On Track

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Ray and I are on our way to convention number four for 2015–MassHOPE (Massachusetts Homeschool Organization of Parent Educators–one of my favorite homeschool organization acronyms) in Worcester, about an hour from Boston.

This is our first time to share our curriculum at MassHOPE. We decided to go when the organizers invited Ray to present three workshops:

• How Christianity Has Changed the World
• The Adventure of American History
• From the Beginning to Now

We are taking the scenic route. We left home on Monday morning and drove south to spend some time with Bethany and her family–not the usual direction to get from Tennessee to Boston. Leaving our car with them, we took a shuttle to the Peachtree Station in downtown Atlanta yesterday afternoon.

Last night we climbed aboard the New Orleans to New York Crescent for our first ride on Amtrak: departure from Atlanta, 8:04 p.m. Tuesday; arrival in Boston, 8:06 p.m. Wednesday.

Our longest train ride to this point in our lives was our six-hour trip from Anchorage to Denali National Park in August. This is our first sleeper car. We had two inspirations for doing this: that train ride in Alaska and our friends Garth and Terry, who had their own Amtrak adventure a few weeks ago. Knowing we were about to take off on ours, they shared their pictures with us last Saturday night.

Let me tell you that IKEA has nothing on Amtrak. IKEA may be able to fit a whole efficiency apartment in 306 square feet, but Amtrak can fit a sitting room, two bunks, and a half-bath in 24!

Here is the seating for two. At bedtime our porter turned these two seats into the bottom bunk.

This is the half-bath. I’m showing it’s two items of plumbing at the same time, but you have to fold the sink up to make use of that bottom piece of plumbing which we Southern girls grew up calling a commode.

Before bedtime, the commode cover served as our luggage rack.

At bedtime, it became the staircase to the top bunk.

The first item of business after nesting in our roomette (I’m not kidding; that’s what it is called) was “dinner in the diner . . . .”

After that, I settled down to write y’all.

Ray and I think train travel is the berries.

If only we Christians could always stay on track like a train does. We would be like King Josiah:

He did right in the sight of the Lord
and walked in all the way of his father David,
nor did he turn aside to the right or to the left.
2 Kings 22:2

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