Every year, ever since my daughter turned five years old (she is 13 now), we try to go to the United States (US) as a family during the summer break. This tradition was only broken during the Covid-19 pandemic years in 2020 and 2021. When my wife and I were doing specialty training in the US from 2002 to 2008, we experienced the beauty of this great country by going on frequent road trips, and there was so much left to be explored. In my opinion, two of the best inventions of the US are the national parks system and the freeway, a network of high-speed roads that crisscross the country from coast to coast. Since we really enjoyed our time traveling to different places in the US, we wanted our kids to see the national parks as well, along with visiting friends and relatives in the different states.

With the recent immigration crackdowns and scary stories about people being denied entry into the US, we were a bit apprehensive about going on our usual trip this year. In the end, we decided to push through anyway with the added precaution of not doing our online shopping until we were admitted into the country. We flew in through Chicago, and the immigration officer didn’t blink, and he let us through without any questions. He didn’t even look at our passports but just pointed his camera at us, and I suppose the facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence told him everything he needed to know.

This year, we planned to drop by Milwaukee in the state of Wisconsin, where we trained in internal medicine, to catch up with old mentors and batchmates at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW). The hospital we trained in, Froedtert Medical Center, was one of the largest hospitals I had ever seen, and had somehow gotten several times bigger. We were hosted by Dr. Mickey Kron, an infectious diseases and tropical medicine specialist who also spent time in the Philippines studying lymphatic filariasis (the worm that causes elephantiasis) and was a previous adjunct professor at the UP College of Medicine. We also met up with Dr. Michael Frank, who was my infectious diseases mentor during my residency training, and caught up with two co-residents, Dr. Heather Toth and Dr. Aaron Dall, who stayed in MCW as faculty. We also visited Dr. Volette Singson, our godmother in our marriage. She is a pediatrician practicing in Milwaukee, and she and her husband, Dr. Juanito Singson, a medical oncologist, really helped us out when we first arrived as trainees. After spending two days in Milwaukee, we drove to the state capital city of Madison, where our kids did a campus tour of the University of Wisconsin. UW Madison, as it is called, is a highly regarded university and is one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever been to. It is situated between two large lakes, and the campus is an eclectic mix of architectural styles. The student guides were very friendly, and I think they made an excellent impression on our children. Hopefully, our kids will study hard, since we would be very pleased if they got into UW. The next morning, we got up bright and early to catch the farmers’ market at the State Capitol, where we saw some excellent produce and sampled freshly baked cookies.

We drove back to Milwaukee and walked along the lakefront to the breathtaking Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by the world-famous architect Santiago Calatrava. The building looks like a ship on the lake, with its trademark parallel white beams and cables looking like masts and sails. The next day, we took the train to Chicago, where we connected to the Amtrak Texas Eagle, which would be our home for the next two days on its way to El Paso, Texas.

We’ve traveled on the Amtrak many times before, and the best way to do overnight travel is by sleeper car. While coach seats are very comfortable and have good recline, sleeping overnight in these seats is not very restful and not very private. Amtrak sleeping accommodations come in two forms: roomettes and bedrooms. Roomettes are seats that fold into beds but do not have private bathroom facilities and have a capacity of two people. Bedrooms are twice the size of roomettes. Each can accommodate two people and has a private toilet and shower. We got two adjacent bedrooms, and the sleeping car attendant connected them into a bedroom suite. Dining car meals are included and are served restaurant style. While sleeping car accommodations are much more expensive than coach seats, they can be reasonably priced if you book them early and can sometimes cost the same as airline tickets to the same destination. The Amtrak ride is an adventure on its own as the train passes through some of the best scenery in the country, and you see the landscapes change as you go from city to countryside and across states. There is a sightseeing car which has panoramic views, and some trains host seasonal guides who narrate the history and interesting facts about different places along the route.

The full route of the Texas Eagle train is from Chicago to Los Angeles and takes nearly three days. At San Antonio, Texas, our sleeper car was transferred to another train, the Sunset Limited, which originates from New Orleans, Louisiana, while the rest of the Texas Eagle went back to Chicago. The transfer happened close to midnight. We stayed in our beds so it was still very comfortable, but there were some pretty loud noises and short power interruptions as the switch took place. We eventually arrived at our destination in El Paso, Texas, after 40 hours of traveling and were transferred to our hotel by Uber. The next phase of our travels involved picking up our rental car and driving 1,500 miles from El Paso to Los Angeles, California, while stopping at three National Parks along the way. These parks are Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, White Sands National Monument also in New Mexico, and Saguaro National Park in Arizona. We also stopped by the historical towns of Roswell, New Mexico, where a UFO supposedly crash-landed in 1947, and Tombstone in Arizona, which was the site of the famous Gunfight at O.K. Corral. I will continue telling the stories of these places in my next column, but needless to say, there are so many interesting places to see in the US, no matter how many times you visit, and its people remain some of the friendliest and warmest in the world.