Tuesday 27 March 2001 - Saturday 31 March 2001

Five days of pretty constant driving, interspersed with the odd break for sightseeing and overnight motels (which at least gave us the chance to have a bath rather than the ubiquitous showers). We slept at: Amarillo, Texas; Shreveport, Louisiana; Pensacola, Florida; Monticello, Florida; and our final destination of Kissimmee, Florida

Viewers of the exhibit are encouraged to participate by adding their own spray-can graffiti ...

... and each year the cars are resprayed a plain colour and the process begins again. Very strange. Drove a lot, avoiding visiting the 2nd largest canyon in the USA as the weather was dreadful and we were both starting colds, ending up at Shreveport for a sleep.

Thursday was my birthday, but by now I had a streaming cold and the weather was cold and grey so I didn't really appreciate it. Christine got me a nice card though, and by a miracle the motel phone had a data jack so we picked up some birthday emails. Drove all day as there was nothing else to do, ending up at Pensacola which is in our destination state but still several hundred miles from Kissimmee. On Friday we drove along the coast as it's more interesting than the Interstate, calling in at Seaside for a great Cajun lunch and St. George's State Park where they have - and are still building - New England style houses on stilts ...

... and ending up at Monticello, famous for nothing except being a convenient overnight stop.

On the Saturday we finished our journey, stopping only at Gainesville for a good vegetarian Indian meal (the real Indians, not Native Americans). Found the holiday house which we were sharing with Jill, Steve and family, which seemed a little shabby on initial inspection (when I picked up a coffee table, for example, one leg fell off), but was at least quiet which we'd been worried about as it was off the dreaded Route 192. Unpacked, did some shopping and collapsed for a bit. They arrived at around 11.30pm, jetlagged in varying degrees from 'very' upwards, unpacked with eyes propped open with matchsticks and staggered into bed.

Sunday 1 April 2001 - Saturday 7 April 2001

The house turned out to be as we'd suspected when, on Sunday, we found that the heated pool wasn't and that its filter let through anything smaller than a cigarette packet. So, on Monday morning after a bit of quality complaining from Steve, we moved to a slightly smaller but nearly new luxury condo.

The next week was spent in a whirl of Universal theme parks. We bought 'go anywhere for two weeks' tickets which entitle you to unlimited entrance to Islands of Adventure (like Disneyworld), Universal Studios (ditto but with a film theme), Seaworld (fish and performing cetaceans) and Wet 'n' Wild (water rides) in Orlando, and Busch Gardens (Disney again but with more animals) in Tampa. During the seven days we managed to visit each of the four Orlando parks twice which took a great deal of stamina, but we were determined to get our money's worth. For one such as myself who suffers grievously from motion sickness, some of the rides are a bit of a no-no ...

... but other than these we tried pretty much everything. Recommended: The Blues Brothers at Universal Studios ...

Top tip #15: If you go to Wet 'n' Wild, at all costs avoid the rides known, I  believe, as Dive Bomber and Der Stuka, both of which involve an almost vertical drop down a water chute which then flattens out sharply at the bottom. This experience was described by Steve and Chris respectively as 'power-assisted colonic irrigation' and 'a water-driven wedgie'. 

On the Saturday we drove to Treasure Island near St. Petersburg for our week on the Gulf Coast. This time we had separate accommodation: ours, booked over the internet a few weeks previously, was a one-bedroom condo in a building which looked remarkably like a cheap motel, but it was immaculate inside, air-conditioned and 100 yards from the beach so we had no complaints.

Sunday 8 April 2001 - Wednesday 18 April 2001

A much more restful week. Other than a couple of visits to Busch Gardens for more rides and a look at the animals ...

... this was a time of lazing around, swimming, reading, playing table tennis and shuffleboard, eating and drinking. About the first time that we'd felt as if we were on holiday for ages.

On the Saturday Jill, Steve et al reluctantly returned to England, only to find (as we discovered later) that their new extension had suffered a leak in the loft ruining the decoration, carpets, furnishings etc. and requiring them to spend Easter Sunday and Monday dealing with insurance companies. Nothing like that to bring you back to reality with a bump, especially after a 24-hour plane and car journey. We, on the other hand, noting that the weather out west was dreadful (snow in Arizona), stayed around for four more days of idleness and glorious weather at Il Tucano Anglo-Italian motel, in a room from which we could step into the swimming pool. Lovely.

Finally decided we'd better make the long trek back to Albuquerque, which we planned for pleasant scenery and interesting places rather than speed, so on the Wednesday we set out and drove as far as south-east Georgia with the intention of seeing the Okefenokee Swamp Park in the spring as recommended to us on our visit last November.

Thursday 19 April 2001 - Saturday 28 April 2001

Thursday: What a swiz! Although there was plenty of green stuff starting to come through, the promised profusion of spring flowers simply wasn't there. However, it was a pleasant enough day: we went on the train and boat and saw the animals, but left early and drove to a shiny new town called Dawsonville, just north of Atlanta, and stayed in a shiny new motel. Atlanta has the widest roads we've come across: eight lanes in each direction was the maximum, although seven seemed to be normal.

Friday: Drove on pretty roads from Georgia through a bit of North Carolina into Tennessee, stopping at Nashville for the night. We managed to get tickets to the Grand Ole Opry: 2½ hours of unrelieved country music, although it was worth it for the experience. The performance was recorded as five half-hour radio shows, liberally sprinkled with adverts whose quality took you back to the fifties (our favourite was Bob's All-Purpose Sauce, which can apparently be used with absolutely anything).

Interesting info #15: Despite America supposedly being a culturally integrated nation, we have noticed that there are certain activities which seem to be virtually all-white preserves - no blacks, Native Americans or any other minorities to be found. These are:

No doubt there are historical reasons which are obvious to Americans, but I'm not sure what they are and I don't like to ask.

Saturday: Drove along the Natchez Trace Parkway, once a route used by the early settlers and now an outstandingly pretty scenic drive. Tennessee countryside is more like England than anywhere we've been, at least at this time of year, and it made us quite nostalgic. However, at the place we stopped for lunch there were a number of locals wearing blue dungarees and with suspiciously similar facial features who looked at us and muttered, although no-one commented that I sure had a pretty mouth (see the film 'Deliverance' starring John Voigt if you don't get the reference) ...

Ended up in Memphis at a motel deep in touristtown near to Graceland, ready for tomorrow.

Sunday: Well, we did it - Graceland, the ultimate tourist experience. It's actually very well presented with accompanying audio and not nearly as tacky as we'd expected, with the possible exception of the family graves in the garden. However, to be fair, Elvis himself was originally buried elsewhere but his father had the grave moved to the house for security reasons which was probably very sensible. Anyway, here's a few of his suits and awards ...

Afterwards we strolled round downtown Memphis: we saw a crawfish and gumbo contest just finishing by the river ...

... went round the Peabody Place Museum which has a superb collection of Qing dynasty art ...

... and saw the ducks at the Peabody Hotel being returned to their penthouse suite at 5.00pm after their day's work entertaining people in the lobby ...

Drove to Lonoke near Little Rock, Arkansas, and slept in a seedy hotel.

Monday: Drove through some more nice but damp countryside to Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas, which used to be one of the USA's major spa towns. Some of the luxury hotels which sprang up around the turn of the century are still operating, but not too many people believe in 'taking the waters' any more. We indulged in a swim in the waters at one place, and a very strange experience it was too: virtually no English-speaking people, and everything was old and slightly scruffy including the motors powering the jets in the spa baths which looked as though they'd been ripped out of old washing machines and were just bolted to the edge  Arkansas is full of signs directing you to see various Clinton-related sites and relics; speaking personally, if he came from my local area I'd keep very quiet about it, but I suppose they need the tourist trade.

Tuesday: Drove through a lot more nice stuff, including the Pedestal Rocks near Pelsor which are huge chunks of eroded limestone overhanging a long drop ...

During the walk we saw our second American snake, which didn't run away when we approached: we think it's some sort of garter snake ...

Ended up in Branson, Missouri, which is famous as Entertainment Town USA. There are literally dozens of shows going on - music, magic, all sorts - many of which put on three performances each day, and lots of visitors make sure they get in their daily three shows. We saw a 50s music show with a great band and fairly good dancers, although in the second half they put in some Beach Boys and Beatles so their time sense wasn't quite right.

Wednesday: Mostly driving today: out of Missouri into Arkansas again, and thence into Oklahoma (where the wind comes right behind the rain). We'd expected unrelieved flat farmland, but the countryside was initially interesting with lots of rolling hills although it flattened out later. Ate in a wooden shack in the town of Jay where they don't get many visitors from the next town, let alone other countries.

Thursday: Another three-state day - Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado. We couldn't miss the chance to visit Dodge City, so went and did the standard tourist tour including the mandatory gunfight reenactment ...

... but it's now a quiet place. Drove through the Comanche National Grassland as the sun was setting; overnight in Trinidad, Colorado.

Friday: took a scenic road into New Mexico and visited Taos Pueblo. Now it's almost purely a tourist attraction; although around 25 people still live there, most have moved out to the 1970s government-built housing down the road which has electricity, water and sanitation. In traditional Pueblo building new rooms are added onto existing structures, either at the side or on top, so the whole thing eventually takes on a strange rambling appearance. Some of the original parts of the buildings are apparently over 1,000 years old, which is quite something as adobe needs patching up every two or three years or it starts crumbling and deteriorating. As well as charging you to come in and the guide expecting a sizeable tip, they rip you off $20 dollars for the privilege of taking a couple of photographs which I resented, so here's one lifted from Encarta instead ...

Taos is also home to the Millicent Rogers Museum; she was an heiress who appreciated Native American art, moved to Taos in her final years and put together a first-class collection ...

Ended up for the night in a sparse motel in Espanola which also has its own Pueblo, but we'd had enough by then.

Saturday: Drove to the Puye Cliff Dwellings in Santa Clara Pueblo, but they were closed to visitors, probably indefinitely. Apparently there was a bit of vandalism and the Native American owners don't want to risk any more. Visited the Bandelier National Monument: more cliff dwellings, not seen by Europeans until 1880 when the locals showed them to archaeologist Adolph Bandelier who had befriended them ...

Then on to Santa Fe which is a surprisingly small but attractive town now largely populated by artists; also home to the Georgia O'Keeffe museum. Had a great meal in Paul's Restaurant, then drove to Albuquerque to get a motel room prior to picking up the trailer next day. Imagine our surprise to discover (at around 10.00pm) that there was a major Indian Nation Powwow taking place in the city over the weekend, and rooms couldn't be had for love or money. So, we drove out to the RV park, crept in and slept in the trailer.

Back to the main plot in New Mexico ...