odysseyone

Welcome to America, the land of the brave, the free and the pickup. It’s a country with enormous freeways, cars big enough to fill in for Noah’s Ark and a grey army like you’ve never seen before. RVs rule here and there’s a whole new dictionary of terms for these monstrosities- pull-throughs, hook-ups, full service and the RV dog.

If an American tells you that their vehicles are just normal size then they obviously haven’t been to Europe, where there are buses smaller than the average American family 4WD. If a local complains about the price of gasoline then they’ve obviously never bought a litre in Australia or come to think of it, almost any other country on earth. Gasoline is cheaper here than a bottle of water and I wonder if there’s any coincidence that the nation with the world’s most powerful armed forces also has the world’s cheapest fuel… just food for thought.

It’s the land of choices, where hunger pangs are a foreign concept and getting out of your car is an unnecessary evil. There are the usual suspects like McDonalds, KFC and Subway and then a head-spinning variety of others like Denny’s, Wendy’s, Carl Jr, In n Out Burger, Carrows, Taco Bell, Chuck-E-Cheese, I-Hop and whatever other plastic food you may desire. We gave up trying to live the American fast food lifestyle after our first nasty experience with Taco Bell. The USA is home to the drive-thru, where drive-thru fast food is just the beginning. We couldn’t resist drive-thru Starbucks, Justin was able to watch his account dwindle at the drive-thru ATM and there was even the drive-thru pharmacy if we had needed it. The only thing they haven’t come up with if drive-thru petrol fill up which would have been handy. The contact with the cashier has been eliminated as most of the time you pay with your credit card at the bowser. We had trouble a few times because we didn’t have a local ZIP code to key in but Brandon, Brenda, Dylan, Donna and Kelly came to the rescue… is it too far fetched to believe two unemployed backpackers from Australia could be living in Beverly Hills 90210? I thought not. After all, this is the land of possibilities.

We found deciding on where to visit in our month-long road trip as overwhelming as all the fast food and shopping options available. The USA is bigger than Australia and because petrol is cheaper and the roads on the most part are better than at home – we saw a couple of highways that were 14 lanes wide – we were tempted to do our bit to burn up the planet by driving all over the countryside. But we have become lazy travellers in the six months we have been away and don’t like to push it too hard so we chose just a few destinations.

We flew into New York from Iceland and were shocked to find they were still having their summer heatwave. We found the heat difficult to handle after spending the last few weeks in a mild England summer. We were both excited to visit New York as neither of us had been there before and we were able to stay with family, which was a nice change from hostels. I had only met two of my cousins once before so we were really grateful to the Postle family for letting us stay in Long Island and Upper East Side Manhattan. It was great to meet them all finally and learn a little bit about NY from locals.

Within hours of arriving we felt like we had stepped off the plane and into the great American dream when we found ourselves standing on the street with the neighbours and the local dogs in front of cookie-cutter houses with perfectly manicured lawns and the American flag flying at the house next door, eating soft serve from the local Mr Softie van.

When we moved into the city from Long Island we were staying fairly close to Times Square and all the highlights but we still found ourselves very busy trying to fit in all the highlights. I think NY is a city where there is always something new to see every time you visit. Our first taste of NY was different to arriving in other cities for the first time because you walk streets that feel very familiar to you because of TV and the movies and you experience sensory overload because of the bustle around you. When you look down any street in upper Manhattan you can see high rises, blue sky, yellow NY taxis and people crossing streets for as far as the eye can see.

Times Square is something else, with its enormous big screen advertising on every available spare inch of the side of skyscrapers. We went to a Broadway show early one evening and when we came out of the theatre, for a moment I was confused because I thought it should definitely have been dark but it seemed like it was light. It was only when I walked out the doors and into Times Square that I realised there are so many billboards, they light up the sky like it’s midday.

I have been to a few ‘cities that never sleep’ around the world but I think NY takes the cake. We found the later it was, the more crowded it became; we were out late one night in Times Square and were gridlocked in a pedestrian traffic jam. Another evening we got on the subway at around 2am and people were standing up and jammed under each other’s armpits like it was the 5pm rush hour. We had just come from a restaurant where we had dinner with a school friend of Justin’s and we had to wait an hour until 10pm just to get a table. My cousin Ray told me he can get stuck in a traffic jam at 4am in the city and the footpath is overflowing with people at all hours.

Other highlights for us included the view from the top of the Rockefeller Centre looking out towards the Empire State Building and further south to where the World Trade Centre once was, Wall Street and the NY Stock Exchange, the free Staten Island ferry past the Statue of Liberty, the UN, WTC site, Central Park and watching the US Open at Flushing Meadows.

We found things too fast paced for us and were very overwhelmed with being able to understand everything we read and heard. After five months travelling Europe and being oblivious to most things going on around us because of a language barrier, it was a shock to be in the states and be exposed to English as a first language again. In a way I didn’t like it because most of what you read and overhear is rubbish anyway and sometimes it’s nice not be able to understand what is going on around you.

We thought maybe our English had become quite bad after our time in Europe because of the number of times we failed to be understood in America. The cashier at one fast food joint confused me for someone French when she said ‘Merci’ even though I had put in my order in English. Justin found he had to repeat himself often and sometimes made a joke of it by saying, “Sorry, my English isn’t very good.” To which the manager of one campground replied encouragingly, “That’s okay. At least you can speak English.”
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We thought maybe this was a one-off until I had a conversation with one of his staff who asked me what language we speak in Australia. He was surprised when I told him that English is also our first language. I explained that some people in Australia speak other languages as well from nearby Asian countries like Indonesia and China. He asked, “That’s where they speak French, German and Spanish right?”

When he told me he learned in school that we are the only country on earth with no states I knew we had a serious problem. It wasn’t just the younger generation who were misinformed. We met an elderly woman who told us her granddaughter had recently moved to Australia after living in Japan. We told her that her granddaughter would be fine settling into Australia because there is no language barrier. To which she responded, “Why? What language do you speak in Australia?”

My personal favourite was when Justin asked a saleswoman for stamps and she said $1 should be enough to send a postcard to Germany. She couldn’t believe it when we told her sending a postcard to Germany was a bit pointless for us as we are AUSTRALIANS!!!

From NY we crossed the entire continent on a flight to San Francisco, flying over the places we had planned to drive during the final three weeks of our trip. It looked pretty dry and desolate and we were started to doubt a road trip into the desert was really such a fun plan.

San Francisco was a shock after NY, with the cold winds and fog coming in off the ocean. The city is different to NY and LA with a relaxed seaside feel, almost a cross between a small seaside English town with bad weather and an expensive beach resort. It was strange to walk down streets with some of the most expensive stores in the world, with homeless people rugged up in sleeping bags outside. It wasn’t the last time we visited wealthy cities with a high concentration of homeless people and in the world’s richest country, it made me wonder what is being done about it. In Ventura, California, being homeless appeared to be a badge of honour, with dozens of homeless pushing around their shopping trolleys, hanging out and generally looking like they were having a good time.

In San Francisco we caught up with an American friend who we worked with for a little while in Japan. He recently returned from Japan and a jaunt to Australia on his way home. It was great for us to share some of our stranger Japan stories with someone who understood exactly what we went through and he had some tales of his own to share.

From San Francisco we drove inland for a few weeks. We travelled through northern and southern California and as far east as Nevada, travelling through Utah and Arizona before heading to LA. America has lots of great national parks and we spent most our time camping in these. My only complaint about campgrounds in national parks is most don’t have showers. If I had known at the beginning that in my first week I would shower just once and have to resort to bucket baths in the cold, I might have reconsidered camping. Even with only basic facilities, these campgrounds were often very popular.

Our first stop was Yosemite NP, which we managed to hit on the last national long weekend of the year. We were lucky to get a campground and were warned of the crowds but it had to be seen to be believed. Where else in the world do you have a four lane road in a national park and it still has a traffic jam and overflowing car parks? Yosemite was scenic but difficult to enjoy because of the crowds. We left via an alpine road to avoid the crowds on the last day of the weekend and it was a spectacular drive with alpine meadows and views back into the valley. It was also our first taste of altitude, which would only get more and more extreme during the trip.

We chose Lassen Volcanic NP as our next destination because we had read it isn’t crowded and it turned out to be a fantastic find. A very high pass ran through the park, with vast vistas and pine trees lining the road, as well as volcanos and fumaroles. The day we arrived was perfect but the weather turned pretty bad the next day when we went for a hike in 0 degrees and sleet and I was layered up with a jumper, two Gortex jackets and a beanie and was still freezing. We thought it would be the perfect time of year to camp because it was only early autumn but we hadn’t counted on almost freezing to death in the higher altitude national parks. We didn’t mind the altitude as it was good practice for South America but layering up like a mummy to sleep was not fun at all. The temperatures in the tent were regularly in the single digits and one night it got as low as three degrees, which was about the point I wondered why I was punishing myself on holidays.

We were able to do a different kind of hike at this park, climbing a volcano that had last erupted centuries ago. The landscape was really different with black sand, tall lava fields and a very deep crater which I kept well clear of.

After passing through Reno, which is a mini-Vegas, we were on the Highway 50 and if tourism brochures are to be believed, it’s the most isolated highway in America. Obviously the people who wrote these have never been to Australia. We failed to find the week’s worth of highlights on this road and drove almost all of it in a day. Call me crazy, but a town can’t expect to attract the masses just because it’s in the middle of nowhere- you usually have to offer something worth seeing. The only thing of interest to us was the wild west feel of these towns but even then, it was sometimes hard to tell if it had a wild west vibe or it was just run down. The only real highlight of driving out there was the beautiful outback sunsets and wide open plains. We drove Highway 21 the next day, which felt much more isolated. It was a surreal feeling to be on a road all day and see almost no other vehicles in the world’s third most populous country. The road went through desolate, dry landscape and through a series of mountain passes. It was the more remote way of reaching Zion NP in Utah, our next destination. Driving into the park in the afternoon was beautiful with the sun setting over the sandstone cliffs, turning the landscape into a deep red. The desert parks we visited were beautiful but motivating myself to actually go walking in the park was difficult because of the scorching sun and intense, dry heat.

We steered clear of the main walks in Zion as it was another weekend. We have noticed in popular outdoors areas in America there is always the ‘must do’ activity or trail and the masses flock to it, whether it really is the best or not. We’ve also noticed American tourists overseas doing the same thing. In Zion we choose a less popular walk to escape the crowds so we could suffer the pain of the desert sun and uphill climb alone rather than in a pack. Our fitness has been very sporadic since we finished cycling so I struggled but it was worth it for the views deep into the canyon and down the valley.

Next stop on the national parks tour was the Grand Canyon. We only visited the North Rim, which is far less popular than the South Rim. We didn’t do the ‘must do’ walk into the canyon as it seemed a little pointless- you get the best idea of how deep it is by standing on the rim. We suffered from the altitude a little bit so we made sure we didn’t get too close to the edge. The Grand Canyon is one of the most impressive things I have ever seen, so deep that you often can’t see the bottom and it is impossible to get a true sense of the size because it is so long.

We had a quick look at Navajo Nation on our way to Las Vegas. The landscape is very dry and barren like the rest of the area and there are very few houses on the reservation. The only Indians we saw were those selling trinkets to tourists and I suspect the others weren’t hunting in the wilderness but escaping the heat in the airconditioning. The few houses we saw had about half a dozen cars parked outside each of them and they all looked very basic. What was really interesting to me was that all the roadside stalls had American flags flying outside of them; this patriotic gesture by the indigenous was a surprise to me.

Depending on how you look at it, Sin City can either be an oasis in the desert or hedonism at its best. After a few weeks staying in national parks the lights, traffic, casinos and crowds of Vegas were overwhelming. I wonder what poor country is living in darkness because of the energy used to light this city. To me it seemed ridiculous to have a city that survives purely on tourism in the middle of the Nevada desert where there isn’t a major water supply. But if you enjoy razzle dazzle, big nights out with the lads or ladies and throwing money away on the tables or slots, this is the place for you. You wouldn’t know the world’s most powerful country was in the middle of a financial crisis if you only saw Vegas. We camped in the heat in the middle of the city and stuck to the free activities – there were only a few – and benefited from the gambling dollars with a fantastic fake volcano with enormous fireballs shooting up into the air and a choreographed water fountain show. The music it was themed to was very patriotic, all about soldiers, guns and being proud to be an American and it was so good for a moment I got all chocked up until I snapped out of and realised I’m not an American. Other highlights were the still-standing Twin Towers – albeit a lot smaller than the original – Vegas’ version of the Statue of Liberty and the bar attendants shaking their booty on the bar, somehow managing to avoid smashing glasses in the process.

A major highlight of the trip was right near the end when we got up close and personal with a black bear in Sequoia NP. We had asked at the visitor’s centre about walks in the park and a ranger pointed out a short one which was our best chance for seeing bears. Of course we spent our whole time on the path freaking out as we weren’t so keen on meeting a bear on the track. We saw a bit of fresh bear poo on the track so we had our eyes peeled. We thought we were out of the woods so to speak but came across a bear and her cub in the picnic ground. The bear was aware of the tourists but wasn’t interested in us as she was busy eating pinecones. We were able to watch her and the cub for quite awhile and even witnessed a bear family tiff when
mother bear boxed baby bear around the head. The ranger told us they had had to put down two bears this year because they became too tame. He scared the bear off when she crossed the ring road and started to hunt through the picnic tables for food.

We wrapped up our time in the US in the land of the rich and famous, camping along the beach outside Santa Barbara. It was cool in the evenings and too cold to swim but we loved being near the ocean again. The celebrities have nicely blocked most of the good views along the coastal road from Santa Barbara to Miami, making sure mere mortals like us can’t walk on the beach by building their houses right on the ocean and making the beach accesses very hard to find. Parking is almost non-existent so we drove along imaging what the ocean might look like while starring at the high fences of expensive homes.

Travelling in the US was easier than some of the other countries we have been to because we had the car, food was pretty easy to find and we could understand the locals- even if they couldn’t always understand us! But the excesses were overwhelming and I wonder if the world should be looking to America as the benchmark for living. It was interesting to be visiting the world’s most powerful and influential country in a time of financial crisis. I’m curious to see how it pulls through and if it remains at the top or if we will rotate our focus and look to another country for guidance for a change.