Our USA trip - roads, routes, flying and a big river

Once we'd arrived in Texas, we did most of our travelling by car on Interstate and state highways.  We were reminded that Interstates are numbered even if they travel east-west and odd if north-south - we spent a lot of our time in New Mexico on or near Route 66 (the Will Rogers road or The Mother Road) now replaced by various interstates as, here, I40.  But the historic Route 66 has a huge and affectionate following in the USA.  One stretch of I40 between Santa Fe and Albuquerque has the railroad running along the central reservation.  The Interstates are built for heavy traffic though it is often sparse outside cities, but the state highways are often much narrower - Barbara told us that one road we drove - NM 55 towards Gran Quivira - had been little more than a dirt track when they'd last used it a few years ago.  But now the rides are smooth and the roads in New Mexico mostly straight, with sudden bends at the corners of ranch properties that reminded us of the zigzags round grand estates in Lincolnshire, but on a much larger scale!

We drove at least 1800 km or around 1100 miles across Texas and New Mexico.  Fuel is only a third of the European price in the USA, and driving and flying are normal parts of many people's lives there.  Even in cities, walking is often very difficult.

Flying was the least appealing part of our trip.  Airports are depressing and clone-like places - sitting as we had to for hours at a time in Dallas and in Houston we discovered that the secure areas are designed in identical fashion so you could easily lose track of which airport you were in - even the order and identity of the shops and eateries seemed identical.  Planes of course have to be designed compactly and there is little room to move or even wriggle unless you pay more than we could afford for extra leg- and elbow-room.  You do get some lovely views at the beginning and end of transatlantic trips - we saw a perfect map of Britanny and Finisterre as we flew towards Paris last Tuesday morning - but the plastic food is best avoided. 

Airports in the USA have their upsides - I enjoyed several hours' free WiFi in Dallas DFW airport but discovered on returning to France that not only do you have to pay in Charles De Gaulle, but the payment system does not work in any case but freezes every time you try to use it.  And interestingly, the American airports are simply divided into 'secure' and 'not secure' - passengers on arriving flights mingle with those departing, partly because domestic flights are a huge proportion of all travel - whereas in Europe the two are very firmly segregated.  So in the USA there are often separate internal transit systems - our friend Judi was whizzing round the internal system while we were waiting for her outside the gate in DFW! - and also, the duty free purchases you make have to be delivered to you after you sign in to board your flight - a special little kiosk in the corridor leading to the plane - rather than being handed to you in the shop.  If not, you could obviously illegally sell them to incoming passengers or others on domestic flights!

Another form of flying is altogether more exciting and breathtaking.  We are used to Ferris wheels, like the London Eye, being regarded as 'aircraft', but the cable car or Tramway to the top of Mount Sandia near Albuquerque was special, as were the views from the top (see photos, also in the Albuquerque post).  The publicity calls it the longest cable car ride in the world but the guides said it has now been overtaken by one in Armenia - in fact from the Wikipedia article there are also longer aerial Tramways in Sweden and Kazakhstan too, but of course the Americans like to claim that they have the biggest everything (overeating people, and platefuls of grub, perhaps included) so perhaps it is not surprising that the keen young men who were our conductors made these claims!  And never mind - the ride was spectacular.

Because flying became such a downer for us, we looked at the railways.  If we ever went back to the States I think we would be tempted to take Amtrack trains, or indeed other local ones such as the rather smart double-decker 'express' from Albuquerque to Santa Fe.  40 hrs from Chicago to Albuquerque does not really seem excessive for a romantic railway journey...

Then there is the Rio Grande.  The sculpture above on the wall of a Santa Fe building shows the entire course and tributaries.  We explored the upper reaches of this, the primary water source for New Mexico, during our trip north from Santa Fe to Taos.  The gorge on the route there is breathtaking - see photos on the Santa Fe blog.  The view from Sandia Mountain (below) is of 50 miles of river valley running through Albuquerque and towards the Mexican border to the south.  This river was also the route of retreat for Spanish settlers expelled by the Indians for a short time in the 18th century - naturally they soon returned and were only replaced as colonial occupants by the Americans a few decades later.  Also below, the map of our whole trip.