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Becoming an uncle for the first time – Nothing really to do with the USA, but we were on the west coast when my sister gave birth.

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Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, Mesa Verde, Badlands, Grand Teton, Bryce Canyon, Arches and Canyonlands National parks – All of them wonderful places to drive around, hike through and see wildlife.  A series of unforgettable and enjoyable experiences. 

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Griffith Observatory – Fantastic views of Los Angeles, an impressive planetarium show and excellent exhibits spoiled only slightly by Californians inability to shut up.

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Reno – The “Biggest Little City in the World”, delivered a more relaxed atmosphere than Las Vegas, but just as much fun.

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San Juan Skyway drive – Sunny at the bottom, snow at the top, rain on the other side, but great views throughout. 

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Mount Rushmore – An impressive sight with a good museum area explaining the construction of the monument in great detail.  In the evening, a very patriotic show didn’t spoil our enjoyment, as it was patriotism where it belongs, as opposed to enforced patriotism. Being realistic, if you’re American and can’t get patriotic at this memorial to America, you probably never will. 

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Crocker Art museum, Sacramento – A nicely presented gallery with some interesting works, spoiled only slightly when a bunch of gobshite tour guide trainees turned up to loudly display their ignorance and lack of enthusiasm.

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Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Salt Lake City – Truly impressive.  Even for those of us with ambivalent feelings about religion, an incredible performance by the choir with no amplification, but a massive sound.

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Muse live at Red Rocks – Excellent gig, great band, wonderful venue.  The venue was so good, if Simply Red were playing there I would’ve considered going until I remembered that they were shite.

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Food – Bavarian Chocolate Banana Cream pie from the house of Pies LA, Fiesta Mexicana; almost as good as Mexico City, incredible milk and malt shakes.  

b

“Cali-fabrication” – Defined as the mistaken idea that California is somehow better than the rest of the USA (and by implication the rest of the world) when in fact it’s a hot, traffic choked shithole full of noisy, irritating and inconsiderate people who don’t shut up for long enough to listen to anyone else’s point of view.   

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Driving on the phone – Countrywide, but prevalent in California.  If you’re driving, then you better have a phone clamped to your ear and take no notice of anyone else on the road.   When one bloke cut us up he even pointed to his phone as if to say “I’m on the phone, so it’s ok for me to drive like an idiot”.

b

Del Mar races / Angels & Airwaves – Poor layout and unsuccessful betting made Del Mar races a bad day out, the free Angels & Airwaves gig afterwards held our attention for fifteen minutes, fourteen minutes of which were spent wondering in disbelief at how bad the band was.

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BLOB’s and FTFFTW – Inhabitants of many National Parks: – BLOB’s  (Bus Loads of Biddies), combined with and often including those FTFFTW (Far Too Fucking Fat To Walk) were a constant source of irritation and amazement for us.

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Cannery Row, Monterrey – Used to be a smelly sardine canning factory, now it’s a smelly, expensive shopping area.

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Accommodation around Yellowstone – Horrendously expensive accommodation tainted one of the highlights of the trip.

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Santa Cruz Boardwalk – The thriving summer fun on the Boardwalk officially finished the day before we arrived, but the place looked as though fun had been in short supply for several years.  The town itself was equally as grim.  

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Zion and Yosemite National Parks – The bad side of National Parks. We were thwarted by huge numbers of miserable people and the weather respectively in these two.

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Food – Too much salt and garlic in most dishes. The Broken Oar in Moab, Utah deserves special mention for serving a Chicken Alfredo complete with processed chicken with stuffing on the edge, stone cold pasta and enough garlic to kill off an entire series worth of villains in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

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Blazing Saddles Cycle Hire, San Francisco – A truly strange phenomenon, in the American city famous for its hills and least suitable for biking, Blazing Saddles do a roaring trade in cycle hire.   Unused to vehicles without automatic transmission, we heard Americans having conversations like this one: – “so it’s number 1 to go uphill and not one of these high number gears?”      

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American Football Live, San Francisco – Lots of people, lots of beer, lots of cheerleaders, lots of patriotism (it was hometown heroes day).  There may have been a game going on, but I don’t think many of the crowd really cared, apart from the bloke behind me who spent the whole of the first half slurring, “Change the quarterback, he ain’t no quarterback, he’s a shit”.  In the second half he lost interest in the game and instead became more interested in baiting the opposition fans that had turned up in small numbers and weren’t segregated.   

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Crazy Horse Memorial – The Native American version of Mount Rushmore is close by in South Dakota, but much more epic in its scope and unlikely to ever be finished (it’s about 15% there after 60 years of effort) as the original sculptor (Korczak) refused to accept government money (and his family keep alive that idea with a fervour that borders on insanity).   Somewhere along the way the Native American gets forgotten in a museum and gift shop far more devoted to Korczak (a Polish immigrant) than Crazy Horse.  Nothing new then really. 

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The Queen Mary – It’s birthed in Long Beach, California and is now a hotel.  It was interesting to read the story of the ship, annoying to be bundled out of the way by groups of scavenger hunters and just a bit wrong really.

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We’re from Lancashire – Fewer old people at home this September?  We found them.  They were in Utah and Colorado, most of them grimacing as they tried to work out “new fangled” digital cameras. 

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Wall Drug, Wall, South Dakota – A shop that overwhelms the town.  You can buy everything you ever wanted and plenty of things you don’t, while you sip on 5-cent coffee, watch the T-rex roar and see the gorilla play the piano.   Rebecca bought a hat; I managed to escape without buying anything.   

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Devils Tower National Monument – The setting for much of Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, as the pictures in the photo album below show; it’s a surreal place.

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Essex Girl Stereotypes – About half a mile up a steep trail in Zion National Park an Essex girl sits with her jeans around her ankles.   “It’s not what you think,” she says.  It turned out she was too hot in her jeans and had decided to change into shorts on what she thought was a remote part of the trail.

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Death Valley National Park – One of the hottest places on earth is spellbinding in a very strange way.  Driving through you pass rock formations that appear to be dark brown or black, but as you drive away from the same formations they appear to be multicoloured.  After ten minutes I was wondering if someone had slipped acid into our drinks as we entered the park.  The sign as you leave saying “Thank You for Experiencing Death Valley National Park”, seemed to sum things up quite nicely.

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Temple Square, Salt Lake City – The strange heart of a strange city.  Spotlessly clean and seemingly guarded by serene Mormon missionaries, the elders (men) and sisters (women) usher you in and out of the Tabernacle and Beehive house, but they make sure you stay away from the biggest building in the square; the Mormon Church Office Building.

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Buffalo Attack, Yellowstone Park – Leaflets at the park warned us that buffalo were dangerous and that many visitors had been attacked.  The first buffalo we saw had people within a few metres of it, merrily taking pictures.  I was hopeful of witnessing a goring, but unfortunately the buffalo didn’t seem as aggressive as the leaflets had suggested. 

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Peppermill casino, Wendover – More garish than any Vegas casino?  Look at the picture in the photo album below and decide for yourself.

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Scouse bears? – Leaflets in Yosemite told of bears that stole your food given half the chance and frequently broke into cars.  Were they originally imported from Liverpool?

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Coffee man, Gorda, Californian Coast – With nothing else around for miles, the coffee man in Gorda gets a lot of trade, which is handy as it keeps him in coffee (he drinks the last cup or two in each flask he brews) and Starburst sweets.   He looked more wired than Television on the cover of the Marquee Moon album.  He could’ve been a poster boy for the Americans Against Caffeine Abuse Association, if indeed one exists (which it probably does).

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The Hotels – The Strip (Las Vegas Blvd) is lined with twenty or more mega hotels over a two-mile stretch.  In most places you stay in a hotel and visit the sights, in Las Vegas you come to visit the hotels.   Want a quarter size Eiffel tower to eat under? It’s here (Paris).  Want pyramids (Luxor) or medieval turrets? (Excalibur)  They’re here.   Want the opportunity to gamble at tables set up around a couple of girls pole dancing with croupiers dressed like the Pussycat Dolls?  That’s here too (Caesars Palace).   

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Free Attractions – Las Vegas can be an expensive place, but there is fun to be had for free, the dancing fountains at the Bellagio are incredible.  Fremont street has its own experience (see strange below) and every casino features a band or singers of varying quality for free.

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Sam’s Town – Our first nights stop, a casino on the edge of town that had great rooms, good food, a friendly casino and an atmosphere of fun that is often stifled in the bigger casinos.    

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The Bellagio – “The best of everything”.  Our room certainly was, highly recommended.

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“O” – The Cirque de Soleil show at the Bellagio, set in the custom-built theatre featuring a huge pool, was probably one of the most entertaining things I have ever seen.

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Cocktails! – The shout from the often scantily dressed cocktail waitresses brightens up any night as free drinks are on the way.  Just tip the smiling girlie a dollar a drink and work your way through as many cocktails (or beers, or coffee even) as you fancy.

g

Buffets – Feeling hungry?  Each hotel has a buffet area where, for a reasonable price, you can consume an amount equivalent to your body weight in top class food.  Use the “follow the fatties” method to find the best buffets.  

b

The Sahara Hotel – After a good first night at Sam’s Town, we were brought down to earth with a miserable, uncomfortable room at the Sahara.   I’ll be cheering in a couple of years when this hotel gets demolished.

b

“Security, open up!” – Our 3:30am wake up call, two doors down from us while staying at the Sahara.  Substantially louder than any disturbance from the room, yet another case of give a man a uniform and a badge and then watch the twat in him rise to the surface.

b

Girls direct to you in 20 minutes. – The slogan on the fliers and t-shirts of a small army of men and women working the south end of the strip.   The grotty face of a thriving prostitution industry.

b

New Technology – The first time we went to Vegas in 1999, each casino was full of the noise of pinging slot machines and winning coins chinking, before being shovelled into huge plastic cups.   Everywhere people wondered around with a drink in one hand and a plastic cup full of quarters in the other.  The drinks are still there, but a ticket that pops out with a half-hearted ker-chink has replaced the cup of quarters.   It’s just not quite the same. 

b

Monte Carlo toilet cleaner – Not sure if it was in the vents or just the chosen aftershave of the day, but the Monte Carlo casino stank like toilet duck.

b

“This is Vegas, baby!” – If I had been given a dollar every time I heard a fat, smelly, greasy or just downright drunk person shout that phrase, I could’ve covered the cost of three nights in the Bellagio.

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Fremont Street Experience – Downtown Vegas is centred on Fremont Street at the top end of the Strip. The big, flash mega-hotels are a couple of miles south and this is the home of the neon winking, waving cowboy, and the Golden Nugget casino, essentially the images most people used to think of as quintessential Las Vegas.   To maintain interest in this area, a huge video projection show takes place every fifteen minutes in the evening on a covered roof area about fifty metres long.  The subject matter changes, but all of the shows have one thing in common; they are incredibly garish and are accompanied by loud cheesy music.   

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How to play TV – Every hotel has at least one TV channel explaining the basics of every casino game.  Concentrating mainly on craps, roulette and black jack, they also cover each variant of poker.  Sadly for many people, the games that seem so simple on the TV in your room are a lot more difficult and expensive on the casino floor.

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What’s the time? – Casinos feature lots of free drink, entertainment and opportunities to lose money.  They do not feature any natural light, clocks or exit signs any bigger than the minimum required for safety standards.  This tends to lead to confused, tired people losing bigger sums of money than they had anticipated, but not caring as they have had plenty to drink.

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Roxy’s Diner, Stratosphere – Diner food accompanied by singing waitresses.  This is where Rebecca got her two-foot long milkshake in a plastic Stratosphere replica and I got to feel like I’d stepped into an episode of Happy Days.  

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Eyes in the back of your head – We didn’t realise that a biker’s rally was taking place in the downtown area of Vegas during our stay.  So when we decided to spend a couple of hours there, we were quite surprised to be surrounded by blokes with more or less identical beards, bandannas and huge noisy Harleys.  One bloke without a beard or a bandanna, had eyes tattooed on the back of his head, which sadly we didn’t get a photo of. 

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Circus, Circus Casino – The casino in Circus, Circus is under a big top and has two floors.  The lower floor is a normal casino; upstairs however is full of fairground games and consequently, little kids.  It’s a very strange mix, with the drunken gambling adults downstairs; the kids upstairs and gaily dressed trapeze artists swinging above the whole thing.  

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World’s largest chocolate fountain, Bellagio – Looks like something Willy Wonka built with his Oompah Loompahs.  See the photo album below. 

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Savannah man – Sitting next to me at the performance of “O” a man in a dodgy mustard suit talks at me about how disgustingly expensive everything is.   Then, out of nowhere he asks me if I’d like a drink.  As I politely decline, he explains that I don’t need to worry about getting him one as he’s from Savannah and is a friendly American, unlike the ones I’ll meet in Vegas and that’s what people from the South do.   A pleasant, if strange interval. 

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Careful of my oxygen – While eating breakfast at a diner, a woman dragging an oxygen canister and her husband walk in.   They are seated close to us.  But that seat is too hot for them so they are moved, not once, but four times.  We get our food, eat it and leave just as they are getting settled in their fifth seat and the woman is muttering “careful of my oxygen” to anyone walking past to the toilet.

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It’s a real town – Away from the Strip, Las Vegas is actually a quite nice, reasonably priced town with all the amenities and facilities of other big American towns.

g

Seattle – Take away the constant rain and the traffic and this is one the best cities in the USA.  The smell of fresh brewed coffee at Pikes Market rounds off an excellent downtown area for shopping and wondering around.  Nice parks and lakes dotted around the city offset the impressive architecture topped off (literally) by the wonderful Space Needle.

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Oregonians – The nicest and friendliest Americans we met, fiercely proud of their state, but avoiding all of the trappings of enforced patriotism and downright bigheadedness. Neighbouring Californians please take note.

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Boise, Idaho – A pleasant town in the middle of nowhere, with a laid back feel and one of the nicest hotels on our trip.

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SAM, PAM and BAM – The art museums in Seattle, Portland and Boise respectively.  Seattle was the best of the three in terms of exhibitions, but Boise was possibly the most enjoyable art museum we visited in the USA.  Portland, in keeping with the town, was more on the quirky side.

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Pyramid Lake Trail, Cascades National Park – A big elevation change soon after the trail started meant we were soon walking through clouds. It was slightly worrying that we couldn’t see more than a couple of metres in front of us, but fun nonetheless.

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Food – Idaho is known for its “Famous Potatoes” and they were really tasty, especially the potato skins loaded with cheese and bacon.  Incredible pot roast sandwiches.  Stuffed hash browns.  The best Denny’s we have ever tasted doesn’t sound like much of a compliment, but the one in Ontario, Oregon really was very good. 

b

Too loud and clear, hotel in Yakima – Our suspicions were roused when we realised the view from our room was over a trailer park, but the noise didn’t come from there.  There were kids running around the lobby to the pool, but they were quiet after nine.  We were fast asleep at 2am when the idiot next door came in, turned his radio up to full blast and then presumably passed out.  We phoned reception to ask if anyone was in the room or it was just the alarm going off.  They assured us someone was in the room, but six attempts at phoning and four tries at banging on the door got them nothing.  Half an hour later the radio stopped and we finally got to sleep.

b

Weather, Mount Rainier National Park – Keen to follow up our walking in the Cascades we were undone by the weather at Mount Rainier where it started snowing as we arrived.  Olympic National Park also defeated us with constant rain.

b

Seattle traffic – Horribly overcrowded and in desperate need of a decent public transport alternative outside the centre.

b

Food – The Cheesecake Factory, combinations based on colour as opposed to taste – goulash and (cold) fettuccine, schnitzel with macaroni cheese and a menu the size of a small novel that seemed to take hours to read.

s

Portland – A quirky place, full of “characters.” Nothing wrong with the place really, its Saturday Market summed it up.  Lots of “artisans” show off their wares which are neither too crap to laugh at, or too good to be really impressed with.  Many of the stallholders are pleasant “characters” and are all friendly in an offbeat, well, quirky kind of way.

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Interpol live, Portland – A truly strange experience.  The venue was the old basketball stadium, but only a small portion of it was used, making it feel like there might be another event happening somewhere behind the stage.  I got asked for proof of age at the beer area in spite of being at least fifteen years over the legal limit.  The support band; Liars were awful, not quite Silverchair or Angels & Airwaves awful, but awful nonetheless.  In contrast Interpol’s set was quite normal, until the end.  With the crowd expecting an encore, only two of the five members reappeared.  They explained that one of the band was ‘seriously fucked up,” so they weren’t playing any more.  After a few initial boos, the mood of the crowd quickly changed to concern.  Was the ‘seriously fucked up” member ok, or had he had a dodgy burrito before the show?  All very strange and completely in keeping with Portland.

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Clymer Museum, Ellensburg – A strange, small, but thankfully free, museum showcased the work of John Clymer.  If Clymer hadn’t been dead for many years I would’ve thought it was the kind of place set up by the artists doting parents to show off their son’s “wonderful” painting skills.  It really isn’t worth going out of the way for.

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Leavenworth, Washington – A recreated Bavarian town in the middle of Washington state.

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Dead Fish at Cascades National Park – With our investigative reporters hats on, we took a picture of the dead fish on the side of the river in Newhalem, before spotting the local industry a little further down the river.  Back at the park visitors centre we unveiled our startling, developing environmental disaster, only to find that the dead fish were salmon who returned to the site of their birth to spawn and then sadly and quite naturally, died.

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Themed Restrooms, Country Kitchen – The restaurant where Rebecca had the conversation with the Korean lady also provided a rather strange toilet environment.  The ladies featured teddy bears in a variety of shapes and sizes complete with a sofa to rest on.  The gents was decorated with toy dogs and dog wallpaper, but the best bit for me was the sticker on the mirror above the sink that warned me that drinking while pregnant could do my unborn baby harm.  I’ll bear that in mind next time I’m pregnant.

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Oregon State Capitol Tour, Salem – We visited Salem to have a look at the Capitol building that wouldn’t have looked out of place in fascist Italy across the square from Mussolini’s “wedding cake” building.  Inside we were persuaded to take a tour by a volunteer called Don, which turned out to be vaguely revealing.  Don explained that each speaker in the house had ten minutes to talk on an issue and could get an extra five, but after that their microphone was switched off.  Don had the vengeful smile of a downtrodden bureaucrat on his face as he recalled the time he had turned off the microphone on a speaker who had exceeded his time limit.  Joining us on the tour were the: –

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Oklahoma Gay couple - One pleasant bearded man and his companion who looked like the stereotypical inbred country boy.  Inbred spent the entire tour taking pictures, complaining about the pattern on the carpet and starting every sentence with “In Oklahoma”.  Not really that strange until we bumped into Beardie in Portland Art Museum the following day.  Were they following us? and what had he done with Inbred who was nowhere to be seen?

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Learn a language at breakfast, Seattle hotel – We turned up near the end of the allotted breakfast time, only to find that most of the room was in the middle of a Spanish lesson.  We got some food, sat around the edge and pretended we were in Mexico.

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Food – Schnitzel and Sauerbraten in Leavenworth, not quite German, not quite American.

g

Friendly and helpful people – Plenty of them, especially in Calgary, helped make our visit comfortable and enjoyable.

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Live Ice Hockey – Ten thousand people at the Saddledome in Calgary chant “Go Flames Go” as the local team try their hardest to compete against a Detroit Redwings team that even to our novice eyes is substantially more talented.  Redwings win 4-1 in the end, but it doesn’t really matter, the atmosphere and the crowd were great.

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Vancouver Island – A beautiful place, we stayed in an excellent B&B in the village of Sooke that had a good pub, a couple of nice restaurants and excellent coast side hiking at the East Sooke Provincial Park.

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“Welcome to Head Smashed in Theatre” – No you’re not in St Ann’s in Nottingham or even Luton, but at the excellent “Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump” Interpretative Centre, south of Calgary.  Excellent exhibits and sticking to the point (the buffalo and the Indians relationship to it) meant this was one of the best displays we saw relating to indigenous culture in North America.

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Snow – Unlike at home, where people in London panic if a couple of millimetres of snow falls, they still have proper winter in Canada. It snows regularly (twice while we were there) and temperatures stay below freezing point all day.  It’s great.

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+15 walkways – They get plenty of cold weather in Calgary, so they have built a series of walkways connecting downtown buildings at a height of 15 feet above ground to avoid the bad weather.  It’s a much more pleasant alternative to the underground cities in Toronto and Montreal.

g

Banff – The most picturesque town in North America apparently.  A nice little place with a big ski resort reputation, but without any sense of self-importance.

b

Vancouver – I’ve been twice now and I just can’t see the appeal of the place, dull to look at, particularly unfriendly (by Canadian standards at least) and expensive.  The only saving grace seems to be that you can easily get a ferry to Vancouver Island.

b

Vancouver hotel – Our room was close to the road and above the reception area.  It would’ve been noisy anyway, but when the night clerk decided to invite his mates around for a two-hour chat at 2am it became the worst hotel of the year so far.

b

The cooool bus – At the ferry terminal on Vancouver Island we spotted a bunch of dopey (or doped up) hippies around our age who had bought an old school bus and repainted it to read “cooool” instead of school.  Ken Kesey is dead folks and the merry pranksters are gone forever.  Try growing up.

b

Constant TV warnings – The following contains sex, violence and bad language, not just at the start of a programme, but before restarting the programme after every break for adverts.

b

Victoria Park sirens – The area where we stayed in Calgary, although very handy for the town, was busy after dark with slightly dubious looking characters.  Three or four times every night, the sound of police sirens dispersed anyone who was hanging around with dubious intent. 

b

Homelessness – A big problem in Calgary, over 4,000 people are homeless in the town alone.  However, they are not intrusive characters and we saw very few homeless people begging for money, they were just living on the streets.  Fortunately the local government is trying to solve the problem with a glut of low cost housing planned.  This is a good example of the difference between the US and Canada.  In Canada the homeless folk are seen as “down on their luck” and a solution to the problem is in motion.  In the US the homeless are seen as an irritation or annoyance and no effort is made further than trying to keep them away from nice neighbourhoods.

s

Kilometres, feet and inches – Canada measures road distances in metric units, but smaller distances in the old imperial feet and inches.  They also use pounds and ounces instead of kilograms and grams, but fill their cars with litres instead of gallons.  It’s almost as confusing as our half arsed version of the metric system at home.

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Back to the Berni Inn – In Calgary we ate a “family run” steak house that was so reminiscent of a Berni Inn circa 1979/80 that we both felt we’d been transported to New Zealand where the time seems to be stuck around the early eighties.

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Double national anthem – Before the live ice hockey game, both the US and Canadian anthems were played as an American team was playing a Canadian one.  The crowd behind us talked all the way through the “Star Spangled Banner” before half-heartedly singing along with “O Canada”.  Many of the crowd took advantage of the break between verse and chorus to shout a quick and muffled “Go Flames Go”.

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Squirrel Gangs in the Park – As we walked through a park in Calgary, a very tame and chubby squirrel approached us.  We ignored it, but were instantly approached by another.  Before we knew it, there were more than ten squirrels gazing at us from vantage points on the side of the path.  Having been fed by the local people the squirrels had grown tame and now seemed to be sizing up how much food they could get out of gang mugging us.  We left.  Quickly. 

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Talisman centre break-ins – At a large sports centre the link between two signs prominently displayed seems to have been overlooked.  The first one said, “There have been an increasing number of break-ins in the Men’s locker room.”  The second one said, “Maintenance work on the Men’s locker room will continue until December”.  Having said that, who knows how far those squirrel gangs are prepared to go.

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Banff merman – Look at the picture in the photo album below, I’m not even going to attempt to explain it.

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Lake Minnewanka – Near Banff, the lake is actually quite a pleasant place in spite of the name.

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Friendly people, both Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia – The stereotype attached to people living in “the South” tends to revolve around the contrasting ideas of wonderful hospitality and racial prejudice, with a dose of stupidity and inbreeding thrown in for good measure.  We were lucky enough to experience the friendliness and hospitality without the bad stuff, outside of Florida at least.

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Levine Museum of the New South, Charlotte – A great place to find out how the South has changed since the mid 1800’s and the American Civil war.  The main exhibit: From Cotton Fields To Skyscrapers, was an interesting view of the development of the South and Charlotte in particular, while other exhibits on regional music and Southern stereotypes were equally as entertaining.

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Dali Museum, St Petersburg – An excellent collection of Dali’s works spanning his entire career with extremely good volunteer tours.  Normally I find volunteer tours a waste of time, but with Dali’s pictures it helped to make some sense of the surreal chaos on the canvas.

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CNN Center Tour – The behind the scenes tour allowed us into the world of CNN at their worldwide headquarters in Atlanta and was entertaining in spite of a surly guide and security levels higher than most airports. 

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Live Basketball, Atlanta – Having seen the other major US sports live, we thought it was time to try basketball.  Atlanta’s team (the Hawks) are considered a fairly poor team and a half empty arena reflected this. Fortunately, the game was entertaining enough to make up for the lack of atmosphere.  The Hawks had a chance to win in the last few seconds, but after two periods of overtime they eventually lost.  The best bit of the experience was sitting next to Mario West’s mother.  She was the definition of motherly pride as she pointed out her son warming up and told us that this was his first game in the NBA.  He looked quite good when he came on in the third quarter, but by that time his Mum had disappeared, hopefully to a better seat. 

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Congaree National Park – Not quite the typical National Park.  No mountainside walks or clambering over slick rock, just walking around swampland on a raised boardwalk.  Thankfully we were out of mosquito season and we saw a red- bellied snake.

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Museum of the Cherokee Indian, Cherokee – An excellent museum tracing the history of the Cherokee from their tribal origins through to the miserable 1830’s Trail of Tears, when the US government kicked the Cherokee (along with all the other Native American tribes in the South East) out of their homeland and sent them to the Oklahoma reservations.  The exhibits were moving without being pathetic, leaving an impression of pride and dignity as opposed to the sickly sentimentality often on offer.

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Brookgreen Gardens near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – Nice gardens, a small, but lively zoo area and some very impressive sculpture made this a good stop.  But if you do visit, avoid the terribly sickly orientation film at the start and try not to read any of the diabolical poetry between the sculptures. 

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Food – Thanksgiving Meal, full on turkey dinner.  Meat Pizza, Hilton Head Island, anything involving slow cooked pork, beef or meatloaf – all delicious.  Pecan pie and ice cream. 

b

“Floridation.” – Defined as the process in which all young Florida natives living south of Jacksonville (a friendly place) are dipped head first into the Everglades, making them miserable and resentful for the rest of their lives.  With wonderful weather they have a great place to live in, but they really don’t deserve it.   

b

Feeling uncharitable – At a restaurant in South Carolina a portion of that nights sales went to “help provide medical care to help shelter animals in need.”  This didn’t bother the ignorant twats two tables behind us.  They managed to order a load of food and then, because another table got the last batch of bread rolls, they left without paying, just as their food was being brought to their table.  They probably deliberately ran over a cat or two on the way home and spent the rest of the night drowning puppies.

b

“Where you at?” – The obligatory response when answering a mobile phone, regardless of race or sex.  I know the South is battered for its lack of education, but it would be nice if you could learn a little bit of grammar at school, assuming that was where “you were at” during your childhood.

b

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – The place to be if you like seaside towns full of fat miserable people who love mini-golf.

b

Georgian and Floridian driving – Speed limits are obviously only suggestions in this part of the country, as we were consistently the slowest car on the road while going at the limit.  Tunnel vision was also in evidence with no notice taken of cars pulling in and out of lanes.  One particularly stupid old fool pulled out of a petrol station in front of us on a 55-mile per hour road without looking.  We were about five feet from his startled looking passenger as our car ground to a halt and he finally realised there were other cars on the road.

b

Flat tyre – A little light on the dashboard told us our tyre pressure was dodgy, but the tyres looked ok.  Two hours later we stopped again and one tyre was practically flat.  The three-inch chunk of metal the breakdown man pulled out of it may have had something to do with it.

b

Food – Mexican in St Petersburg, Florida, all made by Wal-Mart and poured straight out of a can.  More or less everything fried, often in fatback (left over bacon grease).

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Bible belt – Welcome to God’s country.  People wear t-shirts that read “Got Jesus” and similar refrains with no sense of irony.  There is a church on every road, usually more than one on most roads.  Protestors moan that creationism should be taught in schools and the Georgia governor leads prayers for rain in his drought ridden state. 

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World of Coca Cola, Atlanta – A fun experience at the home of Coke, with no attempt whatsoever to hide the “Drink more Coke” message.  Blatant commercialisation in its purest form with a big smile on its face.

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Luray Caverns – A huge underground cavern where you can “hear rocks sing” through the mechanism of “The Great Stalacpipe Organ”. 

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Foamhenge – Stonehenge in Virginia made of Styrofoam.  See the pictures in the photo album below.

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Kennedy Space Center – It’s expensive ($38 / £19 each) and unfriendly (it’s in Florida), but you see things here that you just can’t see anywhere else.  Things like the Space Shuttle on its launch pad, a full size Saturn V rocket and parts of the International Space Station being manufactured.  Best of all you can go on a space shuttle launch simulator that is easily the highlight of any visit.

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Ringling Museum of the Circus – The Ringling complex in Sarasota is, unsurprisingly, staffed by miserable bastards (it’s in Florida) but the Museum of Art is very good.  However, it’s overshadowed by the Museum of the Circus that features a vast diorama of circus day in a town circa 1930, constructed entirely by one man - Howard Tibbals.  He still hasn’t finished after over 50 years of work and while the diorama is undoubtedly impressive, you can’t help feeling a little unsettled by the touch of total obsession in the air.

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Plastic silver, The English Inn, Charlottesville – In a vaguely upmarket hotel we were pleased to see real cutlery at breakfast time, only to discover it was silver coloured plastic.

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The Tree that owns Itself and the Double Barrelled Cannon, Athens, Georgia – Two strange attractions in one town, a tree so beloved by a professor that in the early 1800’s he deeded it ownership of itself and the land eight feet around it (more than most slaves got) and a cannon from the American civil war that was meant to shoot from both barrels at once with a chain between to cut down the enemy.  It proved to be useless, but that doesn’t stop it being on display outside the town hall (still facing North – just in case).

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Haunted toilet, Orlando – As we fell asleep, we became aware that our toilet was flushing itself every twenty minutes or so.  We reported the haunted toilet to reception the next day striking fear into a petrified hotel employee who obviously spent far too much time watching “Most Haunted.”  

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Triple waitress, Lake City, Florida – Feeling dopey at breakfast time we were ascended on by three waitresses at once.  Apparently two were training, but I didn’t believe that for a second, they were just trying to confuse me into ordering more greasy food than I needed.  They succeeded.

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Carter Family Fold – A stop of great importance for Country music fans, we were told it was an interesting place to visit.  So after a thirty mile detour we were a little disappointed to find a large garden shed that seats nearly a thousand people and a few pictures around the stage of the luminaries that have performed there.  Fortunately the man cleaning up the place looked like a relative of Uncle Jessie from the Dukes of Hazzard (overalls and all) and suggested we come back for the weekly performance on Saturday night because, “It's all good clean fun here, no drugs, no cussing and no dirty dancing.”  Somehow that made the detour worthwhile.

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Chatted up by a trained killer at the Hertz desk, Athens airport – While waiting to get a replacement car after our flat tyre, Rebecca had an interesting conversation with a man who had a mosquito tattooed on his hand and the look of a trained killer.  It turned out he was and now plies his trade as a professional bodyguard.  In retrospect, I’m quite glad I didn’t go with her.

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Food – Deep fried ice cream Japanese style, macaroni cheese as a vegetable side dish, grits, chicken pot pie (a bit of pastry doused in pie filling), Newcastle Brown Ale from Scottland (Atlanta Hawks game).