There is a great, fun train ride from Williams AZ to the grand canyon. I took my kids on it 2 years ago. Everything about Arizona - grand canyon, meteor crater, petrified forest, cowboy stuff near phoenix and tombstone, etc. Flagstaff is in the mountains - forest, streams, etc, nothing like you think about Arizona.
You are correct about Yosemite. However, I live near San Francisco. There are many tours on very comfortable buses with plenty of leg room as long as you are under 250 lbs. The buses in San Francisco are terrible and crime ridden, but the cable cars are full of tourists and seem safe in the day time. You can take your kids and feel safe in all the communities South of San Francisco. Some parts of San Jose are pretty scary. I used to live in the suburbs. Now I live downtown (small town, under 250,000) and have no intention of moving out of town. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Russell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "ProFox Email List" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 9:45 AM Subject: Re: [OT] Let's build a train system that nobody will ride On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 8:35 AM, MB Software Solutions General Account < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Stephen Russell wrote: > > Mass transit is great when your population saturation is high enough. > You > > get a ride to the station, hop on a train and get off near work. You > then > > walk the 5,10, 20+ blocks to the workplace. > > > > Unfortunately the USA was designed around a cheap gas model where under > 1.00 > > per gal has been the norm for decades. That has lead to suburban sprawl > and > > moms driving super big SUVs to take 2 or 3 kids to soccer practice. > > > > It is hard to give up the sprawl and go back to a more centralized > > environment where mass transit works. Buses are now getting a higher > rider > > share then they use to. That is a good thing. That bus will still be on > > the street, your vehicle doesn't need to be all the time. > > > > > It'd be great if they offered some sort of incentives (end of year > tax-wise perhaps) for those who used mass-transmit for most of the year. > I never understood why/how Europe's rail system is allegedly great and > in regular use over there, yet our rail system here in the U.S. is > nothing of what it used to be, and some say that the government funding > for AmTrak and the like is bullshit because the train companies don't > make (much) profit....allegedly. I don't know who/what to believe on > that one, and I regret to say I have no time to do "deep" research > (other than googling some keywords) to find out. Lazy, I guess....or > just dis-interested. <g> > ----------------------------------------------------- I - fill in your favorite interstate # here Back in early 2000s I did the train trip down to NOLA for a weekend with the family. It was great. The seating was at least 200% roomier then First Class on 747 or a DC-9 ??. Been there and done the trips over to Asia as well as Europe with the spouse as an employee of the airlines :) I have done the Eurail passes numerous times and the trains were crowded, ran fast and on time, except for Spain but who cares in Spain when or what schedule they are running on. ;-> I would like to do another rail trip across the USA to see the landscape and not have to do the driving as well. Trouble is that the trains tend to go to the big cities and miss the scenic views that the USA is famous for. There is no train to the Grand Canyon nor to Yosemite. Add in there a list of other great places up and down the west coast. -- Stephen Russell Sr. Production Systems Programmer Mimeo.com Memphis TN 901.246-0159 --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html --- [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
