This week an economy passenger offers a fellow passenger $150 for a seat swap, we see the return of the Sightseer Lounge observation car to the 32-hour Texas Eagle route, and we learn how to see synchronized fireflies in South Carolina’s Congaree National Park.
During a flight from New York to Austin, a passenger with an economy middle seat assignment attempted to persuade window or aisle seat passengers to trade with them in exchange for money – once they’d increased the offer to $150, they finally got a bite. They sent the payment via Venmo before the flight even took off, and threw in a drink order as well (though humorously, the trade-ee didn’t think about the opportunity at hand, and just requested a bottled water). As is often the case with…well…literally anything, this sparked a mildly interesting debate on reddit, which you can read more about in this article.
Amtrak’s Longest Passenger Train Ride Just Got a Scenic Upgrade
Amtrak’s Texas Eagle travels 32-hours (or let’s be honest…it’s often probably more than 32 hours) all the way from Chicago to San Antonio, Texas. While this isn’t necessarily the most scenic part of the country, it’s also not UN-scenic, including the Ozarks for example. So it seems appropriate that this route will again have a “Sightseer Lounge observation car” with floor-to-ceiling viewing windows and window-facing seats on the upper level. (Apparently this route used to have a sightseer car in the pre-pandemic days.) There are only six other routes with these sightseer cars.
Congaree National Park announces details for 2025 synchronous firefly viewing
Congaree National Park in South Carolina is one the spots you can catch a rare natural phenomenon where a specific species of firefly blinks in synchronized patterns as part of their mating rituals. The expected timeline for this weird little spectacle is from May 14 until May 21 this year, and the park is offering a lottery system for folks to see the “show”. From 10 a.m on Thursday April 3rd until 10 a.m. on Wednesday April 9th this lottery page will switch to open, and for $1 you can register for the lottery. (Only one lottery registry per family.) Roughly a week later, 145 winning applicants will be notified of their selection. If selected, you will then be charged the remaining $24 for the pass. Your pass would then allow one standard sized vehicle with up to 8 passengers.
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It seems your Amtrak link routes to a malicious link.
Link works fine for me: https://www.southernliving.com/amtrak-texas-eagle-sightseer-lounge-11702782
I noticed too that the actual Amtrak link for the sightseer cars had an ad that then redirected to some kind of watch or something, but on another attempt I was able to click to it successfully without that happening. Just to be safe though, I’ve now removed that Amtrak link. Thanks for flagging this!