4,000 Miles, 6 Small Towns: A Whistle-Stop Tour of America

“See America,” an old Amtrak slogan promised, “at See-Level.” And if you ride the railroad’s Empire Builder route from Chicago to Seattle and back, as I did recently, you’ll watch the scenery evolve, from city to suburb to small town to north woods to sweeping grasslands to Great Plains to sandy buttes to snow-capped peaks to sagebrush meadows to pine-lined streams to small town to suburb to city.

But are you really seeing America? Literally, perhaps: You are seeing it zip by. After a while, though, that can get to feel as if you are wearing a virtual-reality headset, and it may occur to you that to truly “see” America, you have to get off the train.

So I bought a $499 USA Rail Pass, good for up to 10 trips of any length in 30 days, and selected a half-dozen stops along the route. Since the Empire Builder runs once a day, I could, theoretically, have 24 hours in each place; 144 hours to actually see America — specifically, parts of it that look, and feel, nothing like the places most Americans live.

I knew there would be challenges. I wouldn’t have a car. The train was scheduled to arrive in some places at an ungodly hour. The trip runs more than 2,000 miles one-way; without delays, that takes 46 hours and 24 minutes.

But there are, inevitably, ubiquitously, delays. The earliest I arrived at any stop was 20 minutes late. The latest was more than seven hours. That particular segment ended up running 23 hours and 30 minutes.

The Empire Builder at the station in Havre, Mont.Credit…Janie Osborne for The New York Times