Day XV - Endless Trains, Brothel Ladies, Sean & Diane, and The Height of Debauchery

Our train the night before had actually taken off 2 hours late, taken a short 10 mile trip in the right direction ( Reno was our destination) and then stopped.

For the night.

We were supposed to arrive in Reno at 8AM, but as of 8AM, we were still basically in SLC.

So it turns out that since Amtrak doesn't own the actual tracks, and Union Pacific does.  So whenever a Union Pacific train is on its way, it will always get priority over Amtrak.  Normally, that is not a huge deal, but since the main tracks were washed out from a storm, it meant that all the trains (going both directions) were sharing a single set of tracks.

Not a big deal, we've been through worse, not gonna break us!  We decided to make the best of it, and made a couple of friends in the train, most notably, Diane, with her wonderful stuffed animal Maurice the Skunk.  After all of us complaining about how the train would be extremely delayed, we all tried to get a little bit of shut eye, without much success.

After a bit, we decided to make the best of it with a couple of beers in the viewing cart.  It was at this time, finally, when we were moving again! Beerluck!

Well, not for long. After a little while, it was revealed to us that after a certain number of hours, US Labor Laws prevent the staff of the train from working for too long, so the train needed to stop, immediately.

It turned out we were in Wells, NV,  pretty far out in the Nevada countryside.  It didn't take long to notice, by "random chance", the train was stopped directly outside the apparently world famous,"Bella's Hacienda Ranch", also known as "The #1 Legal Brothel in Wells, NV!"

Naturally, everyone started calling up Bella's and ordering T-Shirts and Shot Glasses as souvenirs! Within a couple minutes, you guessed it, a nice lady walked on over to our viewing cart, and gave everyone the glasses & shirts they had always wanted (with one person even ordering Juevos Rancheros from the ranch!).

Well, we aren't going to lie, that part of the day was pretty funny, well, at least until we stayed there for another 4-5 hours, in the exact, same, spot.  After completely playing out every possible joke we could have with our new train friends about how ridiculous our situation was, we started to get pretty antsyy, and ready to get the train on the move.

The lady who was having Braxton Hicks contractions agreed, unsurprisingly.

It did, one more time!  We started going after a bit.  Well, naturally, it wouldn't be long before the train stopped again.  This time, we ran into water.  The tracks ahead of us were completely flooded and we had to wait for a team to come out and literally fix the train tracks.  At this point, no one was particularly happy with our train ride.  It had been a long adventurous day, but it was starting to get dark, and it had been quite the long ride.

After playing some card games with Diane and Sean, we decided to head back to our cart from the viewing area and try to take a bit of a nap.  We weren't able to sleep much, but at 2am, we finally got into Reno.  Our 8 hour train trip, turned 26 hour train trip, was finally over.

We said bye to our friends, our silly brothel-train,  the very nice staff on our train and started our walk to our hotel nearby.  When we got in, we told reception of our crazy journey we had had over the last day, and being the amazing person she was, offered us a fantastic "Large Player's Spa Suite" room upgrade.  A very welcomed amenity for the end of our day.

We thought we would save a bit of money and go walk to Jack in the Box for a quick dinner since it was so late rather than getting room service.  Dumb.  Jbox was closed, not that we wanted to eat that anyway.  Lucky for us we had a pretty solid excuse to get room service.  So room service it was, and a wonderful, beautiful, amazingly comfortable bed.  Time to rest.  Finally!