Day Twenty: Wednesday morning we overslept by a half hour. I thought we needed two hours to return to Chicago plus an hour to drop the car and do some quick errands. But nooooo.....It seems we needed two hours and fifteen for the drive, fifteen minutes for Mary's errands, and another hour to drive into Chicago to the train station. When we realized that we were not going to make it with enough time to return the car, we tried to call the rental office; but the number on the contract was not being answered. We tried the main office and they gave us another number, which also did not work. Driving down the freeway trying to decide which exit might be the one for the station, we gave up on calling the car rental people. We decided on an exit and Mary was sure that we were going the wrong way (away from the station) so I decided to do a right-right-right and I looked up just in time to see the AMTRAK sign up ahead on the left. I went around the block to get to the entrance we needed. 

We had arrived at Union Station about twenty-five minutes before the scheduled departure of the Empire Builder. I loaded the bags and the boxes we did not have time to mail onto a luggage cart and left Mary standing there as I raced away to find the car rental office. Unfortunately, I had packed the Chicago map into one of the sealed boxes we were going to mail; so I was running on sheer instinct to find my way out of the station. What I didn't realize was that the drive we were on (to unload passengers for departure) came out on the opposite side of the building from where we had caught the taxi to get us to the rental office; so I was completely lost in a matter in minutes. I tried to call Mary on the cell phone, but I could not remember her new number. (She had been trying to call me, but since she was two stories underground she could get no service). Seeing that  there was only ten minutes to departure time, I gave up and found the AMTRAK garage across the street from the station. I parked and ran to the terminal. Mary was not where I left her, so I assumed she was at the baggage check-in area.  She wasn't there either, so I tried the First class lounge area -- it was deserted. I got the gate number from an attendant, who told me the train was boarded long ago and I had better hurry.  When I got there, our train was indeed ready for departure: no one but the car attendants were train-side. I asked the first one I saw and he told me the Seattle sleepers were six cars ahead. As I approached the first one, Mary came out the door of the second. She had been picked up by a red cap who had driven her to the train on a cart, since she was too late to give any of our luggage to the baggage dept. This kind man and our new car attendant loaded her and our ten pieces of luggage into the car and our sleeper. She was about to panic when I showed up, less than four minutes before departure time. 

Of course this would have been too easy if the adventure stopped there. As soon as I reached Mary at train-side, I realized that I no longer had my digital camera in my pocket. I asked her if I had given it to her, since I distinctly remembered putting it into my pocket as I moved our stuff onto the baggage cart. She did not have it and it was not in any of our bags. It either fell out of my pocket when I got back into the rental car, or I was 'bumped' in the station and it was gone. We left the station on time, sitting there in our shock and frustration about our bad timing. I calmed Mary down: she was worried that the rental agency would report the car stolen when we did not return it on time. We tried all the numbers we had for Thrifty Car rental, but the number we needed was locked with the keys in the car in the AMTRAK garage. We finally got hold of an agent at the airport office, who assured us that this happened often and we were OK. I mentioned that my camera was probably on the seat or the floor of the car where I had parked the car, and that I had locked the keys and the parking tag inside the car. He told me he would call back in an hour and give me the charges incurred at the parking garage (these would be added to the rental). When we had not heard anything from him after two hours, we became nervous and called back. The person who answered the phone this time did not know what I was talking about, but gave me yet another number to call. I called and the gal who answered knew about the car and told me they could not find it in the garage. She connected me to the person who actually looked for the car and she swore that there were no Chrysler cars in the garage at all. She also told me she was going home for the night and would look again tomorrow. This did not sound too good. It was to late to call anyone we knew in Chicago to go look for the car and the camera; and the keys were locked inside so even if they found it they couldn't do anything about it. We decided to wait till 10 am tomorrow to call back. I am really glad that I had two disks to put into the camera and one was in the case at my side. I had also taken a few pictures with my 35mm camera, so I did not lose all my photos. I can only hope the camera is inside the car, and the car was in the garage all along, not stolen. Our car attendant for this part of the trip is new to AMTRAK, having been on the extra board only five weeks. He is doing a great job of trying to reassure Mary that the most important item made the train, namely ME. The ride out of Chicago is good: we ate the lunch that we bought yesterday and made 6:30 dinner reservations for the dining car. We did an awful lot of "what if"s as we watched the scenery slide by, but all-in-all we are glad to be here together...that is what, we decided, is most important of all.