LAX

Thanks.
to Bob and Joyce Hogan, for hosting us so kindly.
To Ryan Ross for trying to connect us across the country and wishing us a Merry Xmas. Baaa!
To Toyota for the 4Runner.
To Rachael and Mark for looking after Maude (who love Manu).
To Scott and Denise and Amelia for watering the garden (we hope).
To Amanda and Finn for coming with me.
To all the nice people in the Southwest of the US for letting us come and look at you, and your country.

California

Ahem. Not Yuma, as you can see. Some of us wanted to go to Yuma to pay homage to the film "3.10 to Yuma", a noir cowboy flick of considerable grit. But Yuma today is suddenly waking up to become . . . another stretched out town of hotels and highways. Sigh. It was pleasantly warm and we learned it is particularly well liked by the Canadians, that polite nation. Enough reason for us to up sticks quickly and head on to San Diego, a mere 2 1/2 hours away.

And into our last state - California. The scenery was quite spectacular. We passed through forests of saguaro cactus, past glorious desert peaks and long plains. Towns like Superstition Valley, Friendly Corners and Jackrabbit beckoned, but we stayed on the I-8 to San Diego. We passed through the stunning Boulder Park - where giants play marbles.

A fast, smooth run. Except for being stopped by the border patrol twice (which now makes 4 times in all). Very nice people I'm sure, but if they are in action then the giant fence, which we shaved close to for miles and miles and miles, clearly ain't working. Unlike all the Mexicans who are trying to break in to the US to get jobs on minimum wage. Anyone that keen to leave their homeland and do shit jobs is showing the kind of enterprise that America used to like. Let 'em in, I say.

So after Yuma sent us away, we came on to San Diego. Sniffle - our last night here. San Diego seems to be a bit empty - no doubt everyone is at home getting gently smashed on egg nog. And singing carols. Time for us to go home too I reckon.

A top Tucson tip

After slagging American fast food and having a poke at the standard of food we've encountered to date, it's a joy to report a really good meal.

Tucson is another town profligate with its space, stretched and sparse alongside giant 4 lane roads. Like lots of other places we've been (Savanah, New Orleans and Mobile being exceptions) the city is designed for the car - and without one you simply cannot function. Sick of eating out we wanted to get food from a supermarket - but that is a 45 minute drive on the other side of town. Just imagine that - there are no supermarkets within 45 minutes of our locale - and we're only a mile or two from downtown.

So we should have known that attempting to walk to a restaurant last night was fraught. We searched in vain for a cross walk, and stood like little NZ lemmings on the side of the road, fruitlessly waiting for a chance to cross. In the end Finn and I dashed and Amanda stranded herself on an island in the middle. I think she's still there.

Anyway. We made it to a Mexican place called Las Cazuelitas. And behold - the food was seriously hot, delicious and, since no one spoke English, we assume authentic. Yay.

Rules for travellers

Mostly we get along well. Finn, fifteen and stuck with his parents is holding up well. Mostly. Amanda, fifty and stuck in the back seat a lot, puts up with two men well. Mostly. Dave, fifty and stuck with people who have no sense of awe at his driving skill, is coping. But here's five things that we worked out to make travelling easier:

1. Prepare ahead. Reservations for the next night help prevent stupidly wandering around cities looking for places to stay - when you could be looking at the city.
2. In a place like the US, rehearse your freeway entrances and exits out loud before you execute. At least until you have 1000 miles under your belt and zoom off and on with ease.
3. Make sure everyone has something of their own to do. A navigator; a scenery spotter, a road sign reader etc. etc. Then everyone is engaged with the driving.
4. When the argument erupts (oh, there will be arguments) go for it. Scream, shout and point the finger. After another hundred miles sheepishly change the subject, or pull off for an activity. It's good to clear the air.
5. Do things. The journey can become an end in itself - so stop and look at the missile sites at White Sands, or examine some roadkill for a while. Then get back to the road.

High times in Tucson

How quickly one gets use to things being on another scale. We drove up the I10 to Tucson in just under four hours, and it felt ike a fairly quick trip. To our surprise (and everyone else's) it rained really hard once we hit Arizona - but it made for some inspiring sights - the large buttes and mesas glowing against the darkness of the massing purple clouds. When the rain hit no one changed their behaviour on the road. We all kept right on going at 75 or 80 mph.

And then Tuscon - flooded and muddled with the rain. We took an involuntary long route around the city because our hotel exit was closed - and numbered exits are held in the same regard as satnav for travellers. We got to see lots of Tuscon though - including the first 'modern' houses that we liked.

We headed down to the student district and all the hippy dippy shops on 4th street. How many dreamcatchers can a population possibly need? Is there something in the air here that promotes REM sleep? The answer came in the form of an eccentrically dressed woman of - at least 75 and probably more, who stopped us on the street and with impeccable manners asked: "Do you know where I might buy a joint?"

We ate lunch in a student bar - check out the size of our salads ($6.95) and as we window shopped up the street I mused on the relationship between hippies, healing and neuroticism. Wherever you find good sized numbers of the alternative set gathered there will be an inevitable increase in potions, nostrums, special diets and quacks. Why? These people are sicker than the rest of us and they talk about what's wrong with them a whole lot more (but its always someone else's fault). Stay clear of them.

And we caved in to the urge to shop. We were killing time, really, Tucson being wet and chilly. We hit the Tucson Mall and ended up with STUFF. It was really good. I even hummed the christmas songs.

Suddenly we are down to two nights in the US. Want to go home, but don't want to leave.

Las Cruces and a milestone

New Mexico, which expanded its territory after the US civil war in a complicated deal with Texas (which gave up a third of its territory for US$10million), is called "the land of enchantment" and it really lives up to its name. It's 1/3 bigger than NZ and has half the population - so if we say 'empty' you'll know what we mean. We went from the valley floor to nearly 9000 ft (and snow) and then down again, barely seeing another car - wonderful touring.

We reached a milestone today: we've travelled more than 3000 kilometres. And in all that time we've felt entirely safe on the road. I think we've seen fewer than 10 police cars and only one accident.

Until today. As we pulled in to buy apples from a roadside stop we saw a couple of animals flat on the road. As we passed, Finn saw they had leads on . . . and yup, they were pet Yorkshire terriers. Manda told the owner, who was looking for them, what she saw while Finn and I ran back to the dogs. One was dead and the other died within minutes. With some other people we got them off the road and brought them back to the hysterical owner. She was screaming, keening and all but tearing her clothes. It was pretty upsetting.

We went to dinner at La Posta in Mesilla - a haunt of the late William Bonney, Pancho Villa and other outlaws and notables from the west.

Proof

There is too a town called Notrees. Before someone planted some scrubby trees, I think the town probably deserved the name. Really.

Notrees

Luckily, we seem to be resilient. When the satnav power system failed again we resorted to the map book. Which got left behind. And while West Texas and New Mexico are flat they are so vast that discovering a mistake might take 30 of 4o miles until the next intersection puts us right. But who cares, right. It's an adventure. So big hearted thanks to the young chiquita at the service station in Kermit for sending us on the back roads to Carlsbad.

We drove for hours through the working oilfields of Texas, pumping, pumping, pumping. There are thousands, no tens of thousands of these prehistoric wee pumpers doing their thing. And it looks pretty cool. On, and on, into New Mexico and past towns like Notrees (a misnomer), Blink (missed it, but it is in Winker County), Loving (home of the Loving Falcons), Eunice and Jal.

And once again, America produces such a landscape that neither my words, nor our photos can convey what we saw. The land is on a scale so large that the only way to comprehend it is to pass through it. We, of course, get to drive - imagine what it would have been like to ride or walk through it. It simply would have gone on for ever. And it is so empty that the human mind simply wilts.

Once in Carlsbad - a rusted streak of a town, with empty shops and lots stretching out into the top end of the great Chihuahuan Desert - we made tracks to the Carlsbad Caverns. I don't know how I knew about them, but they have long held a spot in my must do list. And they didn't disappoint. Heroic, mythic, mouth-droppingly stunning. The caverns sit below an enormous, ancient reef. They were etched from the limestone when methane from oil deposits bubbled through calcium carbonated ground water to produce sulphuric acid(true!). And then they just kept on building and carving themselves out. We did the 2.5 mile walk, down to nearly 1000 feet. The park service have produced a wondrous experience. Here's a photo from the 20's:

Weather

The temperature today is . . . 0 degrees celcius. How exciting. I love the cold - and here in the mid-continent it's crisp and dry.
Strange really, because only 420 odd miles down the road in Austin yesterday it got to 26! There have been appalling storms and snow in the North East and Mid West, so that polar air is obviously pushing into Texa. And today we're crossing out of Texas and into New Mexico where it really can get cold. Hope our icebreakers are up to it.

In the permian basin

Ah. A long day. To be truthful, frustrating - but we're allowed one of those.

We spent the morning in Austin (motto "Keep Austin wierd") which is the state capitol of Texas. Last night we went down to 6th St, the equivalent of Courtenay place and had a very average meal at Iron Cactus. Actually, average meal number 6. Eating, outside of fine restaurants and Bob Hogan's cooking, has been unutterably, overwhelmingly dull. In fact there seems to be a greater number of chains and eating-out places than I've ever seen in the US before. Too fatty, too cheesy, too sugary and too much! Honestly, the standard of food in any cheap Thai place back home is a hundred times better than what we've had in most restaurants here. We crave lettuce and fruit. But enough scolding and fnger wagging.

In Austin we signed on to a segway tour - and had a blast. We saw the beautiful Capitol building from the inside. We learned about how getting right with God had fixed our guide's bi-polar disorder and incipient psychosis ("I had a demon possess me") and we learned where Lance Armstrong lives (did anyone know he'd hooked up with an Olsen twin?). A great way to see the city and the machines are - extraordinary.



Then the long drive from Austin to Odessa - home of 22% of America's proven oil reserves. Check it out on the map - we came off the I10 at Sheffield, and then up through Iraan (!!!) in the dark, and onto the 385 into Odessa. Tere is nothing there, save for oil rigs and deer. At times, as we drove past oil derricks in the night, we even smelt it. That was while watching out for deer (like the one who flashed across the road in our headlights. We stopped counting at 25 - and I thought they hunted around here).

The trip through the beautiful hill country of West Texas was great. The road, as always was a marvel. When seen from a moving car the road becomes an entity in itself, the towns begin to seem, what, incidental? They are simply geographical markers for the road to have a reason to go here or there.

And then - as we left towns completely behind and slipped off the interstate, we were treated to a sunset of mythic scale. The sunset filled the car with a light that came from the moment of the big bang. And it went on for hours and hours and simply got more and more intense. These photos are a pale imitation.

Politeness, sentimentality, nationalism and religion

We listened to the radio en route to Austin. Given it is Christmas there were a lot of schmaltzy christmas songs played. I was surprised at just how many though - christmas songs on every station - even the metal stations beloved of my son (Silent Night gets to be very ironic played by a thrash band). And in New Orleans nearly every house had a) an American flag flying, and b) gigawatts of fairy lights twinkling away, showing a joyously anarchic mix of snowmen, reindeer, Joseph and assorted wise men. Every house!
I was musing and bopping gaily to the christian songs that spaced out the christmas songs and wondered if there was a link between all these things in the American cultural programme.
Americans are way more polite than the people of any other nation whose hospitality we have sampled. Perhaps the golden rule is imprinted so deeply that when combined with faith and hope eternal it overflows into gushy sentiment and a non-ironic worldview (I nearly said naive). Americans love to celebrate - God, the USA, love, holidays - and they do it unselfconsciously and publicly.

It's catchy though. Have a nice day, y'all.

Austin

A bientot New Orleans!

To be honest, I dreaded this drive - 856kms from New Orleans to Austin in the middle of Texas, which as we all know, is BIG. But travelling at speeds up to 130kph and on good roads, we ate it up. Getting around Houston was a pain, but the whole thing only took us 8hrs 30mins. Tonight we meet up with native Austinians Brandy and Richard who have promised us the best Tex-Mex in the southwest.



Here's the view from the hotel window:

A belated map

Because it's possible, we have a map of the journey for you to look at.



http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?f=d&saddr=Jacksonville+fla&daddr=savannah+ga+to:GA-89%2FUS-441+to:tallahassee+fla+to:new+orleans,+louisiana,+United+States+to:austin+tx+to:fort+stockton+tx+to:carlsbad+nm+to:lordsburg+nm+to:phoenix+az+to:yuma+az+to:los+angeles+ca&hl=en&geocode=%3B%3BFWY32QEdrN0R-w%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B%3B&mra=ls&via=2&sll=32.10119,-99.84375&sspn=18.41572,39.375&ie=UTF8&ll=30.334954,-81.650391&spn=9.399356,19.6875&z=6

New Orleans II

So a good night's sleep and we're ready to explore. We turn away from the other touristas in the Quarter and climb onto the St Charles streetcar ($1.25) to the Lafayette cemetery. A slow meander shows that early life here was really tough - the crypts, all above ground, record the short lives of most and the endless deaths of infants and babies.

Then we strolled in the shade (close to 23C today - but it snowed here last week!) to the groovy Magazine Street. Rachael, Bev and Karen - here's the target for y'all next year.

As can be expected we forced Finn to endure hours of looking at the antebellum homes up in the Garden District. There are some stunning large mansions; sometimes they look a little grandiose - 1 story bungalows with big pillars.

New Orleans has a great feel. It's very hip and knowing. It doesn't take itself seriously. The city seems to be coming back, and we will too.

An early start and a big drive to Austin Texas. We're going chew tobacco and shoot longhorns. Or greenhorns.

The Crescent City

A real city at last! The bartenders and maitres d'hote to whom we spoke all said "it's too quiet". That seems to be a consequence of Americans not travelling rather than the aftermath of Katrina. When things are in full swing here I cannot imagine how busy it must be. New Orleans is the kind of shameless place that wraps itself all around you and announces that it wants to have some fun now. Tonight we saw any number of hustlers, greeters, street walkers and buskers; the large brass band at the top of Bourbon Street and a guy from earlier in the day wearing a Pork pie hat who (kindly) pointed us towards a restaurant.

We'll stay an extra day, and drive the ten or twelve hours to Austin on Friday.

Mobile postscript

We wandered through the foggy, warm night to find a dinner spot. Wintzell's ("now franchising") is an oyster house - and what a gem. Plastered around the walls are the collected aphorisms of the long dead founder, but they served great food. As Wintzell said "If by you pass, and hungry you be, the fault's with you, and not with me". Ahhh, indeed.

Mobile

We thought of pressing on to New Orleans, just an hour down the road, but Mobile appeared through the mist and seemed irresistible. Who ever stayed in Mobile Alabama that you know?

So here we are - and it seems we're the only ones here.

Mobile was a port furiously fought over by the British and the French, by the Americans during the civil war and by the civil rights movement during the 60's. And with all of that the fight seems to have plain got up and left (along with most of the industry, trade and people). Once a fabulously wealthy town when the cotton trade existed, Mobile now seems to survive on seasonal tourist business in summer. After the middle of town was torn down (urban blight) in the late 60s or early 70's only one downtown street remains - Dauphin Street. Old Edwardian, Victorian and Deco buildings now house bars and restaurants for the most part, loan shops and second hand furniture places for the rest. It is really pretty, actually, but there is no one here. How business survives is beyond me.

For all that they have a great little museum that tells the racy and racist stories of the town's heyday. People are without fail frienndly and seem proud of their town.

We're planning on walking 5 or so blocks for dinner at Wintzell's oyster house and I can't shake the image of Captain Oates, stepping out of the tent he shared with Scott in Antartica, saying "I may be some time . . "

Travelling

America is vaster than a vast place. Although one knows this, you don't really feel it until your bum is frozen on the car seat and there is still an hour to go - even when the country whizzes by at 80mph. And no matter what you think you see on tv - Southern America is achingly beautiful, empty, wooded and cut through with waterways.

Savannah

My one request for the trip was a visit to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. So today we wandered the planned, treed and oh-so-picture perfect squares of Savannah, Georgia. We signed on to a walking tour with born and bred Southerner Cecil. Cecil is unashamedly parochial and has spent his life studying the glories of the South, in particular Savannah. Our fellow walking tourist, Kurt from Chicago, was constantly referred to as 'that Yankee'.
Cecil is also legally blind, so we had to help him down curbs and across the street. Kind of the blind leading the blind when it came to remembering which way to look crossing the road.
Savannah is more English in feel than American (unsurprising since they founded it).
But the road called and we drove the 300 miles from Savannah to Tallahassee after lunch (at a nice wee spot called 1790).
We also deepened our relationship with the satnav. Apart insisting we 'turn left and then turn right' in the middle of a straight highway, she conjured up two hotels that a) were in the middle of Tallahassee's drug dealing neighbourhood, and b) didn't exist. Suggestions for names for such an incompetent yet bossy bitch can be posted here.

Off to Savannah

Yesterday Bob and Joyce loaned us their car and we cruised Amelia Island, getting a great sense of the coastline here - which, along with everything else is simply vast. Acres of beautiful salt marsh and some stunning beaches. Most of the building actually resembles Kiwi baches - although there are the inevitable enclaves for the McMansion set and more.

We did a short bush walk to look for alligators, which are rumoured. Instead we saw no less than 3 armadillos - fumbling their way through the leaves.

Thanks Bob and JC - wonderfully kind hosts. Here's to the margharitas and the chili.

Amelia Island

We arrived here late - like 2am late. Bob was heroically waiting up for us with a stiff scotch and a beer for Finn, and it was closer to 3am before bed.

Morning brought a revelation. Our bedroom looks out over a completely unspoiled salt marsh on Amelia Island, just on the border of Florda and Georgia. Spanish moss does drip from the trees and we saw herons, pelicans and maybe even an eagle.

The Hogan's house is situated by itself on a little peninsula, just off the intercoastal waterway. It feels like its in the wilderness.

America, as ever, is easily underestimated - its wild and unspoiled here.

Useless Airways

A two hour wait in San Francisco and then onward to Jacksonville. That was the good news (see Finn happy on Air NZ). The bad news was flying US Airways. Don't. They are the people for whom cattle class has added meaning. It could only have been beter if the staff had cattle prods.

Waiting to go

Three days to go. Anticipation, done well, adds immeasurably to the journey. We have sat round the table looking at maps and considering the names of towns on the route. Who could resist Appalachicola, Bogalusa or Bunkie? Should we make a pit stop in Leakey? On the good side, New Mexico has Hope, Lovington and Lordsburg; but it also has the more sinister Carlsbad (almost certainly going there for the caves). Maybe we can even make the fabulous Truth or Consequences.

No one has considered what to pack - Florida is temperate but how cold does it get in Arizona or New Mexico in winter? Does is snow that far south?

Someone said we should book motels - but how can we when the trip requires us to wander all over the map. In any case, the town of Why, Arizona (pop 113) may not even have one.

Data

Here's the hard stats - the trip is 2570 miles or 4136 kilometres long. We aim to drive for around four hours each day, give or take. The US Interstate system is pretty cool - if anyone is interested in I-10, have look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_10

People want to know stuff about the trip. Like "Will you go to Dealey Plaza?" Can we get back to you on that when we're closer?

The Plan

As luck would have it, work takes Dave to Florida, to stay with Bob and Joyce Hogan (http://www.hoganassessment.com/) on Amelia Island Fla., and thanks to the miracle of Air NZ Airpoints dollars Finn and Amanda are coming as well.
After Dave is done with work we'll hire a big-ass US truck and travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast along US I-10, passing through Georgia, Alabama, Missisippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
Finn has promised not to say 'Yo niggas, who voted for Obama'. And no, Finn, we won't purchase a handgun for the trip.

So this blog will record our thoughts and sights as we do the transcontinental.
Wish us luck.