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You should be OK for breakfast tomorrow morning (which they'll start serving during the "fresh air break" at St. Louis). As for supper tonight, your best bet might be to pick out any veggies likely to give you problems (as I did with the cashews when sampling the hubby's butter chicken on our...

There are coffee pods which use less plastic & work in Keurig-style coffeemakers (f.ex., San Francisco Bay Coffee Co.). However, I can imagine that Amtrak would use pods from whichever company gives them the best deal, whether those pods are the mostly-plastic ones or not. (Kinda like how the...

I tend to order heavily sweetened coffee drinks from both McDonald's and Starbucks, so I probably have never tasted the "ground-up pecan shells" or the "burnt floor-sweeping compound". The coffee from the urn in the sleeping car on the Texas Eagle was close, though -- when it was available. On...

Dinner meals only, as those are the only ones specifically mentioning alcoholic beverages.

The PDF of the Floridian's dinner menu states, "Served with a complimentary alcoholic beverage". The description of the Floridian's Traditional Dining on the main Traditional Dining page on the Amtrak website states, "First alcoholic drink at dinner on us". However, it is unclear from those...

I've been in that parking garage several times, as it's the same one we've used when attending book sales at the Normal Public Library (currently undergoing renovations, so all of their programming is off-site for the duration). Non-Amtrak parking there is all via an app now, which I find far...

Now in my 60s and easily winded, I'd be with you on not attempting any long walks from Chicago Union Station. If the weather was decent, maybe just to the nearby bridges over the Chicago River for some fresh air, but that would be about it. (And I'd find a safe place to stow luggage inside the...

The long walks that I took in my 20s on day trips to Chicago tended to be either in the summer, or on warm Saturdays in spring and fall (during the year I worked full-time between undergrad and grad school).

Many years ago (when Chicago NorthWestern was the commuter rail from Kenosha, WI to Chicago), I would ride commuter rail down to Chicago (and if it wasn't Chicago Union Station, it was close to it), and walk to the Art Institute. On another occasion, I walked to a record store with a large...

I've heard of people using the child-size bunks in the Family Bedroom to extend the length of the adult-size bunks. I'd still recommend that your son take the top bunk (assuming that he's a bit nimbler than you), but you should both have enough length in extended Family Bedroom bunks. Sounds...

If you were to book 1 roomette for the 2 of you, you'd probably want your son to take the top bunk, as he would doubtless be a bit more agile than you. He would have to scrunch up a bit, though, as he's taller at 6'6" than the length of the top bunk at 6'2".

The SightSeer Lounge.

Lunch was by reservation on the Texas Eagle earlier this month, too. (We could have had lunch about 1-1 1/2 hours before we got back to our local station, but were getting tired of the Flex Dining meals by then.) CZ riders, of course, choose meals from the Traditional Dining menu -- lucky you!

That was certainly the case for the hubby and me on the Texas Eagle earlier this month! It's kind of like slithering up (or down) a chute, even if your carryons are all backpacks or duffels with shoulder straps, as ours were. You won't be hauling luggage to get off & on the train at fresh air...

We had the ladder, but the hubby found it to be a bit unstable when the train was moving, and he didn't trust his ability to climb into the top bunk safely. (And he didn't want to risk my safety by having me attempt to climb into the top bunk.)

Heads-at-opposite-ends (like the "Pushmi-pullu" from Doctor Dolittle) wouldn't have worked well in a regular bedroom, as the lower berth is only 78"/2 meters long, I think. So we were in an L shape instead at night. Southbound, the hubby had his head on the backrest of the jumpseat and his...

We did this year's Texas Eagle trip as 2 one-ways. We booked the tickets before "points + cash" was an option, and had hoped to use points for at least 1 person's 1-way fare, but didn't have enough points at the time for even that, and ended up putting the entire fare on my AGR credit card...

I was just reading the Points + Cash FAQ, and it seemed to indicate that Points + Cash could NOT be used for ticket purchases via telephone, and that ticket reservations paid for with Points + Case could not be changed. This could be a problem for me when I try to book next year's California...

After looking at the latest email from Amtrak Guest Rewards this morning, I read through the FAQ on the Points + Cash method of purchasing tickets, and apparently Points + Cash can not be used when ordering Amtrak tickets by phone (only via the website or app instead). That could be a problem...

Any time there's a hotel next to the train station, that town moves up my list of "towns I'd like to visit someday"! Unfortunately, Dwight's motels are geared more towards Interstate and US Route 66 traffic, so train visitors would need to be picked up by a friend/relative/taxi/Uber(?).