The Colorado River, photo by Betsy on her cross country train trip.
Excerpt from CNN Travel article “The travelers who are turning their backs on airplanes”
Francesca Street, CNN • Updated 10th November 2021 https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/flight-free-travelers/index.html
Betsy Thagard, 59, recently traveled from California to Chicago to visit family, and made the trip largely by rail.
"Two years ago is when I first declared I would be flight free," says Thagard. "Then, of course, we couldn't travel anywhere for 18 months, because of Covid. So this trip that I'm in the middle of was the first one I've taken since I made that declaration."
While switching from plane to rail meant a longer journey, and more planning, Thagard says she's enjoyed seeing the US by train.
“It makes you start focusing on your local places -- what can we do to keep our local places beautiful -- instead of having to fly somewhere else, to see someone else's beautiful local place.”
"I've been flying back and forth to see [my family] for decades now, and so deciding to go flight free meant a real change of life for me, but I love it."
The Shenandoah and Potomac meet at Harpers Ferry, photo by Betsy on her cross country train trip.
However Thagard says she had to do one leg of the journey by plane.
"There was only one train that went from Charlotte [in North Carolina] to Birmingham [in Alabama] and it left at three o'clock in the morning," she says.
Thagard didn't feel comfortable waiting alone at a train station at that time.
"So I had to fly that one leg, and that was very disappointing," she says.
It's for this reason that Thagard hopes that the US government will expand the country's railway network to make avoiding airplanes easier.
Embracing slow travel
While Thagard traveled a lot when she was younger, she says there are some destinations she's not visited, and she says she may now struggle to see these places, given her commitment to being flight free.
"I always wanted to go to New Zealand, I always wanted to go to Prague, I'm never going to go to those places now -- unless I can find a boat to take me, because I know I wouldn't enjoy it, knowing that I was destroying the very places that I wanted to see by flying there," she says.
Thagard says this makes her a little sad, but she's ready to appreciate the beauty of California, where she lives, and the surrounding western states.
"I've got all kinds of places I can go in the west of the United States that are just as beautiful as anywhere in the world. So it makes you start focusing on your local places -- what can we do to keep our local places beautiful -- instead of having to fly somewhere else, to see someone else's beautiful local place."
Plus, Prague might not be out of the question. When Thagard retires, she hopes to travel across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2, and then explore Europe by rail.
Like Wolf in the UK, Thagard is aware that it's a privilege to be able to take your time traveling by rail or boat -- she's also self-employed and able to manage her own time.
But Thagard wants to encourage others whose jobs and lifestyle allow it to embrace slow travel.
"The journey, the getting from here to there, is part of the pleasure of the trip. It's not just this unpleasant step you have to take in order to arrive somewhere else," she says.
"It's important to get out there that it's fun."