The only things worth buying on the road are the odd, hyper-local specialties: weirdly good potato chips, obscure sodas…

The car is better than the plane, though less safe for sure. For the aforementioned ten years I’ve just been driving mostly. I like driving cause you can uproot as much of your life that can fit into whatever car you’re driving. Once I realized I could take my own pillow my travel life was upgraded. And I make no claims on my municipal water, but it is my water and I drink it every day. Your water is gross to me, I tend to bring my own. I’ve watched people complain for a week straight about not liking the water where we’re staying, while I sipped away on my private stock. Speaking of private stock… If you drink it seems your liquor store is the only cheap store in America. Every other liquor store (except for those rare exceptions) will not stock your well liquor, will not have your top shelf (not at any reasonable damn price). And you will inevitably drink too much as you try to “Finish the bottle”. 

Loading a car with anything you might buy while on the road is also the world’s greatest travel hack that only frugal car travelers seem to know. Likewise with the weeklong complaints about water will be the receipt face off that people have about their every other day vacation grocery store bill. The only things worth buying on the road are the odd, hyper-local specialties: weirdly good potato chips, obscure sodas, questionable regional deli meats. That’s the real treasure.

With all those positives about driving you’d think I’d just get a Prius, or an RV and shut up. Sometimes I don’t want to drive though. And driving is its own thing.  I do kinda want an RV, something tight and small, but I’m not sure I want to be the turtle who always has his shell with him. I don’t think I’m post car either. I just don’t always want to drive or be amongst drivers. This is where Amtrak comes in. If you do want to bring the kitchen sink with you it’s possible. On Amtrak you can bring one personal item, 25 lbs. (12 kg) and 14 x 11 x 7 inches and two carry-on items, 50 lbs. (23 kg) and 28 x 22 x 14 inches each. You can even bring a bike with you, and if you bring a folding bike you can carry it on. Folding bicycles under the dimensions of 34″ x 15″ x 48″ (860 x 380 x 1120 mm) will be allowed onboard all trains in lieu of a piece of baggage. This is a significant amount of gear you can take to wherever you’re going. It also means that you can spontaneously acquire stuff while out on a trip and bringing it back with you isn’t some huge deal breaker. 

Unlike the airport your Amtrak station will probably be downtown. In Atlanta the Amtrak station is an old dignified building. And it is what you imagine an old Amtrak station to look like. Inside it feels like 1963, it is dignified and well preserved. The bathrooms are pleasant and clean. The lobby is clean and well lit. Outside there was only one homeless person. They had their Grocery cart train across the street, it was sizeable but they weren’t spread out too wildly. There was a light rain the day I was leaving for my trip, they had one shoe and sock off, said bare foot had seen better days. This was in contrast to Birmingham which juxtaposed ther modernity of it two story train station with a much more robust populace of displaced people. It definitely felt easier to buy drugs or find a gun with scratched off serial numbers. This might have also had something to do with the fact that the Amtrak Birmingham shared its facility with Greyhound. 

I’ll take us back to the beginning of this trip though. I shouldn’t go so far ahead.