Train tickets were purchased months in advance. I knew exactly when I was leaving. I'd gone over some potential backpacking routes with Mike. We were set. The plan was for me to take the train to Glacier National Park while Mike flew to Seattle. I would do a short backpacking route on my own while Mike would attempt to climb Mt. Rainier. Mike would then take the train to Glacier and meet me for my second tour of duty in the backwoods. We were hoping I would be able to pick up all of the necessary permits in one fell swoop.

So we were more or less ready. One could hardly blame me for being a bit too blasé about packing. I'm not sensible enough to make a list. I know what things I usually bring. I travel a lot, so I'm extremely casual about preparations. Things tend to work out. Forget something and you can deal with it.

This may help to explain why I waited until two hours before train departure before I started to gather up the things I need. Normally, this would have been plenty of time. Throw the usual stuff in the backpack and go -- easy.

However this only works if you can find everything expeditiously. Or if your uncle doesn't decide he needs some last minute computer help before you leave. Or if you don't get paged from work by one of the few people you will answer pages from.

After making a feeble attempt to get myself to worry about missing the train I resign myself to my calmness. Right before a trip, I sometimes get into the type of calmness that reaches down to your soul and wraps it in a blanket. In a peaceful funk, I gather up most of my stuff, help my uncle a bit, and deal with the work problem. My uncle drops me off at Union Station in Chicago and lends me a Ramboesque knife to replace my missing minimalist Swiss Army knife.

I make the train. I almost always make the train/bus/plane. I am lucky.

Right from the start I begin picking up indications that this is no ordinary trip. I'm deciding on where to sit in the front part of an upper coach section when a woman in the first row, who appears to be traveling with a large box of computer paper, points to the seats across from her and says: "Those are the ones you want, in front. Got the most leg room."

I look over at her and smile. "Oh, so you're an expert at this?"

'Yes," she replies, matter of factly.

I thank her and take her advice. After all, if she's an expert... As soon as I sit down I have the strong intuitive feeling that I will have to deal with this woman before the end of the trip. At this point it seems rather unlikely because I know I will not initiate a conversation with her. I'm also thinking that she might develop into a slight inconvenience for me.

All that after such a brief exchange! This is my first premonition of the trip and I'm unused to them at this point.

The train rolls out, down by the river and follows its north branch for a time. Very slow going at first, rolling along, waiting to pick up steam. The city looks different near the tracks -- weedy and dilapidated, edge of town or end of civilization.

Just as I'm getting into the scenery, the conductor comes by and perfunctorily tells me to move to the seat across the aisle. The train is full and it is policy to move single people around to make room for couples traveling together. The policy is reasonable, but I am not happy to give up my nice window seat to move next to the woman I just had a premonition about.

I move across the aisle.

My new seatmate beams at me.

Her name is Juanita and she is going to Minot, North Dakota. She lives with her husband on the air force base there. I once read that the friendliest people in the US live in North Dakota. Juanita is probably above average in the friendliness department, even by North Dakota standards. Juanita chats gaily and I switch into "Iowa mode". I'm sure Iowans must give North Dakotans a run for their money in the friendliness department. I lived there for many years and learned how to interact with the friendly Iowans. Growing up in Chicago I associated friendliness towards strangers with hustlers and cheats. There was always an angle, a hook to watch out for. Living in Iowa taught me that people exist who can be friendly towards strangers without trying to take advantage of them. Iowans stop at crosswalks and wave each other on. They thank the bus driver when they get off the bus. Strangers say hello when they pass each other on the sidewalk. A whole new world for me once, but now I have some understanding of it.

So, I know how to deal with Juanita.

Juanita says she's noticed my backpack and asks if I've been to Alaska.

"It's the only state I haven't been to," I reply.

"Oh, you'll love it when you're there," she says, automatically assuming I have plans to go. Juanita used to live in Alaska when her husband was stationed there. She raves about Denali in particular.

This is an interesting coincidence because just the evening before while I was at a White Sox game I had a conversation with Susan M. where she immediately brought up the subject of Alaska when I mentioned I was going backpacking the next day. She also raved about Denali NP. The similarity between the two conversations struck me. At this point I remember that it was Susan who reminded me to keep a journal for this trip and that it is very likely I would have forgotten to bring paper for it had she not brought up the subject the night before.

I hadn't slept very much the previous night (previous weeks, for that matter) and the gentle rocking motion of the train lulls me into a short nap.

When I awake I'm surprised to see that Juanita is asleep. She had seemed so bright eyed and chatty! Even more disconcerting is the fact that she wakes up about a minute after I do and is once again bright eyed and chatty.

Juanita is originally from Millerton, PA. She had been visiting her relatives there and is now returning home to Minot, ND. She is 33 years old. She has followed her husband to air force bases in Grand Forks, Alaska, Grand Rapids, and now Minot.

Besides visiting relatives in PA, Juanita had hoped to adopt a set of twin boys who were recently born to a woman there who had an agreement to give them to Juanita. The woman backed out of the deal after the birth. "She has six kids already that she's abandoned!" Juanita is understandably disappointed.

One of the names she had picked out for one of the boys is Matthew.

"Please do not put anything thicker than toilet paper in the lavatory toilet. Any thing thicker will clog up your facilities."

A young woman in shorts stands in a truly gigantic weed covered parking lot. She is alone in the vast space and appears to be surveying.

A ramshackle building sits directly under an overpass, right next to the tracks. Two large dogs eat out of bowls. Two men sit outside in lawn chairs, facing the train, watching it as if it were a television set. Rows of tires are scattered about their yard.

I discover the wonderful views through the large windows in the observation lounge. It gets a bit too smoky in there though. Hard core smokers crowd into the small smoking section and the air gets thick throughout the car.

I overhear two older women who had evidently been talking together for quite some time. They have such an easy familiarity with each other that I had assumed they were travelling together. One of them starts to complain bitterly about the smoke smell in the car. The other agrees and the first launches into an extremely vehement anti-smoking tirade. She goes on like this for several minutes and then pauses to catch her breath.

The second woman sheepishly confesses that she smokes a few cigarettes a day.

"Oh," says the first woman. A long, uncomfortable pause follows. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't be dear," says the smoker, "when I came in here I said to myself that I wouldn't need my cigarettes today because of all the smoke in here. I could just breathe in the smoke!"

Stacks of boards and massive piles of pulp sit outside the ugly grey corrugated sheds of a large lumber mill.

Both before coming to the lumber mill and after passing it, is row upon row of corn rolling about pastoral farmland.

Strange place to put an ugly lumber mill.

While passing by some more rundown buildings, Juanita wonders why trains always pass by the bad part of town. "You'd think they'd want to show off the good parts to people."

"The people in the good parts don't want to live near the train tracks," I say.

Juanita considers this for a second. "Oh, yes," she agrees.

We reach LaCrosse Wisconsin in about 5 1/2 hours by taking almost the same route I took by bike last October. It took me 5 1/2 days by bike. Days into hours. And people complain the train moves too slow!

I was ridiculously unprepared for the bike trip. It was my first attempt at long distance biking and I didn't even plan well enough for a day trip. I had all my stuff bungied to the back of my bike like some comical Dr. Seuss character. My bike was so back heavy that my kickstand broke in two the first time I stopped. I couldn't ride up steep hills.

My clothes consisted of bike shorts and a long sleeve shirt. I ran into rain, strong wind, and 20-degree weather at night. I usually camped shivering in my tent by the side of the trail. I had little food and had trouble finding towns to buy some.

In short, it was a great trip.

Actually, it really was. I saw very few people on the trails. The scenery was glorious in the leaf turning fall. I had a great adventure. I kept a journal for the first time in my life.

Unfortunately, I didn't take the time to transcribe it to computer when I got back home and have since lost it forever. I'm determined not to make the same mistake this time.

Go slow and keep a journal.

Juanita tells me she was engaged four days after meeting her husband Gary. She had the wedding ring within a week and was married before the end of the second week.

Talk about whirlwind romances! They've been married for eight years.

Unlike Juanita, I got married after living with a woman for several years. We knew each other so well, that getting married was a minute transition. We were best friends and knew each other better than anyone else in the world.

After traveling about the world, we returned to our home base in Iowa City and lived a tranquil existence. Then my wife seemed estranged to me after her father's sudden death. Her behavior became increasingly erratic. One day she decided she wanted to move in with a lesbian lover in Chicago.

She didn't want to leave me though. So, we lived in a bizarre limbo state for several months. We were still best friends. We still took trips together, just as we had so many times before. We still loved each other. We just didn't have sex any more.

I eventually saw it would destroy both of us to keep going like that.

"Sorry you got divorced," says Juanita sympathetically.

"Most of the marriage was extremely happy times for me."

"And you still got divorced," says Juanita, somewhat puzzled.

"We had a very amiable breakup. I'm still concerned about her well being. I haven't seen her for about a year. She didn't look too good the last time I saw her."

"A year... but you parted friends, right?"

"Yes, but I told her it would take me a long while before we could just be friends. She wanted that right away, but it would have been too hard for me."

Juanita nods understandingly.

"But I think I will call her soon," I continue.

"Do you ever feel like you could get back together with her?"

I'm somewhat taken aback by Juanita's question, especially after she'd heard such a cursory explanation of the events of my marriage. "No," I say, "I was on that roller coaster for awhile. It's over/not over/over/maybe not. But I've known that it's over for quite awhile."

"That's good," says Juanita, nodding.

Postscript -- I did talk to my ex about a week after returning. She's doing much better! It was good to talk to her.

Isn't it interesting how strangers will often tell their life stories to each other while travelling? And how quickly travelers can sometimes become familiar with each other!

On several occasions, Juanita nudges me to look at deer.

Later, when I tell her that I run she pats my knee. "I don't," she laughs, "I walk."

When she gets up to go to the washroom, she squeezes my shoulder and says: "Be right back."

We chat, but we're not chatting the whole time. For the most part, the passing scenery quietly mesmerizes me. Juanita does puzzles when I'm in quiet mode or when I'm busy writing. Strangely, she doesn't comment on my writing, despite the fact that I frequently jot down notes while in the middle of conversations with her.

She wants me to tell her travel stories, but I only tell a few. Juanita is not very worldly, and it's no fun to tell travel stories to an audience who won't appreciate them. So, she asks me what I think about aliens visiting the earth. This is much better! I don't often get to have this conversation. The gist of my theory is that life on other planets is probable, but it is highly unlikely any aliens have visited earth. I cite lack of solid evidence for sightings, the distances involved, speed of light, relatively short time period since we've been here, etc.

I may have changed Juanita's mind on this issue.

She wants to know about my theories on what the future will be like. At first I'm tempted to start in with my pessimistic theory of a society slowly going to hell. However, I quickly change my mind and stick with likely future innovations in technology.

For some reason I don't want to give Juanita a pessimistic world view.

It's pretty hard to sleep in the Amtrak coach seats. I have weeks of sleep deprivation behind me though, so I'm ready for the challenge.

Early success! I'm asleep quickly and soon fall into a deep slumber.

Cold shock! Wet, sticky, smell of fruity coconut alcohol raining on my head.

"Oh, sorry," a woman slurs. A shape staggers out of the car.

"Oh, she's real potted!" says Juanita.

I sit up, in a daze. Apparently a drunken woman has dumped a mixed drink on my head. Juanita plays mother and ineffectually wipes a pillow cover over me. She rings for the attendant, but no one comes. Eventually, one passes by, ignoring the call light, and I ask for a towel.

I tell her what happened and the attendant is amazingly unsympathetic to my plight. She has no towels. She's not a bit interested in my problem. The best she can do is to bring a plastic garbage bag to drape over the wet sticky seat.

It's ridiculous, and not very comfortable, but I'm too tired to care.

Just before I go to sleep for the second time, a drunken cowboy and a younger black man stagger past, accidentally heading into the dining car. They soon come back the other way.

Cowboy Crocked: "We've got to find us a beer car, that's all I'm saying!"

Kid Blackie: "Hee, hee."

I pull the plastic over my head as they go past. A man snores nearby. I sleep on and off. I dream that I have brought the wrong tent poles for my tent.

This is something I'd assumed I'd done earlier in the year while hiking the Ice Age Trail. Rain forced me to beg space in a crowded tent with two comrades. As I lay huddled at the foot of the tent one of them would periodically try to force his big toe into my ear, perhaps dreaming it was a slipper.

When I got home from that trip I discovered that I'd actually brought two sets of tent poles with me. I could have slept without toes in my ear. I'll probably have nightmares for years to come.

The train stops for a long time at one point. We are very late.

In the morning, I go to breakfast with Juanita. We are seated with a woman and her son. A woman who was born and raised in Minot, ND! Such a small town, but I meet two people who live there in a very short time!

Now, Juanita has been dissing Minot to anyone within earshot, and to me in particular. She describes a drab, dirty, run down, boring pit of a town. She tells me that when she first arrived there she asked her husband: "Did you punch somebody to get transferred here?"

The nickname of Minot is "The Magic City". Someone asks Juanita what's magic about it. "Absolutely nothing!" she says.

When we discover this woman at breakfast is from Minot, Juanita starts into her usual complaints about the place.

The woman nods understandingly, but then tells us how she once moved away to Minot to go to college in Missoula MT. If you aren't familiar with Missoula, it is a very pretty valley town surrounded by wonderful mountains. I have friend who lives there and he loves it. Most people rave about the surrounding scenery.

The Minot woman admits that the mountains were nice, but she really missed Minot! She loves the place! She couldn't wait to get back. She thinks the plains around Minot are wonderful. She thinks the town is great, and she wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

Juanita is more than willing to debate her on the Minot issue. They go back and forth a few rounds, but the former Minot native is tactful enough to let the issue die.

The little boy in the row behind me plays with his Gameboy for almost the entire trip. His mother (a Julia Sweeny "Pat" look alike) continually pours chips from a bag with a vigorous shaking motion directly into her gaping mouth. Dad has the placid look of a lobotomized (or at least post three martini lunch) 1950's sitcom father knows least. Son #2 is a whiner: "Everybody wants to shit on me!" Little son #3 is pretzel addict.

Grandma wants nothing to do with any of them. Perhaps she is embarrassed by what her genes have produced.

Juanita wonders aloud how they harvest the many lovely sunflowers we've seen since crossing into North Dakota.

I'd been wondering the same thing myself, to myself.

Later, still looking out the window, I notice that Juanita is staring at me.

"You're quiet," she says.

"Yes," I nod, quietly.

'Do you make people nervous around you?" (I'm supposing she means when I get very quiet.)

"Sometimes, at first, but not after they get used to me."

Juanita nods understandingly, once again. "You always been that way?"

"Yes."

Most of the buildings in Devil's Lake are from another era. Old rectangular brick boxes on the prairie. The ugly new Ramsey National Bank and Trust Company building looks incongruent next to the old VFW Club.

Brown wheat fields with yellow border flowers. An occasional green marsh filled with ducks. Long, straight, lonely dirt roads.

The water tower in Stanley looks like a blue 1950's rocket. Ready to take off for mars.

More irregularly shaped sunflower fields, yellow bursts that curve around trees and grassland, slowly turning with the sun.

Tough prairie flowers surround every field. They have a subtle, earthy beauty. These are strong, private plants that display their colors reluctantly, unlike those delicate, ostentatious garden flowers you find in the city.

Sign on boxcar: "Do not hump." (People must get pretty hard up in ND!)

Rugby, ND, from the tracks, is a town of propane tanks, fertilizer spreaders, pickup trucks, and big truck tires. Somehow I don't think I would fit in there.

Boy and girl walk by.

Boy: "Let's just go walking."

Girl: "Ok, we are.

Two girls playing cards in the observation deck.

Older one: "Want to play Go Fish?"

Younger one: "Goldfish?"

Older one: "Go Fish, you know it. Except we'll make it harder. Instead of just asking for numbers, we'll ask for colors too. Like 'Do you have any black sevens?'"

Juanita is concerned about my getting into Glacier so late at night. We're behind schedule and our current ETA is after 11pm. I have not made any arrangements for where to spend the night.

"Didn't you make a plan?" she asks.

"Oh, I made a plan," I reply. "It's just not a very good one."

Juanita cracks up, which is nice to see. "Well, you can look at it as an experiment."

"Yes," I say. "It's more fun than knowing exactly what will happen when you arrive somewhere."

"You like to do daring trips, don'tcha?"

"Sometimes."

Juanita might be right, Minot looks a lot like Rugby from the tracks. I wish her good luck on her hopes to transfer to Idaho, Indiana, or Tennessee. She laughs.

Juanita's computer paper box turns out to be filled with cacti. She shows me a picture of their flowers in bloom. She gives me some beef jerky.

"Hope I didn't bore you with my gabbing," she says.

"No," I say, "you're a very interesting person."

"Didn't mean to boss you into that seat when you first came in," she says, with just a hint of a smirk.

"You probably knew that they'd move me over by you," I say.

Juanita hesitates, and then smiles wickedly. "Well, I wouldn't tell you whether I was thinking that or not."

I help her with her box and give her a hug when she leaves.

A water sprinkler shoots jets high into the air, making a misty rain that gently cascades upon a brown field.

A stocky kid of about ten, in western duds, walks alone by the tracks, He kicks at rocks with his cowboy boots and picks his nose.

A herd of cows camp out in the middle of an obviously infrequently traveled road.

There have been five meals served in the dining car since I've boarded. I usually eat very little while I'm traveling and have only had some pancakes with Juanita.

However, many people seem to be attending every meal. I overhear some of them waiting in line for the dining car.

"Seems like all we do on this train is eat," says one woman.

"Yes, I've been stuffed the entire trip," says another.

Are they unaware that dining car attendance is not de rigour?

A lean, muscular, guy with a crewcut, glasses, SilverTab levis with generic cigs in the back pocket, white gym shoes, and a black tank top that says "LORD*DROL" gets on at Williston, ND. The conductor seats him next to me.

They probably want to put the scary looking people in one place. My hair is getting long and increasingly grungy. I have a scruffy beard and am wearing the throw away clothes I reserve for trips.

My seatmate talks to one of the conductors for a bit. His name is John Lewis. When the conductor leaves he sits all the way on the edge of his seat, turned facing away from me. I must be scarier looking than I realize.

John leaves to smoke in the observation car. When he returns, he snatches his seat ticket, and moves to another seat.

Never got to speak to him. Quite a difference from Juanita.

A dust devil whirlwind kicks up a bit of a fuss in a dusty field, then quickly blows itself out in a dizzy finish.

Three horses bunch together in a huge forlorn weed field.

The buttes near Snowden look a bit like parts of the Badlands. Hawks glide over their strange crags. Fall away to fields and sloping hills. Nothing rolling about these foothills. They are slapped on with a scalpel.

Glasgow, Inverness, Malta, Havre -- exciting names for dull Montana towns. The story is that the railroad baron James J. Hill, founder of the Empire Builder, named these stops after European towns he'd visited.

Near Shelby, a checkerboard patch quilt of green, yellow, brown, and black fields, each perfect squares, lead off into the horizon, ending at a misty grey mountain. I'm reminded of Tolkein and the Wizard of Oz.

It gets too dark to see out the window for a long time, but I still continue to stare. Most people heading for Glacier get off at the East Glacier stop. It is nearly midnight when the train pulls into West Glacier.

Only a handful of people detrain with me. A man asks me where I'm going and I say that I'm not really sure (sticking with my plan). He points to a young guy waiting near the station. "He might be able to help you."

I walk up to the young guy and he asks me where I'm going.

"Depends," I say. "Where are you going?"

He laughs at this and says he could take me to either Lake McDonald Lodge or to Apgar. I tell him I was headed for Apgar, but was planning to walk since I'd heard it was only a few miles.

"You wouldn't want to do it in the dark," he says. We wait around to see if anyone else needs a ride, but there is no one. The only people left at the station are loudly singing "Happy Birthday" to someone who has just arrived. Cameras flash. Quite a welcoming party for so late at night!

The young man's name is Mitch and he leads me to a large red bus that resembles a truck. He tells me bear tales as we drive. At first, I think he's just trying to scare a city boy, but then I see he means it. Mitch says there are bears all over this year, near the campgrounds, getting into things. Several trails have been closed in the Many Glaciers area (where I'm headed with Mike) due to bear problems.

Not surprisingly, the Apgar campground is full (it's a huge campground too), but Mitch lets me off anyway. Somehow he knows I'm just going to scrounge around and sleep on the ground somewhere. He doesn't even ask me for money for the ride. Mitch is one of those "Trail Angels" you meet from time to time. I thank him and he leaves.

I walk a ways outside of the campground and lay out my bag. The sky is clear and the stars are bright. I leave my glasses on for a time so I can drink them in. I think about bears for a bit, since there is food in my pack and Mitch had been talking about them so much, but I get to sleep ok.

A perfectly executed plan!