Thunderstorm in Wisconsin

It starts raining through dinner, and soon it's pouring cats and dogs. We pass by several small stations with waterfalls overflowing the downspouts and splashing out the gutters. The contrast is rather startling — dark and wet and miserable outside, while passengers enjoy their steaks and fish inside.

The cars on the road are slowing down to let their windshield wipers keep up, but the train barrels through Wisconsin at better than 60 mph (100 km/h) on Canadian Pacific tracks. The thunderstorm intensifies and the lightning puts on a spectacular show. We pass through the storm, though, and it begins clearing up as we enter Minnesota.

I don't fall asleep until after our arrival in St. Paul (for once preceding Minneapolis in a description of the Twin Cities), about an hour and a half late. I feel the bump as the rear coach is removed, but fall asleep sometime in the fifty minutes we are stopped in the station. I get a good seven hours of sleep. As the sleeper attendant says, "The first night on a train is the hardest for sleeping." Now I'm quite used to it.