Off The Cuff

And They’re Off…..To Iowa

Posted by: From Arkansas in Family stuff, Travel on Aug 10 2008

Welcome back!

We have some newlyweds in the family. I am not going into the whole deal. That you can find on my sister’s blog. But my niece and her husband decided to move from our very rural life to live in the city. So, they worked out a way to get to Iowa where my daughter lives. They looked forward to that with eager anticipation as the days counted down. The actual trip was going to be by train which is almost unheard of in our part of the country. In fact, I found it fascinating that they could not come up with a bus route that came anywhere near our part of the world. Is that weird or what?

The buses have disappeared from around here. There are none that stop within a hundred and fifty miles of where we live…in the right direction. And they cost the moon to travel that way. What they found out was that if they did take a bus, it would have to be over a 150 miles away and cost quite a bit too. That seemed somewhat unreasonable to me. They would have paid out almost $160 for both to travel by bus AFTER being transported by car…using the gas for that, of course….Insane. But what else did they have? TRAINS!

So, instead of traveling that amount for someone to take them to the bus, they went by train that was only 45 miles from our house. We took them last night to the train station. Now, that is sort of a weird name for it but it was a train station nevertheless. We know because the local cop thought we might be lost (we were) when we zipped past the station but looked like we were looking for that illusive something. He pointed out the train station which does NOT look like one at all. In fact, the other half of the thing was the Chamber of Commerce. Uh yeah.

The station itself was a kind of hole in the wall with a bathroom, a bench and some brochures. There is no attendant which was noted on a sign prominently displayed inside on the wall. We got there a tad early. The train was due at 1:36am and we got there at quarter to twelve based on the fact that usually people have to check in long before they have to board. Not so here. And we could have gotten there on the dot because the train didn’t….show up on the dot, that is. It was delayed. We have no idea why. It just was.

Anyone know what a chigger is? Yes, it is a change of subject….or not depending on your point of view. We sat at the station waiting for the big train whistle or horn to blow but it didn’t. But what did show up were the chiggers. Lots of them. Bite, bite, bite. Yes, that does itch a lot!

By the time the train actually did show up at 3am, we were so happy to say goodbye and get back home! The end result was that they got to Iowa safe and sound after a 10 hr trip on a train and 3 more hours on the bus that backed up the train since trains do not angle east or west when they are heading north or south. Oh yeah, the cost of the trip was $10 more than if they had elected to go by bus. Not bad at all and certainly worth the less aggravation for the rest of us. I do hope they become happy there with new jobs and a new place to live.

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