The USA is not a country you can visit for a couple of weeks, take a roll of photographs and say you've truly been there - that you've experienced the place and are ready to move on. A few trips may begin to reveal suggestions of its true identity yet even a lifetime of exploration would probably fall short of knowing what the word America really means. That said, I doubt many who have lived their entire lives in the States would claim to fully "know" the country. And this isn't just because it is so huge, being the 3rd largest country in the world - to drive from coast to coast would rack up some 3,000 miles - but because it contains one of the widest varieties of climates, landscapes, natural habitats and geological features on the planet. And then there's all the man-made stuff too - whether you're staring up at all 443 metres of the glorious Empire State Building in Manhattan, or looking down at a steaming bowl of home-made chili in a century-old diner in New Mexico, this country really has it all. There is that somewhat condescending statistic that claims x percent of Americans have never left their own country. Yet, to be honest, with so much on their doorstep, they don't really need to.
Having only covered a tiny portion of its immense sprawl in the 160 days we spent there, I can still conclude that it is the nation of extremes, of immense variety and endless possibilities. A single day's drive can see you crossing a scorching desert plain with a missile test facility on one side of the road and a vast array of bright white snow-like sand dunes on the the other, to then arrive at a towering mountain range through which tightly wound roads will lead you up to heavenly snow-capped forests of sun drenched pine and herding deer. Later that same day, you could arrive in the shimmering desert oasis of neon that is Las Vegas with all the noise, alcohol and flashing lights you could ever expect to find in one place. The next day, while traversing another seemingly endless vista of sand and rock, you'll notice a sudden convergence of high powered speed boats gliding down the dusty freeway, pulled behind 4x4 pickups. The road will drop, slip between a deep gap in the rock and reveal a mammoth lake of minty blue. Sparkling in the desert sunshine, its perfect surface being carved and sprayed wide by jet skis and roaring motor boats. At the far southern end, where the rocky horizon drops and meets the water, the vertiginous concrete face of the mighty Hoover Dam will tumble 221 metres down to the Colorado River. Follow this same river north and you will soon arrive at the Grand Canyon, if you have saved enough 'oohs' and 'ahhs' and space on your camera, that is.
If the 3,000 mile coast to coast drive isn't on your agenda, throw £100 or so at Expedia they'll email you a plane ticket to New York, or Boston, Chicago, Orlando, Seattle...anywhere you could want to go, and a few hours later you'll find yourself in another corner of the country with a thousand more reasons to say 'wow!'.
I could ramble on for hours about why the USA still reigns as my favourite country, but I'll try and achieve this in ten(ish) words before running through my usual (and final) post-country synopsis:
1. American Beer (but definitely not Budweiser et al.)
2. Road-Trips
2. Manhattan
3. National Parks
4. Route 66
5. The Grand Canyon
6. Incredible Food
7. New Orleans
8. The Old West
9. Sun Studios, Memphis TN
10. Clarksdale, Mississippi, birthplace of the blues.
Country Synopsis
Likes:
The Yanks seem to be the butt of the world's jokes far too often. But brush aside the stereotypes and you'll realise that as a nation, in general, they really are an incredibly nice bunch. Yes, many people hold their conversations at a volume loud enough to be heard across a crowded room let alone a small table, but the truth is that they're just a lot more confident and outspoken than us Brits. You'll therefore see strangers sparking up conversations on a crowded subway train after someone shamelessly asks for help with their journey. On the other hand, step aboard any London Underground train at rush hour and a bloated silence fills each car, accompanied only by the tinny overspill from iPod headphones. I even read a London travel guide for foreigners that suggested talking on the tube might encourage frowns of disapproval from fellow passengers. Human interaction in the States feels a lot less stunted than in the UK. Yes, the ubiquitous chants of 'how are you doing today' and 'have a nice day' that echo around the checkouts of shops and supermarkets might sound robotic and insincere, but at least people are looking one another in the eye and interacting, even if it is at a superficial level. That aside, we found that there really was an unlimited supply of people happy to say howdy, hey, hi or hello, even in the big cities. You really get the sense that they are incredibly proud of their nation and are often more than happy to talk to visitors and offer them a friendly welcome.
Another aspect of the country that we found thoroughly refreshing, was the concentration of independent (and successful) shops, bars and restaurants, especially in New York City. The high streets of twenty first century London seem to have succumbed to the buying power of large corporations that push repetitive, formulaic and thoroughly unimaginative establishments into every corner of our lives. Conversely, New York, for example, has clearly resisted the soul sapping business men and women in suits in favour of a consumer-choice led culture of creative small enterprises. Each bar, for example, is completely unique, offering a different theme or interior design. In Britain, a handful of chains own most pubs and bars, and even those with their own name will often look and feel exactly like those around them. At the next level, tiny craft breweries then have chance to get their foot in the door, allowing for a raft of local beer choices no matter where you go, all at affordable prices. In many areas of Brooklyn, finding a Bud Lite or a Corrs is almost impossible. Instead, you're greeted with rows of beer taps (sometimes even a beer menu) offering brews with names like "Coney Island Amber" and "Brooklyn Blast". As if to prove our point, a recent beer-run to a UK supermarket left us staring blankly at the wall of Stella Artois, Carling, Carlsberg, Kronenburg 1664 and the other typically British (or European) flavourless, gas-filled chemical concoctions that dominate. 'I don't really want any of them,' I remarked.
This "undiluted marketplace" means that eating out, whether you want to spend $5 on meal or $50, will almost guarantee you a good meal. Food really is part of the American culture - and I'm not just talking giant portions of meat and fries. Good food is just part of life over there. Restaurants that have been open for fifty, sixty, seventy years, still pump out the same food, using the same recipes that your Grandpa ate as a boy; and still Grandpa visits, surrounded by his children and his children's children. The quality of food, of simple but delicious meals, sees many restaurants attain an almost holy level among its devout locals. It is so great to see and makes eating out a real adventure rather than a simple necessity. In the UK, so many chain restaurants, in the pursuit of driving down costs, have resorted to microwaved, boil in the bag, fried brown dishes void of flavour and, sadly, void of soul.
Dislikes
Unfortunately, the USA as a whole seems to be a bit too much red, white & blue and not enough green. Yes, the world's greatest superpower is very much behind in the fight against unnecessary waste and pollution. Take a trip to the local out of town supermarket (and I'm thinking back to the many we visited in the South West) and even on the way there, you'll notice that a surprisingly large percentage of vehicles are enormous gas guzzling pickups, with a giant 6 litre V8 engine up front, a tiny soccer Mom behind the wheel and a large flat bed behind. Now when we Brits think of a pickup, we might picture a reasonably sized van with a single bench seat and few tools in the back, but these things are immense, like the designer has just enlarged the whole thing until it completely dwarfs the humans its designed to carry. During one part of our road trip, I counted one lorry, two trucks and one "normal" car for every 4 vehicles. At times, in certain towns, it seemed as if the pickup was the only vehicle in existence. Now this is fine if everyone lives on farms and spends their lives crossing vast dirt roads of mud and puddles...but they didn't and they don't.
So, we've battled through the throng of school-run pickups and made it to Walmart. I'm going to withhold comment on the aisles of multi-coloured E-number laden cereals, super sized bags of chips, sugar pumped fruit juices and shopping carts without rear wheel steering, and skip straight to the check out. Leave it to the employee at the till and your shopping will, literally, be loaded into an almost laughable amount of free plastic bags, sometimes to be handed to you with just a single bottle of soda or a loaf of bread inside. Re-packing ten bags of shopping into just two, or better still, putting it all into one bag-for-life, was often met with looks of confusion and raised eyebrows of the "stupid foreigner" variety.
Huge hotels and motel chains churn out mountains of chunky polystyrene disposable plates, cups and plastic cutlery every morning for their "Free Continental Breakfast" which would always, no matter where we were, end up spewing from the nearby trashcan, creaking and popping as the compressed cylinder of foam grew tighter and denser as the morning went on. Ask for your left-overs "to-go" at any restaurant and yet more polystyrene containers will be piled onto the table for you. Head to a public restroom and you'll be drying your hands with disposable hand-towels that have been produced in a factory, driven to a warehouse, driven to the bar or cafe or whatever, then, when you've polished your hands with a fist-full of them, another lorry will arrive to take them away. On the odd occasion that a blown air dryer was available, those around me almost always flocked to the hand towels instead.
Now, I'm certainly no tree-hugger but, rather oddly, it seems the UK is way ahead in the fight against land-fill and pollution.
Favourite Day
With so many amazing experiences and sights to choose from, it's tough to point at one single day, but standout moments have been:
Favourite Meal
Oh my...oh my oh my. What a choice to make. With the help of a bit of local knowledge and a map of Man vs Food locations, we really did eat our way around the States, and I really believe we sampled some of the best the country has to offer.
Some highlights:
So there it is. Twelve months, ten countries, tens of thousands of miles by land, air and sea, and the most memorable and life affirming year...so far.
Having only covered a tiny portion of its immense sprawl in the 160 days we spent there, I can still conclude that it is the nation of extremes, of immense variety and endless possibilities. A single day's drive can see you crossing a scorching desert plain with a missile test facility on one side of the road and a vast array of bright white snow-like sand dunes on the the other, to then arrive at a towering mountain range through which tightly wound roads will lead you up to heavenly snow-capped forests of sun drenched pine and herding deer. Later that same day, you could arrive in the shimmering desert oasis of neon that is Las Vegas with all the noise, alcohol and flashing lights you could ever expect to find in one place. The next day, while traversing another seemingly endless vista of sand and rock, you'll notice a sudden convergence of high powered speed boats gliding down the dusty freeway, pulled behind 4x4 pickups. The road will drop, slip between a deep gap in the rock and reveal a mammoth lake of minty blue. Sparkling in the desert sunshine, its perfect surface being carved and sprayed wide by jet skis and roaring motor boats. At the far southern end, where the rocky horizon drops and meets the water, the vertiginous concrete face of the mighty Hoover Dam will tumble 221 metres down to the Colorado River. Follow this same river north and you will soon arrive at the Grand Canyon, if you have saved enough 'oohs' and 'ahhs' and space on your camera, that is.
If the 3,000 mile coast to coast drive isn't on your agenda, throw £100 or so at Expedia they'll email you a plane ticket to New York, or Boston, Chicago, Orlando, Seattle...anywhere you could want to go, and a few hours later you'll find yourself in another corner of the country with a thousand more reasons to say 'wow!'.
I could ramble on for hours about why the USA still reigns as my favourite country, but I'll try and achieve this in ten(ish) words before running through my usual (and final) post-country synopsis:
1. American Beer (but definitely not Budweiser et al.)
2. Road-Trips
2. Manhattan
3. National Parks
4. Route 66
5. The Grand Canyon
6. Incredible Food
7. New Orleans
8. The Old West
9. Sun Studios, Memphis TN
10. Clarksdale, Mississippi, birthplace of the blues.
Country Synopsis
Likes:
The Yanks seem to be the butt of the world's jokes far too often. But brush aside the stereotypes and you'll realise that as a nation, in general, they really are an incredibly nice bunch. Yes, many people hold their conversations at a volume loud enough to be heard across a crowded room let alone a small table, but the truth is that they're just a lot more confident and outspoken than us Brits. You'll therefore see strangers sparking up conversations on a crowded subway train after someone shamelessly asks for help with their journey. On the other hand, step aboard any London Underground train at rush hour and a bloated silence fills each car, accompanied only by the tinny overspill from iPod headphones. I even read a London travel guide for foreigners that suggested talking on the tube might encourage frowns of disapproval from fellow passengers. Human interaction in the States feels a lot less stunted than in the UK. Yes, the ubiquitous chants of 'how are you doing today' and 'have a nice day' that echo around the checkouts of shops and supermarkets might sound robotic and insincere, but at least people are looking one another in the eye and interacting, even if it is at a superficial level. That aside, we found that there really was an unlimited supply of people happy to say howdy, hey, hi or hello, even in the big cities. You really get the sense that they are incredibly proud of their nation and are often more than happy to talk to visitors and offer them a friendly welcome.
Another aspect of the country that we found thoroughly refreshing, was the concentration of independent (and successful) shops, bars and restaurants, especially in New York City. The high streets of twenty first century London seem to have succumbed to the buying power of large corporations that push repetitive, formulaic and thoroughly unimaginative establishments into every corner of our lives. Conversely, New York, for example, has clearly resisted the soul sapping business men and women in suits in favour of a consumer-choice led culture of creative small enterprises. Each bar, for example, is completely unique, offering a different theme or interior design. In Britain, a handful of chains own most pubs and bars, and even those with their own name will often look and feel exactly like those around them. At the next level, tiny craft breweries then have chance to get their foot in the door, allowing for a raft of local beer choices no matter where you go, all at affordable prices. In many areas of Brooklyn, finding a Bud Lite or a Corrs is almost impossible. Instead, you're greeted with rows of beer taps (sometimes even a beer menu) offering brews with names like "Coney Island Amber" and "Brooklyn Blast". As if to prove our point, a recent beer-run to a UK supermarket left us staring blankly at the wall of Stella Artois, Carling, Carlsberg, Kronenburg 1664 and the other typically British (or European) flavourless, gas-filled chemical concoctions that dominate. 'I don't really want any of them,' I remarked.
This "undiluted marketplace" means that eating out, whether you want to spend $5 on meal or $50, will almost guarantee you a good meal. Food really is part of the American culture - and I'm not just talking giant portions of meat and fries. Good food is just part of life over there. Restaurants that have been open for fifty, sixty, seventy years, still pump out the same food, using the same recipes that your Grandpa ate as a boy; and still Grandpa visits, surrounded by his children and his children's children. The quality of food, of simple but delicious meals, sees many restaurants attain an almost holy level among its devout locals. It is so great to see and makes eating out a real adventure rather than a simple necessity. In the UK, so many chain restaurants, in the pursuit of driving down costs, have resorted to microwaved, boil in the bag, fried brown dishes void of flavour and, sadly, void of soul.
Dislikes
Unfortunately, the USA as a whole seems to be a bit too much red, white & blue and not enough green. Yes, the world's greatest superpower is very much behind in the fight against unnecessary waste and pollution. Take a trip to the local out of town supermarket (and I'm thinking back to the many we visited in the South West) and even on the way there, you'll notice that a surprisingly large percentage of vehicles are enormous gas guzzling pickups, with a giant 6 litre V8 engine up front, a tiny soccer Mom behind the wheel and a large flat bed behind. Now when we Brits think of a pickup, we might picture a reasonably sized van with a single bench seat and few tools in the back, but these things are immense, like the designer has just enlarged the whole thing until it completely dwarfs the humans its designed to carry. During one part of our road trip, I counted one lorry, two trucks and one "normal" car for every 4 vehicles. At times, in certain towns, it seemed as if the pickup was the only vehicle in existence. Now this is fine if everyone lives on farms and spends their lives crossing vast dirt roads of mud and puddles...but they didn't and they don't.
So, we've battled through the throng of school-run pickups and made it to Walmart. I'm going to withhold comment on the aisles of multi-coloured E-number laden cereals, super sized bags of chips, sugar pumped fruit juices and shopping carts without rear wheel steering, and skip straight to the check out. Leave it to the employee at the till and your shopping will, literally, be loaded into an almost laughable amount of free plastic bags, sometimes to be handed to you with just a single bottle of soda or a loaf of bread inside. Re-packing ten bags of shopping into just two, or better still, putting it all into one bag-for-life, was often met with looks of confusion and raised eyebrows of the "stupid foreigner" variety.
Huge hotels and motel chains churn out mountains of chunky polystyrene disposable plates, cups and plastic cutlery every morning for their "Free Continental Breakfast" which would always, no matter where we were, end up spewing from the nearby trashcan, creaking and popping as the compressed cylinder of foam grew tighter and denser as the morning went on. Ask for your left-overs "to-go" at any restaurant and yet more polystyrene containers will be piled onto the table for you. Head to a public restroom and you'll be drying your hands with disposable hand-towels that have been produced in a factory, driven to a warehouse, driven to the bar or cafe or whatever, then, when you've polished your hands with a fist-full of them, another lorry will arrive to take them away. On the odd occasion that a blown air dryer was available, those around me almost always flocked to the hand towels instead.
Now, I'm certainly no tree-hugger but, rather oddly, it seems the UK is way ahead in the fight against land-fill and pollution.
Favourite Day
With so many amazing experiences and sights to choose from, it's tough to point at one single day, but standout moments have been:
- Hiking the Grand Canyon
- Spending an evening at Morgan Freeman's "Ground Zero" bar in the spiritual home of blues music, Clarksdale MS.
- Alligator hunting at the Everglades National Park, Florida.
- Driving the Extraterrestrial Highway, through the Nevada desert, past Area 51 to Rachel, Nevada and then spending the night at the Little Alie Inn, the inspiration for the movie Paul.
- Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios, Florida - Worth the trip for the Spiderman ride alone.
- Cruising the old Route 66, arriving in Winslow Arizona and standing on the corner...
- Bar hopping in Williams, Arizona.
Favourite Meal
Oh my...oh my oh my. What a choice to make. With the help of a bit of local knowledge and a map of Man vs Food locations, we really did eat our way around the States, and I really believe we sampled some of the best the country has to offer.
Some highlights:
- Gus's Fried Chicken in Memphis - again, a mecca for fried chicken fans around the world.
- L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn - the most simple yet the most delicious pizza ever. True Sicilian style - a thick doughy base covered in slices of fresh mozzarella, drenched in a traditional herb infused tomato sauce and sprinkled with olive oil and baked in huge rectangular sheets.
- Putnam's of Brooklyn- the best bacon cheeseburger I ever ate, ever.
- Sisters of The New South - so you wanna eat like a Southerner? Go to Savannah GA and go here. Crispy southern fried tilapia fillets, sweet potatoes, fried okra, black eyed peas and gooey mac'n'cheese.
- Dottie's True Blue Cafe - Okay, so we didn't go to San Francisco on this trip, but a couple of years ago this place earned its title as my favourite breakfast spot in the world. A forty-five to sixty minute line up the street suggests that I'm not alone.
- Yoder's Amish Restaurant, Sarasota FL - I challenge all to find a bigger and better cream pie.
- Oklahoma Joe's, Kansas City KS - we ate a lot of BBQ but this place wins.
- Stroud's Oak Ridge Manor, Kansas City MO - This place was possibly the prettiest spot we ever ate in. A traditional wooden house at the edge of the Missouri countryside, sat beside a picture perfect pond and teetering over a sweeping hillside, it serves amazing home-cooked southern chow in huge portions. Get the fried chicken.
* * *
So there it is. Twelve months, ten countries, tens of thousands of miles by land, air and sea, and the most memorable and life affirming year...so far.
