Getting Back into Training

I'm going on a trip.  The primary destination will be Olympia, Washington.  I expect to be there a little over a week.

And yet, I will be away from home for most of August: not quite three weeks.  I expect to leave Marshall on Monday, 08-07, and get back on Sunday, 08-27.

Why Olympia?  The Pacific Northwest is usually a little bit cooler than where I live.  And I hope to visit Olympic National Park, and perhaps also make it to Victoria, British Columbia.

And why will it take so long to get from home to Olympia and back?  To me, that's not a bug, it's a feature.  You see, I'm a rail fan, and most of the miles will be covered by train.

More specifically, most of them will be on the Empire Builder.  That one train will take me from Chicago to Seattle.  And on return, it will take me from Portland (Oregon, of course) back to Chicago.

And the Empire Builder is the longest Amtrak route that I haven't traveled before.  So you could call it a bucket list thing.  Probably most people would think it eccentric to decide on that basis, but hey, it's a free country.  So far.