Perch Express Day One

Whew boy, what a day!

Have you ever tried to travel to North Dakota in the middle of winter? Let me take that one step further, have you ever traveled to North Dakota in the middle of winter on the back side of a white out blizzard, in the midst of a -25 degree arctic cold front, on a train that lost its electricity and its door was stuck open while it was delayed enroute for 2 hours, and the door never could shut for the last 1.5 hours driving 79 mph and then upon arrival, run through union station with Chef Todd carrying (not wearing) 600 lbs of arctic gear, only to find out about an hour after barely boarding the connecting train that it was officially terminating due to the frigid temps in Minneapolis at 11 pm, which is about 7 hours short of our destination!!! This first day of our polar perch express is quite an adventure to say the very least. The folks at Amtrak and the folks at the Woodland Resort have been great to work with so far, but we will just see how everything pans out??? We were planning on fishing Friday morning, but now it looks like we are going to rent a vehicle Friday morning and drive to Grand Forks Hertz station about 2 hours from Devils Lake where the Woodland Resort is going to pick us up late in the afternoon and take us the rest of the way to Devils Lake. We are most likely going to extend our stay by an extra day to make up for precious lost fishing time and jump on the train for home at 11 pm Monday night. We’ll see how it all pans out??? Currently it is 1:07 am and I am sitting up at the Days Inn in Minneapolis, not quite tired enough to fall asleep. Here are some pics from day one of the perch express:

Chef Todd enjoying the high life in the 'first class' sleeping car.

Boarding the train at Union Station

Justin is knawing on the ranch packet. We made 5:30 reservations for dinner and were quite impressed with our meals.

I had my ribs gone in about 3 minutes.

Dad, Justin, and Chef had the New York Strip. Of course every meal is critiqued by the Chef, and to get a 7 out of 10 on a train is actually pretty impressive!

Chef stole the conductors hat, and for those of you wondering if he looks drugged up a bit in this late night pic, you are absolutely correct.