Get Aboard the GMA Train!

We all have our morning routines, and mine since retirement has been watching Good Morning America beginning at 7 am, drinking my coffee and eating my oatmeal while getting up-to-date information and lots of laughs from the 4-person GMA team: Diane Sawyer, Robin Roberts, Chris Cuomo, and Sam Champion.

This week has been incredible, as the four of them are aboard a special Amtrak train visiting 50 states in 50 days. Today (Thursday) they visited Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, and they began with actually stopping the train so they could take in a beautiful view of the Shenandoah River in the early morning mists. It was magnificent.

If GMA (on ABC) is not your usual morning habit, I'd recommend switching it on if only to virtually climb aboard this train. They manage to incorporate some of the history of each stop in the state they are visiting. I really enjoyed seeing Stockbridge Village in Massachusetts, for instance, as I've always wanted to go there. I have the Main Street ceramic village that I set up in our bay window every Christmas but have never convinced hubby that we should stop and visit every time we drive near that highway exit.

When we retired to Rocky Mount, I was unaware that Roanoke, once a major railroad city, was no longer in that category at all. Now, with the current gas prices, efforts are being made to reactivate some of that railroad heritage, perhaps bringing Amtrak closer to, or even into, Roanoke. Maybe GMA's train across America will show people what we could have here.

Get on the train, everyone! GMA runs from 7 to 9 am. Yes, they are plugging in political interviews, which I personally could do without (and much of their e-mail indicates I'm not alone in this respect) but if you want to see the corn growing high in farmers' fields in Ohio, or the sun coming up on a beautiful river in West Virginia, tune in.