General outline of the trip that DW and I took Dec. 3 to Dec 19.
Started at Chemult Oregon after 8PM. The southbound Coast Starlight was about a half hour late. We were stopped for a while about 30 miles north of Sacramento while the host railroad repaired a broken rail about dawn. Got to SAC about 7:30AM.
We put our bags on "hold" while we went to breakfast at Jim Denny's (12th between H&I).
We boarded the California Zephyr about 11:15AM enroute to Burlington Iowa.
During our journey the weather was very cold. Several times members of the train crew had to get out to hammer ice out of switches so that we could get on a siding to let westbound freight trains pass. We arrived in Burlington about 3 hours behind schedule (2:30PM).
We got picked up in BRL with our rental car (red Mazda2). The weather was cold and cloudy. As we approached Indianapolis, we saw the first flakes. Our hotel reservation was in Louisville. We did make it about 11PM. The Interstate from Indianapolis to Louisville had about 10 cars that slid off due to the icy conditions.
I purposely took a southern route to avoid the lake effect snow zones. Saturday 12/7 left Louisville and went east and then southeast through the Cumberland Gap into Tennessee to connect with I-81 north to Salem VA in the Shenandoah Valley. Weather was good.
We heard that an ice storm was coming in on Sunday. We left Salem about 5:30AM and got about 150 miles up I-81 before we hit the bad weather. We did stop several times to knock ice off the wipers before we got to DD and SIL's place in Columbia MD.
We left after sundown to go to our reserved hotel room on the east side of Baltimore.
My tip is to NEVER reserve at a Rodeway Inn. We spent one night because we sort of had to. We checked out the next morning after a rather poor breakfast.
I found a suite at the Extended Stay in Columbia for about the same money. This is where we will stay any time we go to visit DD.
Now for the real purpose of the trip: Our daughter graduated with a BS in Nursing from the University of MD on Monday evening 12/9. We left Maryland on Thursday morning on the way back west.
I had planned to take a route through PA and Ohio to northern Indiana but decided to play it safer and go through West Virginia and back to the place we stayed in Louisville.
The next day we drove as far as Blue Springs just east of Kansas City.
On Saturday we drove to Abilene KS. I found a couple of geocaches before we checked into our $44 room which was much better than the $55+ Rodeway in MD.
Sunday we got out early to go to a church in Nebraska City NE where a pastor I knew from Bend is now preaching. I found a cache in NE and then we headed for Hannibal MO.
On Monday morning (12/16) found a couple of caches in MO before we headed back to Burlington. I did manage to find a cache in the Convention and Visitor Bureau for my IA cache find. During the trip I added 8 new states with a cache find.
We had a great late lunch at the Drake in Burlington. We turned in the car about 4 PM (they close at 5). We sat in the Amtrak station until the westbound Zephyr arrived at 7PM.
We were running late until we got to SLC a few minutes early. We arrived in Winnemucca, Reno and Sacramento early.
We "held" our bags and headed for Old Town. We spent 2 hours touring the California Railroad Museum. We spent an hour poking around some of the shops in Old Town before going to the Firehouse restaurant for a fabulous meal (rather expensive).
We sat for several hours in the Sacramento station waiting for the northbound Coast Starlight. It was about 12:15AM before we were on our way out of SAC on our way back to Chemult. We were about 10 minutes behind schedule when we got off the train.
Sleeping on the train in coach can be uncomfortable, but we survived 6 nights out of 16.
I am glad that we got to take this trip without having to drive over the Rockies and all the way through Kansas or Nebraska.
I'll be glad to try to answer questions you may have.

Congratulations to your daughter! And congratulations to you for sleeping in coach on Amtrak. Last year I took Amtrak New York - Chicago - San Francisco - Portland - Seattle and enjoyed myself, but I had a roomette for all the night trains. I was on time into Chicago and San Francisco but the Coast Starlight arrived an hour late at SF and left three hours late after they changed the loco (at least I got to spend the two hours lying down - I felt sorry for the people further on). You were lucky with your connections - I would not have booked them so close.

Thanks for the report Tom

The California Zephyr ride was a beautiful one when I took in the summer, but I'll bet it's particularly beautiful in the winter. I'm impressed that you survived such long rides in coach; I've loved my cross-country train rides but I don't think I would enjoy them as much without the roomette.

TTT
The connection from the Coast Starlight to the eastbound California Zephyr is guaranteed. We had over 4 hours for our walk to breakfast. On the way back we had over 10 hours in SAC.
I now have enough Amtrak Guest Reward Points that my next Amtrak trip will be in a free roomette.

I'm not sure that that "guarantee" means they will hold the Zephyr. There were a number of people on my delayed Coast Starlight who were connecting to the eastbound Empire Builder, and they had to get off the Starlight early and travel by bus to meet the other train instead of going on to Seattle, thus missing a good bit of the scenery on both routes.

Enjoy that roomette!

Sounds like a nice trip, minus the bad weather. Thanks for reporting.

Can you compare the cost of taking the train vs. renting a car, paying for gas and lodging on a similar trip?

The guaranteed connection from the northbound Coast Starlight is at Portland. They have on occasion, held the eastbound Empire Builder for up to an hour for a cross platform transfer.
In the "bad old days" when the northbound was very late, they would bus those connecting to the EB from Klamath Falls north on US 97 and east on I-84 to Pasco Washington. It has been at least 2 years since they did this.
If a southbound Coast Starlight was running 3+ hours behind, they could take connecting passengers off at Chico and bus them to Truckee.
From my home to Burlington IA is 1900 miles which takes 30 hours under good conditions. $150 in gas and at least 1 $50 motel room each way. I earned some AGR points by reserving at several Choice hotels. The Rodeway was a basket case. I had to go down to get pillowcases, towels/washcloths and hangers.
The interior carpeted stairs smelled funky. The outside concrete steps were ice covered and dangerous.
At breakfast, DW put a shot of milk in her coffee and it curdled. The manager did go get a fresh gallon of milk.
The Extended Stay had a full kitchen and a nice couch.
We had a room across from the elevator but we didn't mind the occasional ding.

Slightly more recent than two years. It was May 2012 when I was on the Coast Starlight. We were running three hours late - they had to replace the regular loco with a freight loco and never made up the time.

Will rememeber not to stay at Rodeway!

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