Lisa Carnley is managing editor of the Lampasas Dispatch Record. I have used varied methods of transportation for long trips, including car, bus, train and airplane.

The car is too restricting. Buses make too many stops, and between picking up passengers and loading packages, it can take 12 hours to get to a destination that is about three hours from home.

Going by train is not my idea of the perfect way to travel either. Been there, done that, too many times.

Trips to see my folks up north were an expensive prospect when my kids were young. We couldn’t afford the airplane tickets, and sometimes we just needed a break from a four-day car trip.

One year we got the brilliant idea (yeah, whose idea was that anyway?) to take a passenger train to New York.

We left from the Temple Amtrak station on a Thursday afternoon, and we were set to arrive in upstate New York by Saturday morning.

At the time of our first rail journey, our sons were 2 and 6.

The problem with taking a train is that if you cannot afford to rent a sleeper berth, you have to sit up in a seat all night -- unless you are toddlers or youngsters, who run up and down the aisles all night long because they are full of energy from sleeping all day because they were up all night the day before. It’s a vicious cycle.

Eating on a train is an experience, too. Since we couldn’t afford to eat in the dining cars, we brought our own food with us.

And since there is no refrigeration for those who choose their own "meal plan," our diet for the entire trip consisted of Pop-Tarts and water. That was after the bread got smashed flatter than a pancake and the jar of peanut butter rolled under the seat and into oblivion.

We stayed hungry the entire trip. My parents probably thought I never fed my children because they ate from the time they arrived at their house and were still stuffing their cheeks like squirrels as we were leaving for the train station to start the journey home.

And you can’t bathe if you don’t have a sleeper berth. The bathrooms equipped with showers are reserved for “paying customers.”

The best you can do is take a flimsy paper towel and wet your hands and face. But you still end up in the same clothes you started in because it is too hard to pack (and carry) enough clothing for four people for several days and still fit the bags under the train seats. (No storage for us since we weren’t “paying customers.”)

When the train finally reached its destination, the doors opened to expel those of us crazy enough to travel like cattle packed into a rail car and headed for a slaughter house. We all burst forth to get away from our smelly neighbors and into the waiting arms of our loved ones, who exclaimed: “What’s that odor? Why is your stomach making that terrible noise?”

And swearing we would never do that again, I believe we traveled by train at least two other times -- especially after taking my little ones on their first airplane trip. But that’s a story for another time.