This Amtrak train I'm on right now is going rather slowly for the time being and I'm listening to a 90s country station on Slacker radio, which is fabulous, en route to St. Cloud, Minnesota. We're meandering through Minneapolis and I won't reach my destination for a couple hours. Last time I took Amtrak I was on my high school senior class trip to Washington D.C. This is a much shorter trip at about 7 hours.
It's my turn to visit the boyfriend so I'm headed back to MN to visit him on his family's dairy farm. Seeing him will of course be nice, but I'm also very excited to be back on a farm for the weekend. Madison is a great town and I'm getting more used to it. Once in a while though, I need to be in a rural area surrounded by fields and petting cows. I often miss the farm when I'm Madison partly because it's home but also because it's a rural farm.
While I am listening to music now, earlier I got to talking to the lady who sat next to me for a bit. Her daughter has been out of college a couple years and we talked about the economy, job searching and, of course for two people from MN and WI, football. Eventually I mentioned where I was going and why and she mentioned that her grandpa and 5 of her uncles farmed and how she loved to visit the farms. We even talked about robotic milkers, which spurned from discussion of how hard it is for dairy farmers to get off the farm.
Had I decided to drive the 7 1/2 hours instead of taking the train, I may have saved a little bit of money, though not much, but I wouldn't have gotten to have conversations with others or do a little reading. I'm excited to be back in Minnesota briefly. I'll probably be even more excited to go home over Thanksgiving as I haven't been home since July. My rabbits are still there and it will be nice to see them again in a few weeks.
