Two weeks ago, on Monday, May 18, I was kidnapped. Luckily, I was able to return home safely and I am OK.

Here is the story.

My wife, Pam, and I were going to California with our daughter Katy and her husband Wade who live in Mankato. Our main reason for going there was for the graduation from Ripon High School of our grandson Andrew.

He and his family once lived in Blue Earth where his father Nate worked for Seneca. Andrew’s sister Lauren, who will be a sophomore next year, was born at UHD in Blue Earth.

Back to the trip. I knew we were flying out very early Monday morning. For some reason we were flying to Chicago and catching a connecting flight from there to Sacramento.

However, in Chicago we got off the plane and picked up our luggage at baggage claim and left the airport in a mini-van cab.

My wife, Pam, and Katy and Wade gave me some strange reasoning that our next flight was out of Chicago’s other airport. However, I could tell we were headed towards downtown Chicago.

I questioned all of this as it seemed to get more and more strange and eventually, as we pulled up to Union Station in downtown Chicago, I was finally told that we were going to take the Amtrak train to Sacramento, not a plane. That was news to me.

The background is that Wade and Katy are adventurers. They have been to the Kentucky Derby, to a Vikings game in London, to New York City on New Year’s Eve to see the ball drop and see a Broadway show. They have camped in the Rocky Mountains and on the Dry Tortugas at the end of the Florida Keys, and even taken a Disney cruise out of Los Angeles.

So, taking the train to California was another adventure for them.

And they knew that I had always wanted to take the train to the West Coast. So they plotted this as a surprise for me.

And it was.

I have always loved trains. Pam and I have ridden them in the Colorado Rockies, Black Hills, on Amtrak to Chicago, on Cape Cod, up to the North Shore in Minnesota, and well, you get the idea.

But those have all been day trips. I have always wanted to take a long, overnight trip sometime across the country.

This one was 48 hours and two nights on the train. We left Chicago at 2 p.m. on Monday and got off the train at 2 p.m. on Wednesday in California.

It was great. We had our own (tiny) roomette to sleep in at night and ride in during the day if we wished. We spent a lot of time in the observation/lounge car. There were three great meals each day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, with choices off a menu.

The train is on the move almost every minute. It makes some stops along the way. Some are very brief, some are a few minutes long where you can step off and breathe fresh air, and one is very long (40 minutes) in Denver.

The views are sometimes boring and sometimes spectacular. You see a lot of wide open spaces in many parts of the route. Like eastern Colorado. Then you have incredible views while crossing the Rockies on the west side of Colorado. Even a lot of snow in the tops of the mountains.

You sometimes see the “seedier” sides of towns as the railroad line often is in the industrial park and/or the poorer housing area of the town. And some of those small towns in Iowa, Colorado, Utah and especially Nevada are, well, not the prettiest little towns I have ever seen.

We went through or nearby Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Reno and other places of note, but not a real tour of those cities at all. Just a brief stop at a railroad depot at best.

Still, I found it interesting to just watch the countryside roll by. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

We talked a lot, read a lot, even played cards a time or two.

I am not sure this kind of trip is for everyone. There is no TV or Wi-Fi on the train, which, of course, I found refreshing. Cell phone service can also be pretty sketchy.

But if you can sit and look at your phone while some of the most beautiful scenery in America is going by, then something is wrong with you. We all had our phones out, but it was only for taking photos of the beautiful mountains.

Would I do this trip again? Well, yes. You would not even have to kidnap me to make me go.

I hear that the Minneapolis to Seattle, then Seattle down to San Diego, trip is pretty awesome, too.

I will have to check into that…