is a dislike or even a dread of flying, but in this traveller’s case it was the river that Abraham Lincoln once called “The Father of Waters” – the mighty Mississippi.
Having flown from Chicago to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul in Minnesota, the option of a more leisurely return by train – for a closer look at the American landscape across three states – had a certain appeal. The fact that for much of the journey, train and river would follow the same route, made it an irresistible idea.
Like other great rivers – the Danube, Amazon and Nile come to mind – the Mississippi is not just a powerful force of nature that has cast its spell on the imagination, it is intertwined with time, history and myth. It is the setting for songs, movies and stories, most notably in the work of its great laureate, Mark Twain, with whom it is synonymous through his tales of the river-borne adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and his memoir, Life on the Mississippi, with its observations of life along the riverbanks.
Before the trip, I had associated the river with the American South: with Memphis, Baton Rouge and of course New Orleans and its Mississippi jazz and blues. But not those twin cities of the cold north where the river’s source is to be found in Lake Itasca, 2,300 miles from where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The Chippewa Indians are believed to have given the river its name, which translates simply as “very big river”.
My journey began in a station in St Paul where a particularly good-humoured stationmaster kept waiting passengers amused with his early morning wit, shouting out for us to remain seated and remain patient – our train would arrive. And so it did, not quite on time but not too late.
I had been warned by my St Paul hosts not to take either the scheduled arrival and departure times too seriously – that US passenger trains deferred to commerce and the needs of the freight services along the line and therefore had to submit to unscheduled stops and delays that knocked timetables into the realm of fiction.
When the Empire Builder finally arrived, it had already made its way through several states – Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota – and through spectacular scenery that included Glacier National Park and the Rockies.
Called after James J Hill, the railroad emperor who built the Great Northern line, the Empire Builder runs twice daily – once in each direction – between Chicago and Seattle in the Pacific Northwest and serves one of the busiest and most popular of Amtrak’s routes.
The full 2,200-mile journey can take 46-50 hours, so many passengers already on board were close to two days on the tracks. Boarding was a calm experience – thankfully, a carriage had been reserved for all of us making the St Paul-Chicago leg of the trip, so no scrambling and no worries about our unreserved seats.
Four stops before St Paul, the Empire Builder had pulled into Fargo in North Dakota, familiar from the Coen Brothers’ movie of the same title and which made good use of the snowy landscapes of Minnesota, with several scenes filmed in Minneapolis where the brothers grew up.
I was taking the last stages of the journey and the first place of some personal interest after our St Paul departure was Red Wing – not a name that resonates in American history or culture. It does, however, hold the Minnesota Correctional Facility, established in 1889, and which has been set in song in a very early Bob Dylan ballad, The Walls of Red Wing, the words of which came to mind as I caught glimpses of the red walls of Dylan’s song:
“Oh, some of us’ll end up / In St Cloud prison / And some of us’ll wind up / To be lawyers and things / And some of us’ll stand up / To meet you on your crossroads / From inside the walls / The walls of Red Wing.”
Then on to Wabasha which is located in an area renowned for the sighting of the eagles – I had been told to keep a close eye on the sky on that stretch of the trip, but that particular morning the American eagle was nowhere to be seen.
The next stop was Winona – a city which originated on a sandbar in the river and was named after the daughter of Indian Chief Wabasha. There are traces of the Native American history and culture throughout this entire region. In 1886, Twain referred to this upper stretch of the river and what he called the “finest part of the Mississippi”, as having been ignored in the writings of travellers: “It is strange how little has been written about the Upper Mississippi. The river below St Louis has been described time and again, and it is the least interesting part. One can sit on the pilot-house for a few hours and watch the low shores, the ungainly trees and the democratic buzzards, and then one might as well go to bed. One has seen everything there is to see. Along the Upper Mississippi, every hour brings something new. There are crowds of odd islands, bluffs, prairies, hills, woods and villages – everything one could desire to amuse the children.”
Twain’s description matches exactly what we saw in the first three hours of a journey that did not disappoint and brought this legendary river into focus in a series of memorable images. It appeared and disappeared, keeping my eyes on the lookout for changes in the scenery. Its opposite banks were within sight or way off yonder in the distance; woodland emerged on either side of the tracks with small cabins nestled in the copse, a hint of spookiness in the wooded wilderness.
There is a distinct change of scene as the train leaves La Crosse, where Huck Finn’s “monstrous big river” is almost four miles wide, and the journey entered a new and river-less stage, meandering into the Wisconsin farmlands, which stretch off into the distance under big skies reminiscent of the ones we associate with those cowboy movies of old. Acres and acres of withered corn stalks, occasional farmsteads, silos that stood in solitary isolation.
Approaching Milwaukee, rural and pastoral America gives way to the grimmer bricks and mortar and cluttered skyline of an industrial landscape – and that was to remain the constant eye-fodder for the rest of the way to Chicago’s Union Station. It was the point too at which the Empire’s Builder’s observation desk – a glass compartment with terrific views of the attractions – emptied out; having been a popular vantage position and fully occupied throughout most of the journey.
However, because passenger seats were on elevated upper decks, all carriages offered splendid views along the way. I had been told I would be surprised by the comfort of the Amtrak train, and that was the case – more than ample leg room and a spaciousness that kept neighbours at a good distance.
The crew might well have been a troupe of performers: one seemed to sing his way from St Paul to Chicago, and probably for the entire journey, another joked and pointed out the sights we might be interested in.
And the voices announcing the dining car and other services sounded as if they too only had one purpose in life – to make our experience as pleasant as possible.
And so it was, pleasant and memorable and never more so than when we were watching the river flow – the one that Twain called “the crookedest river in the world”.
Get your ticket
The Empire Builder runs between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest every day along parts of the Lewis and Clark Trail and following the early pioneers from Illinois, through Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana and Idaho to Washington State. Fares from Chicago to Minneapolis/St Paul cost from $102 single and $180 return. The full route from Chicago to Seattle takes 46 hours and costs from $159 single and from $320 return, cabins are available and will cost from $120 per night. Be flexible to get the best fares. Amtrak.com