Free-Reprint Article Written by: Chuck Saddler See Terms of Reprint Below.
***************************************************************** * * This email is being delivered directly to members of the group: * * [email protected] * ***************************************************************** We have moved our TERMS OF REPRINT to the end of the article. Be certain to read our TERMS OF REPRINT and honor our TERMS OF REPRINT when you use this article. Thank you. This article has been distributed by: http://Article-Distribution.com Helpful Link: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Overview http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------- Article Title: ============== American Travel Ideas: Amtrak Will Take You Most Anywhere Article Description: ==================== When I was a child in the 1970's, my grandmother heard that Amtrak was coming to an end in our part of the country. So, she arranged with my parents to take us kids on a train ride one last time, before the end of an era. Amtrak has returned to offering nearly national service, and it serves to help move people nearly anywhere in the country. Read this article to learn more about the resurgence of Amtrak. Additional Article Information: =============================== 805 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line Distribution Date and Time: 2008-11-14 11:12:00 Written By: Chuck Saddler Copyright: 2008 Contact Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For more free-reprint articles by Chuck Saddler, please visit: http://www.thePhantomWriters.com/recent/author/chuck-saddler.html ============================================= Special Notice For Publishers and Webmasters: ============================================= If you use this article on your website or in your ezine, We Want To Know About It. Use the following URL to let us know where you have used this article, and we will include a link to your website on thePhantomWriters.com: http://thephantomwriters.com/notify.php?id=6382&p=load HTML Copy-and-Paste and TEXT Copy-and-Paste Versions Of Article Are Available at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/s/american-travel-ideas-amtrak.shtml#get_code --------------------------------------------------------------------- American Travel Ideas: Amtrak Will Take You Most Anywhere Copyright (c) 2008 Chuck Saddler American Travel Ideas http://www.americantravelideas.com/blog/ When I was a child in the 1970's, my grandmother heard that Amtrak was coming to an end in our part of the country. So, she arranged with my parents to take us kids on a train ride one last time, before the end of an era. Fortunately, we were able to ride the train twice before the service ended in the Great Plains of the United States. On our first trip, we rode the train an hour-and-a-half to Oklahoma City. On our second trip, we traveled much further, riding all the way to Fort Worth Texas. And then the Amtrak service ended its run from Chicago, Illinois to San Antonio, Texas. That was in the early 1970's, when I was about eight-years-old. In the 1970's, Congress decided that in the era of air travel that the citizenry of the United States would not ride the train anymore. But in 1999, Amtrak brought its service back to Oklahoma. Now, if we are willing to change trains in our route, we can catch a train out of Oklahoma City and reach nearly every area of the nation in less than a day. Traveling With Young Children Given the challenges of arriving two hours early at the airport, toting young children through security, and keeping children calm during a long flight, a train ride may be much more attractive for most parents. With my children, we will not even consider flying with the kids, but we have taken the train to San Antonio to visit family. With comfortable seating, great views of the Oklahoma and Texas countryside, and a dining car available to us, the twelve-hour ride to San Antonio and back again even beat putting the kids in the car for the long trip. Don't get me wrong - if it were only my wife and myself, I would enjoy the long drive. But with three young children in tow, I would not consider making such a trip with the kids again. The last time we drove, we only had two kids, and that was very painful and frustrating, as the kids needed to get out and run about every hour. What is normally a 13-hour drive by car took two days and a hotel-overnight, when we took the kids with us for the trip. Most Any Destination In The Country Is Served When you visit the Amtrak.com website, you should click the tab at top labeled, "Routes". Once on that page, you should click the link for the "Interactive Route Atlas". Upon doing so, you will notice that Amtrak routes run through 47 of the 50 states in the United States. The only states not served by at least one stop are: Hawaii, Alaska and South Dakota. No matter where you live or where you want to travel, you will find that the Amtrak service can get you pretty close to your intended destination. When we rode to San Antonio, we rented a car that helped us travel the last ten miles to our final destination. The Amtrak website offers an interactive scheduling tool, to help you to find the right train to carry you to your target destination. It can also offer you an accurate tool to help you to determine the real costs of your journey. Compared To Airfare In the next couple months, I need to make a solo trip to Chicago, Illinois, so if I decide to Amtrak to Chicago, I can do a full round trip from Oklahoma City to Chicago for just about $263. The same trip will cost me anywhere from $271 to $490 by air, depending on which airline I get my tickets. Cash-wise, Amtrak offers the better deal. Time-wise, I gain a little bit of time by using an airplane. The train ride will take 15 hours. The airplane ride will be five hours, but I need to buffer that by arriving at the airport at least two hours early, so my airplane commitment will be 7-8 hours. If I were taking my kids with me to Chicago, Amtrak would be my only consideration. However, since my future travel plans are related to business, I might opt to fly, but I doubt it. Fun For The Whole Family Not only is a train ride less stressful than an airplane ride, on small children; it is also less stressful on parents who are tending to the children. But beyond the stress factor, a train ride can be fun for everyone in the family, since more than one of you will be able to see out the windows on the train. I have to be honest. When I took my children on the Amtrak to San Antonio, not only did they have fun, but also I found the trip as exciting as I did when I was eight-years-old. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuck Saddler has traveled America most of his life. As a writer, he has decided to share with his audience another a different view of the places and attractions he has visited and might like to visit in the future. With three young children, Chuck's view of travel has changed to reflect how to enjoy his travels with three young children in tow. Read more of Chuck's American Travel Ideas on the website: http://www.americantravelideas.com/blog/ --- END ARTICLE --- Get HTML or TEXT Copy-and-Paste Versions Of This Article at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/s/american-travel-ideas-amtrak.shtml#get_code ..................................... TERMS OF REPRINT - Publication Rules (Last Updated: May 11, 2006) Our TERMS OF REPRINT are fully enforcable under the terms of: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2281.ENR: ..................................... *** Digital Reprint Rights *** * If you publish this article in a website/forum/blog, You Must Set All URL's or Mailto Addresses in the body of the article AND in the Author's Resource Box as Hyperlinks (clickable links). * Links must remain in the form that we published them. Clean links should point to the Author's links without redirects having been inserted into the copy. * You are not allowed to Change or Delete any Words or Links in the Article or Resource Box. Paragraph breaks must be retained with articles. You can change where the paragraph breaks fall, but you cannot eliminate all paragraph breaks as some have chosen to do. * Email Distribution of this article Must be done through Opt-in Email Only. No Unsolicited Commercial Email. * You Are Allowed to format the layout of the article for proper display of the article in your website or in your ezine, so long as you can maintain the author's interests within the article. * You may not use sentences from this article as an input for any software that steals sentences from others in order to build an article with software. The copyright on this article applies to the "WHOLE" article. *** Author Notification *** We ask that you notify the author of publication of his or her work. Chuck Saddler can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Print Publication Reprint Rights *** If you desire to publish this article in a PRINT publication, you must contact the author directly for Print Permission at: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ..................................... If you need help converting this text article for proper hyperlinked placement in your webpage, please use this free tool: http://thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl ===================================================================== ABOUT THIS ARTICLE SUBMISSION http://thePhantomWriters.com is a paid article distribution service. thePhantomWriters.com and Article-Distribution.com are owned and operated by Bill Platt of Stillwater, Oklahoma USA. Learn more about our article distribution services by visiting: http://thephantomwriters.com/x.pl/tpw/info/article-distribution/index.html The content of this article is solely the property and opinion of its author, Chuck Saddler http://www.americantravelideas.com/blog/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ---------------------------------------------------------------------
