Originally Posted by
Seat 2A
Re. El Paso to Billings
I realise that, over time, I've just glanced by this route once in a while.
1971 and first time running round the US as a student with a Greyhound bus ticket, I came through downtown El Paso one midday. The old PCC trolley that ran over into Juarez was still running as I shot a photo of one out of the bus window. I believe it gave up shortly afterwards.
1994 was a holiday with good friend
from LA, flew out there first and then my only trips ever on Southwest, LAX to ABQ and back in a 732, and drove up to Santa Fe where we had a pleasant few days. Drove up Sandia Crest and wondered how ABQ, thousands of feet below, can manage with an east-west runway pointing straight at the mountains. I later found that there was a Lockheed Connie stored at the Santa Fe airport, which we passed by but did not visit. Oh if only I had known in time.
Not my first time in Santa Fe, because in 1974 I repeated the Greyhound bus trip in a much more comprehensive manner, came through Albuquerque, stopped a couple of days in Santa Fe just at the time of the Festival (presumably September), then on overnight up to Denver (huge steak lunch in a bar & grill over the street from the bus depot - I must have been starving), then on to Cheyenne, on the way there on I-25 the bus ran out of fuel ...... yes, could even happen to Greyhound !
Further up Wyoming, just before you get to Buffalo WY and the end of I-25, off to the east in the absolute middle of nowhere on the Range, there is an aviation VOR-DME transmitter named Crazy Woman. It's a common en-route point for BA flights from London to LAX, and I reckon over the years it must have been pointed out, just for its distinctive name, at least four times by the crew as we passed overhead. Unfortunately the tradition of occasional commentary from up front is dying out (although BA still do it mid-flight on every domestic trip from London to Scotland and back), seemingly those infatuated with their AVOD cannot bear the film being interrupted for a moment to be told of fascinating things visible out of the window as the continents slip by underneath. Too bad. So here it is, with miles and miles of dirt road leading to it. I wonder if the cowhands there ever look up at the jet trails streaking westwards and wonder where they are going.
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=43....52692&t=h&z=19