Train Ride to Disneyland

It was a wonderful September night for a train ride to Disneyland. 

There were 6 families from Cornerstone Christian Church headed to Anaheim, 

California. It was bound to be a wonderful trip, with great friends to share it with. 

We boarded the train in Klamath Falls, Oregon, at 10:30 p.m. Most of the parents 

had decided to meet us in California by taking an airplane, but don’t worry there 

were 2 sets of parents there with us.  

The trip started out ordinary and uneventful. We found our seats, 

which were on the first floor of the train. The ladies who happened to be sharing the 

same area, made it very clear they did not want to sit by a boy! Fine with us. I 

decided to sit by them, as I was the oldest “kid” of the group and no one else was 

comfortable sitting with them. We were all a little too excited to go to sleep just 

then, and since we had the next 24 hours on the train we decided to go to the 

observation car. Card games and silliness ensued, as only 10 teenagers can cause. 

Time flew by, before we knew it, it was 3:00 a.m. First a couple of us decided that 

they were ready to hit the hay and headed to their seats. And that started the 

waterfall effect. Pretty soon almost the whole group was back at their seats and fast 

asleep. Well, my friend, Joy and I weren’t quite ready to go to sleep yet, so we 

decided to stay up a little longer and talk. By this time it is 3:30 a.m. 

Joy’s dad was on his computer a few seats away from us, and there 

was another man sitting behind us doing some work, besides that Joy and I were the 

only ones on the observation car. We had enjoyed some Disney themed fruit snacks, 

and were savoring some girl time. All of a sudden a man wearing a Peruvian sweater 

decorated with llamas, karate chopped the door next to us! He apparently didn’t 

have a seat, so to entertain himself, he was exploring the train. Weirded out by this 

unusual behavior, we chose to ignore him. A few minutes later he was back. This 

time he spoke to us! To Joy he said, “You have perfect mermaid hair.” Then turning 

to me he said, “And you have perfect bed and breakfast hair.” What on earth! Who 

says things like that to complete strangers on a train at 3:30 in the morning? Despite 

our best efforts to end the conversation and somehow make it back to our seats 

without leading him to them, it kept going. I wish I could say that the topic of 

discussion got better from there, but it did not. Somehow polygamy came up, as well 

as traveling to Israel and various other places. And still we could not loose this crazy 

hippie. 

Finally at 6:30 a.m. when we had reached San Francisco, he left us 

alone. He talked to us all night long about the strangest topics and he never caught a 

hint. We are still unsure if he was incapable of catching our hints (as the night went 

on they became more obvious) or if he was purposefully not getting them. What 

made it even worse was the fact that the whole crew came back with Starbucks and 

looked well rested. We had prime seats to watch their return. The remainder of the 

trip was uneventful and I’m glad to say, restful. Disneyland was magical, as only the 

happiest place on earth can be. 

As we boarded the train to head home, we laughed and said how it 

couldn’t get any worse, or more entertaining, then it already had. But we were 

wrong. This time the whole group was in on the fun. First, there was an older couple 

that was conducting some kind of guided tour on what we were seeing out the 

windows of the observation car. I’m sure it was interesting if I could have focused on 

what they were saying. At a table near us, there were sitting 4 Amish young adults, 2 

girls and 2 boys.  They had a 2-liter bottle of Crush soda and were playing some kind 

of card game. What made them even more distracting were the four letter words 

that seemed to be every other word they said. 

Since our group was so big, we couldn’t all sit at the same table. Four 

of us sat at the first table to the right as you entered the car, the Amish group was 

across the aisle from them, then right behind the Amish group was another 4 of our 

group and across the aisle from them was a man and women and behind them was 

the last of our group. Now the man and woman were adding in their own bit to 

chaos. They were not traveling together, nor were their seats together, they simply 

met on the observation car. The man apparently practiced some form of New Age 

beliefs and was telling the woman all about how wonderful it was. She was 

completely enthralled and wanted him to teach her some of his methods. He went 

back to his seat to fetch something, and he came back with a guitar and an 

elaborately decorated piece of paper. The paper contained the words to Twinkle, 

Twinkle Little Star. They proceeded to place their hands over the guitar and 

meditate on the words of the song. This lasted for about 15 minutes. 

Suddenly a short, dark woman wearing too much make-up and clothes 

that did not fit right, burst into the observation car and asked in a very loud voice if 

anyone wanted to play cards. It took everything we had to not laugh. The whole 

situation in this one car was more then we could take and in our end of the trip 

exhaustion everything was funnier then usual. There were some college age women 

who joined her in several rousing card games. Those games lasted for hours. 

Arriving back in Klamath Falls, we were glad to have some sanity 

back. The adventures on the trains were as exciting as the adventure that they were 

to take us to. We still laugh about those times, remembering how strange they were 

and glad for the stories they provided for us to tell our children someday. And Joy 

and I still joke to this day that we are going to open a bed and breakfast named the 

“Perfect Mermaid”.