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Jon & Amanda drop in on New York and then drive from Florida to San Francisco in 3 weeks.

New York, New York

Touched down in New Jersey on a hot, sweaty Thursday afternoon, headed straight for the Big Apple and got ourselves a room in a fleapit hotel in Chelsea. Only had 36 hours to see the city…..

We were tourists on the cheap. Caught the subway to the site of the former world trade centre and ogled at the big crowds looking at the big empty space. Next we caught the free Staten Island ferry across the harbour, past the Statue of Liberty. Then to Times Square and a very long walk down Central Park, stopping at Strawberry fields to think about John Lennon and the reservoir to admire the NY skyline. On into Harlem at the end of the park. As if we’d crossed a border and walked into another country. Hasn’t the USA abolished segregation yet? Ended up in Chinatown eating tasty mock meat, then hailed a yellow taxi cab to get us home.

All over New York we found signs of protest. From anti-Bush satirical posters in SoHo to ‘dump Bush‘ stickers in Manhatten shop windows and even giant letters spelling out ‘STOP THE WAR’ next to the World trade Centre site. Little symbols of hope, perhaps the people of the US are as fed up with their leader as we are?

Miami, Florida

From the tall, dark and dirty high-rise skyscrapers of NYC to the low-slung, pastel, art-deco structures along Miami Beach. White coral beaches, Cuban cafes and hordes of pretty gay boys looking to score.

Got up early to watch the sunrise and found a Cuban café for our breakfast where an elderly waitress sang beautiful songs as she worked.

Drove west to the Everglades in search of gators, we found them … and turtles … and an ibis … and a scary swarm of evil mosquitoes who made our car their home.

From the wilds of the Everglades to the sophistication of Coconut Grove. We’re here for Jacqueline and Kelley’s “unconventional” wedding. Jon scrubbed up in Simon’s purple shirt and I strutted around in Julia’s fabulous retro dress. Maybe one day we’ll be sophisticated enough to own our very own party clothes?

The ceremony was beautiful, both brides were radiant and the mothers (who gave their daughters away) were beaming. Jacqueline and Kelley both live according to their beliefs, so no surprise that the vows were preceded by a message for us all to register to vote. The buffet was delicious and the vegan wedding-cake awesome.

Next to the Florida ACORN office to meet up with Meryl, fresh from a day spent registering voters. Drove through a huge tropical rainstorm (maybe the start of the hurricane).

Our final morning in Florida saw us eating breakfast at another Cuban café in Little Havana, eating omelettes and watching the neighbourhood go about its (seemingly black market) business.

The drive north to Georgia

And so we set off on our trek across the country. Head north on I95, getting to grips with right-hand side driving, left-hand side steering and the bizarre ways of American roads. Even the gas stations are different (and a damn site cheaper than the UK).

Lunch at the IHOP and are made to feel very slim by the average customer. Halfway up the Florida coast we took a detour to see Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Centre. Decided against spending fisfulls of dollars to look at a space shuttle or 10… on we drove…

…And then, 500 miles into our trip, we discovered the ‘cruise control’ button on the dashboard. Oh joy!

Brunswick, Georgia

A very nice lady at the wedding mentioned “a hostel in a forest with domes and treehouses” … we had to see it for ourselves.

Just over the Georgia border we take a turn down a narrow track into dense forest, with creepers, palm fronds, hanging moss and BIG INSECTS to a series of domes covered in wooden shingles.

Inside we meet some cliché hippies running around and giggling. Before our tasty vegetarian dinner we all hold hands and say what we are thankful for
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The evening is spent swimming in a warm lake, watching fireflies light up before settling for the night in our treehouse called Elmo. Some hours later a tropical storm hits the forest. I lie in bed watching the forest light up around me while the lightning flashes on and off to accompanying booming thunder.

Atlanta, Georgia

Another day driving and we’re in Atlanta. We enter the city on a 14-lane freeway and head over to the Sierra Club to meet up with Kate and Natalie for some southern hospitality.

Spend the evening in east Village. First to Canallis, a vegan restaurant, next to the Gravity pub to drink Pabst Blue Ribbon (how ironic). At 8am we’re awake and wishing we weren’t, so to the Flying Biscuit for breakfast of fried green tomatoes, grits, scrambled tofu and biscuits (only we’d call them scones).

We have a morning of sightseeing before heading back on the road. First to the Martin Luther King Centre (very moving) and then to the Southface Eco-house.

West to Memphis

Stopped off at the Welcome Centres in Alabama (rocking chairs on a deck) and Mississippi (plantation-style architecture, jungle-print plastic chez-longe, full size elvis cut-out and women with ridiculous hair). Inspired us to stop in Tupelo, birthplace of ‘the King’ and home to a whole series of monuments with tenuous links to Mr Presley.

We gaze at Elvis’ bible in the memorial chapel, then we walk along the wall of stories (quotes from everyone who met him once when he was about 5 yrs old), past the Elvis fountain, to the house that Elvis was born in (a reconstructed shed with furniture from the 1930s that Elvis’ mum was too poor to afford). Finally we walk past a replica car pointing in the direction of Memphis into the souvenir shop, feeling deeply bemused.

Memphis, Tennessee

Our arrival in Memphis coincides with that of Senator Edwards, the Democrat Vice-Presidential candidate and his campaign-bus convoy. The obvious thing to do in this city is check out Graceland, so we do that. In the dark. It’s closed, but we catch a glimpse of Elvis’ two personal jetplanes (Lisa-Marie and Hound-dog) and the wall with all the fan-club grafitti. We find a seedy motel for the night.

Arkansas and Oklahoma

Another driving day. Had expected Arkansas to be flat and full of wheatfields, pleasantly surprised to find rolling hills, forests and rivers, almost reminded me of home. Opt to get off the interstate and sample some of what Arkansas has to offer and find some roadside attractions.

First up is Atkins, the ‘pickle capital of Arkansas‘, but see no pickles. Then to Ozark, home of ‘one of the top 16 spans in the US’. We see 3 bridges, none worthy of an award. A few miles more and we hit Altus, the ‘germanic wine capital’. This place is good. We take a tour of the Post-Familie vineyard and taste their wine. Reminds us of good homebrew, so we buy some.

But we are so underwhelmed by the attractions of Arkansas that we skip Alma (’spinach capital of the world and home to an 8-ft high Popeye statue), get back on I-40 and drive very fast through Oklahoma. Keep going all the way to Elk City where we find a nice motel (swimming pool AND coffee machine), Pizza Hut (”y’all not fram rand here“) and crack open some wine from Altus. It’s still fermenting but we drink it anyway.

Texas to New Mexico

The plan to drive straight through Texas is thwarted when we spot a wind turbine at the side of the road, which sets off a detour to visit White Deer Wind Farm. 80 huge turbines in the middle of flat. empty North Texas.

The other interesting thing we find in North Texas is Cadillac Ranch, 10 cars buried head first in a field next to I-80, covered with spray paint
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We cross the border into New Mexico and the landscape changes, almost immediately fro flat arable land to red, high-altitude desert. We drive to Santa Fe where everyone lives in Adobe or mock-adobe buildings, like Fred Flintstone. Even McDonalds is mock-adobe.

Find a campsite up in the mountains and spend the evening in the city. Lots of people with clipboards are out registering citizens for the New Voters Project. Eat some good food in the Longevity cafe and spot a coyote and a deer on the way home.

Santa Fe to Aztec, New Mexico

First stop is Wild Oats to get picnic food. Then we take the high road to Taos. Stop at Truchas to look at a beautiful Adobe church from the 18th century.

Taos is also full of adobe and mock-adobe and it’s a tourist trap, pleasant enough but everything costs a lot of money, so we don’t spend long here.

We head north and drive across a wide desert. we stop for a picnic at the Rio Grande Canyon. A deep, narrow valley that runs through the middle of this desert - as if somebody has taken a knife and cut a line through the land for the river to flow down.

A couple of miles further we spy some unusual buildings - Earthships. We stop to investigate and find a visitor centre with a showhome and video. The structures are beautiful. Curves, solar panels, adobe, (too much) cement, interesting structural use of tyres, bottles and cans and a view to die for. I decide that this is where I would like to retire to.

End the day in Aztec, NM and pitch our tent in an RV site. Take a walk into town and get talking to the girls who work in Subway.

Us: “So what is there to do around here?”

Them: “Cow tipping! But you need four people and a good run up for it to work. Or you could go to Farmington to watch high-school world series baseball - AND there’s a haunted house behind the KFC there. There’s skinwalkers up in the hills who steal your soul. Or you could go to the UFO crash-site… You see there’s not a whole lot to do around here, so people have to make stuff up.”

Aztec, NM to the Grand Canyon

Next day we go to the Aztec Ruins National Monument - an excavative native american pueblo, complete with a reconstructed kiva. Amazing how much is still intact: woven-willow doorways, complex masonry, 1000 years old and in a country famed for a lack of history.

On the way out the park rangers ask if there’s anything we want to know. I ask who are the skinwalkers that the girls in Subway were talking about. Another park ranger appeared, led us outside and questioned why we were asking such a question. He then went on to tell us that this is a very controversial subject that some people will refuse to discuss, but very roughly, skinwalkers are real people who practice negative magic and it’s a very bad thing to get mixed up in and not the best idea to go around asking questions about.

Then we drive on west, missing the junction for Utah. Drive on 30 miles past Shiprock until we realise we’ve gone wrong, so turn around and head north back the way we came and onto Monument Valley, a famous panorama from every western movie worth its salt.

Giant, red mesas and pillars protrude majestically along the skyline. We do the tourist stop and pose for photos and I buy a necklace to ward off bad spirits. Then we go south into Arizona and west towards the Grand Canyon. Arrive just before the park store closes, just in time to get one of the final campsites and just in time to get our tent pitched before dark.

Grand Canyon to Las Vegas

After a very cold night camping at 9,000 ft (especially for Jon who didn’t bring a very warm sleeping bag), it’s quite easy to get up at 5am to watch the sun rise over the canyon. We find a rock to perch on and watch the sun flood into the canyon. Words can’t do justice to this spectacle.

Then we get our breakfast/caffeine shot and get back on the road again. Our route takes us north back into Utah, to Zion National Park. The drive in looked incredible, worth spending more time, but too much heat and too many tourists plus a very full car park puts us off stopping there and fighting through crowds. So on to Las Vegas…

We get a very good deal in the Sahara Casino hotel at the end of the strip. Every Las Vegas cliche rings true. The ground floor is full of rows and rows of slot machines. The front entrance has an ‘arabian’ canopy, which vaguely resembles a mosque. Then there’s the tastefully themes ‘Nascar‘ area with giant motor racing cars and theme rides, including a rollercoaster that screams around the top of the building every few minutes. And then there’s the buffet, all you can eat for $9, most of it tasted like school dinners, presumably a ploy to ensure you don’t eat too much at all. Nonetheless we managed four huge plates of salad, noodles, pizza and pudding. Each.

We wander down the strip to Circus Circus to watch a circus act: three men from Moldova and a springy pole. All a bit bonkers really. Then on to another Casino to sip frozen margarita and admire the acres and acres of hideous carpet.

Spend the evening cruising the strip, absorbing the extravagence. We cross Brooklyn Bridge and hear duelling pianists at New York, New York. We drink beer under the Eiffle Tower at Paris. We watch the waterfalls dance to patriotic songs at Bellagios and stand on the balcony at the Venetian.

Finish the night off with cheap beer and bourbon at Westward Ho and watch some poker feeling quite smug that we haven’t done any gambling.

Las Vegas to Lee Vining, CA

Wake up in the largest king-size bed and remember I’m in Las Vegas. Unfortunately it’s time to move on and the road takes us west through Death Valley. A bleak desert and the second hottest place on earth.

Driving into the valley feels like a different planet. It feels large, empty and very, very hot. Hard to believe that anything can survive here. We drop from an elevation of 5,000 ft down to five feet and then have to climb back out on the other side. Road signs tell us to switch off our air-conditioning to save the car from overheating and there is radiator water stored in tanks every few miles along the road. We pass a bus which has its engine fully exposed in a desperate attempt to cool down.

Our car does us proud and we reach the top of the far side of the valley, back up to 5,000 ft again. We have made it through one of the hottest places on earth and the lowest land in the western hemisphere.

An hour further along the road and we are looking at the highest peak in the USA, we have reached the Sierra Nevada mountains. We get to Mono Lake as the sun is setting.

Here we look at the Tufa columns, spot some California Gulls and lots of flies, while learning all about water resource use. Mono Lake is no longer being drained for Los Angeles, good news for the environment. We stop for the night in the Lee Vining RV Park.

Lee Vining, CA to San Francisco

We take the Tioga Pass into Yosemite National Park. It’s a beautiful day and the park is gorgeous. We go for a trek around the base of El Capitan and then go to Wawoma and the Mariposa Grove of giant redwood trees.

As we leave Yosemite, a large turkey flies right in front of the car. Then we go through central valley and head straight for San Francisco. We pass through the Altamont Wind Farm and cross the Bay Bridge in the dark.

We celebrate our arrival in San Francisco with huge veggie burritos at Taqueria Cancun and finish the night with drinks at Dylan’s, a welsh-theme pub.

Up early the next day to move the car and fins a space to park (had forgotten what a challenge this can be). Next we go to explore the murals in the Mission and introduce ourselves to Mike at Global Exchange, a very friendly CAT MSc student who offers us a place to stay (thanks Mike).

We lunch at ‘Lucky Creation‘ in Chinatown, a hole-in-the-wall place that serves top, tasty vegetarian food. Our afternoon is spent in North Beach at City Lights bookstore and then downtown. In the evening we catch up with Cathleen, eat more burritos and drink more beer.

Monterey, CA

Monterey is on the California coast, very affluent and very touristic. Our visit to this city coincided with the world’s largest classic race car event. Plenty of dressed-up people speeding around in over-specd cars. We get away from all of this madness by meeitn up with Kristen and driving south on Highway 1 to Andrew Molera State Park. Here we walk along the beach and encounter bizarre seaweed floating in the water.

San Francisco, CA

Back to Fr’isco, our final destination. Jon turns 32 today and celebrates in Haight Ashbury, California’s answer to Camden Lock. We take a trip to the cinema at 1000 Van Ness (Jon thinks it looks like a Czech railway station) and go to see Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore’s film about recent US foreign policy. I visit the bathroom after the film and there’s not a dry eye to be seen.

Back to Haight St for our last american supper at Axum, which serves incredible Ethiopian food. And then we go to Tracy’s apartment on Potrero Hill.

4,500 miles driven … and it’s the end of the holiday.