Re: The rest of the story, part 2

The 17,395 miles that Helen rode in 1968 was largely due to the fact that she could not find a job she liked. She did not want to do waitress work, so after a couple of weeks in Richland she moved to Seattle and worked at the Group Health Hospital in a setting more aligned with her degree in dietetics. So she had almost a routine worked out. On Fridays she would take her travel kit with her to work. Then after work she would take the bus to King Street station and board the MAINSTREETER for the 251 mile trip to Pasco, where I would pick her up. We would go on hikes with the Inter Mountain Alpine Club or other friends, and around midnight on Sunday night she would get on the westbound MAINSTREETER, arriving in Seattle at 7 a.m. and take the bus directly back to work at the hospital. Of course we often varied the routine. Sometimes we would drop her off in Wenatchee to catch the WESTERN STAR back, sometimes she would catch the North Coast Limited, sometimes I would take the train to Seattle, etc. The good thing was that she could sleep really soundly on the train. The King Street station people always told her that they would hold the MAINSTREETER if she wasn't on the train at departure time on Friday nights.

The NORTH COAST LIMITED, seen here approaching Kennewick and the Columbia River draw bridge was always a pleasant ride when she could get away a bit earlier.



Here she is on a late running NORTH COAST LIMITED instead of the MAINSTREETER (she is riding above the "C")



Sometimes the ride was on less luxurious accomodations, such as on this TTX trailer flat car, riding 417 miles on Milwaukee's THUNDER HAWK over the Bitterroot Mountains.

The riders, left to right: my house mate Paul, Carolyn's room mate Mary, Carolyn, and Helen. Paul and Mary met on this trip and married a few months later. I think I will have to do a thread on this adventure even though it is NNG.



After a year of work Helen went to Kansas State U in Manhattan, Kansas, for her Masters Degree. I would mail her tickets for the CITY OF ST LOUIS (later the CITY OF KANSAS CITY), for periodic work and holiday travel to the North West. Life was surely different when there was still a network of trains to ride. After she finished her schooling we were off to many international trips.

BTW, I was responsible for getting Carolyn married off too, by introducing her to glacier travel, where her future husband was her instructor in crevasse rescue practice on Mt. Rainier's Nisqually Glacier.



My apologies for veering a bit off the original narrow gauge thread