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A lot of planning went into the vacation. How does one travel lightly with a 9 and 4 yeard old? Easily. Here's how it was done. Two small duffle bags contained enough socks, shirts, shorts, underwear, and pullups for 8 days as well as some long sleeve shirts, jeans, little pillows (thanks Stephanie), kids jackets, and flip flops. A medium sized backpack was filled with, our tickets, AMTRAK guide, prescription medication (2 full bottles), syringes for the medication, toothbrushes, small toothpaste, shampoo, Motrin, Benedryl, Balmex, Styptics, 2 disposable razors, medical kit, snakebite kit, Cortaid, Anbesol, 4 Tylemol, 4 ace bandages, maps of LA, D.C., Seattle, Chicago, Arizona, Washington, cell phone, charger, car adapter, coloring books, crayons, magnetic travel games, cards, camera, 8 rolls of film, $500 cash, a roll of quarters, 2 Swiss Army knives, a compass, electronic adress book, tissues, and 2 paperback books. The kids each had their own small bags. Marissa brought her CD player, Cd's, 8 extra batteries, a disposable camera, and Harry Potter. Erica's bag had a small stuffed animal and a disposable camera. A box with 6 more days' worth of clothes was shipped to our hotel in Flagstaff. We were ready to go.
8/5/00 Noon
So off we go! As we left the Deerfield Beach station I could only imagine what this trip had in store for us. Our first train to Orlando was rather uneventful. The 229 mile trip took about 4 hours. The attendant thought that he could split up a Dad and his two daughters in different areas of the train, that was quickly corrected.
After a 2 hour layover, we made our connection which would take us across 2764 miles in 64 hours. Luckily for us we met several people who had kids and were on the same train, at least as far as Houston. Throughout the journey, we seemed to be stopping a lot, often for freight trains. As luck would have it, every freight train in the US was also on the same tracks as us. By morning we found that we'd be at least 1.5 hours behind schedule.
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