26-27 September

St Louis Missouri

“It winds from Chicago to LA, more than 2000 miles all the way” - so the classic Route 66 song goes. Winding through hundreds of small communities, the original Route 66 became, literally, the main street of the USA. It simply joined up the “dots' of sealed roads that ran through each of the towns in a wide southern arc from Chicago in the north to LA on the Pacific coast.

Going up the St Louis Arch today, we met a family with a couple of kids who had taken 8 hours to drive from Chicago to St Louis. We have taken three days! On the way we have seen some of what travellers in the 1940s and 1950s would have seen. Sadly, many of the small towns along the way have suffered as the result of the Interstates that progressively replaced the single lane highway of the '30s and '40s. Dwight, Odell, Atlanta, Williamsville and many others have become almost ghost towns.

On the other hand, towns closer to bigger cities have done well. Springfield IL. is a good example. Abe Lincoln was elected from here and the great man is buried in a fittingly magnificent tomb in the city. Museums and other attractions associated with Lincoln and the Civil War attract tourists to this progressive little city. (If you ever go there, don't miss the Lincoln Museum and the “Ghost of the Library Presentation” - How do they do it!!?

Our Sunday afternoon ride into St Louis was easy and we found our downtown motel immediately. The Green Bay Packers (football) were in town to play a local St Louis team so there were plenty of people in the city. We wandered out for a late afternoon recce and came across the Gateway Arch. WOW. One of the many jaw dropping sights the US offers! You can actually ride a VERY small, 5 seat, enclosed, pod, 630ft to the top. So why not? What a view!

St Louis is a city of about 2.8 million people. But unlike most European cities of that size, it is very manageable and it is easy to drive, even in the centre of town...well, so far.

22-25 September

Chicago Illinois – Bloomington Illinois (Route 66)

Our kind of Town... Chicago!

Unusually, the weather has been less than kind to us over the past few days. Low fog and mist shrouded the spectacular Chicago skyline. We were lucky for a few hours each day as the fog lifted just long enough for us to get some idea of the scale of this, the third largest city in the US.

Judy and Marty Crowley, who we had met 7 or 8 years ago in Brisbane, put us up and showed us around their home city. Their hospitality and generosity made our short visit a wonderful experience. There is nothing like being shown around by locals!

Before we reached Chicago, we really belted out the miles. Now that we are on Old Route 66, we are taking it a little slower. Old Route 66 winds through the main streets of hundreds of small towns and cities as it snakes from Chicago to LA for over 2000 miles (3200kms). Today we made well less that 200 kms, pottering along from one retro site to another. Old diners, gas stations and more Main, Maple, State, and Elm streets than we can remember AND this is our first day!

21 September

Winterset, Madison County, Iowa

During our last trip to the US, we had a chat with a couple of fellow travellers in a bar in Atlantic City (where else?). When we told them that we planned to drive Route 66, they commented “... have you ever seen 2000 miles of corn?” Well, we haven't even started on Route 66 yet and we've probably already seen ENOUGH corn. Never mind. The scale of it all is interesting in itself.

Why Winterset? Remember “The Bridges of Madison County”? That's one reason. The second is that John Wayne was born here in a small house on South Second Street in 1907. A must see!

20 September

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

The small town of Wall, SD, where we spent the night last night, is famous for just one thing. The Wall Drug Store.

It was the depths of the depression when Ted and Dorothy Hustead bought the Wall Drug store. “Tin Lizzies” chugged along Route 16A, loaded with suitcases and everything else families could load on as they searched for work. Business was slow until, one day, Dorothy figured out that travellers would make a stop for cold water. Free ice-cold water. That was in 1936. Today, the Wall Drug store boasts more than 2 million visitors a year. It is the main industry in Wall. Aside from motels! If the whole population of the town checked into a motel for the night, there would still be over 400 vacant beds! Sure, many locals complain about the hundreds of advertising signs that litter the Interstate advertising the Wall Drug, but you've got to admire their spirit. And their prices. We had an all you can eat breakfast for $7.00 each!

Leaving Wall, we headed off to the Badlands of South Dakota, a moonscape of grey and pink rock canyons that, in the morning light, kept our shutters clicking!

19 September

Wall, South Dakota

Deadwood, South Dakota, is famous for at least three things. Gold, Wild Bill Hickok and Casinos. The TV series of the same name might also have added to the attraction of this 'tourist trap'? What is left of the old, late 19^th century, gold-mining town has pretty much disappeared behind the razzle dazzle of casinos and T-shirt shops. The saloon where Wild Bill was shot in the back of the head, is now a dress shop. Or at least the building that stands on the site is now a dress shop! Up in the old “Boot Hill' cemetery, the graves of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane have attracted tourists and souvenir hunters for over 100 years. Poor old Bill has had his grave marker replaced so many times that, at one stage, the grave remained unmarked to discourage trophy seekers.

Later in this trip, we plan to seek out “Big Things” (like the Big Pineapple) down Old Route 66. Here in South Dakota, there are a couple of world class “Big Things” - right up there with the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Well, so the local advertising goes. Of course, we are talking about Mt Rushmore and the lesser known Crazy Horse Memorial. Both are Very Big things. Mount Rushmore is so iconic that it is one of those places where you feel that you have been here before. The four Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt loom out of the rock in what will probably forever remain an unfinished work. (The original plan was to carve them out at full body height, not just as busts.)

Crazy Horse's Memorial is a much more recent and far more ambitious project. It was commenced in 1948. Mt Rushmore was started in 1927 and finished in 1941. To date, Crazy's head is all that is complete. To give some idea of the scale, his head is bigger than all four Presidents combined. And, he will finally be a half-body, horse-mounted sculpture.

18 September

Cody WY – Gillette WY

Museums are one of our favourite things when travelling. Many are must-see and well known – like the Louvre! - others, like Trail Town in Cody WY, are probably locally revered but not on the same plane as many of the grand museums of Europe. It all depends on what you are looking for. In 1969, Paul Newman and Robert Redford starred in one of our favourite movies, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. We've lost count but we must have seen it more than 50 times? So you can imagine how enthralled we were with a museum that featured buildings that our 'heroes' actually lived in or visited.

Sited on the outskirts of the old cattle town of Cody, a small village of original buildings from the late 19^th century has been gathered in a street that could be right out of the 1880s. The Mud Spring Cabin where Sundance and Kid Currey (Butch's predecessor) planned their raids was balanced on the other side of the street by the Hole in the Wall cabin where Butch, Sundance and others hid out between robberies. Fantastic! AND..complete with wild rabbits bounding about amongst the ruins.

The more well-known Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody was large, well laid out and full of authentic western memorabilia focused on the life and times of the bigger than BIG hero of the Old West – Buffalo Bill Cody. Interesting but, for us, not a patch on the far less pretentious Trail Town.

The drive from Cody down the eastern slopes of the Rockies was a mix of hundreds of kms of rolling grazing land and spectacular rocky canyons.

17 September

Cody Wyoming

Cody is about as close as we have managed to get to the Old West. Buffalo Bill (Cody) is associated with this town. Yet it's hard to get the same frontier feeling one gets in towns in Western Queensland. The town's facade is all too new and well maintained to be a real western town. It all comes close though. Our motel is called the 'Big Bear'. It has all the normal trappings in the room, but the outside is comfortingly rural - dirt fore-court, rabbits bounding through the rough dry grass behind the units and the owner's kid wandering about on her pony. There is even a corral for visiting horses out the front!

Most of today we worked our way around the Yellowstone Grand Canyon. Between us, we must have taken a hundred photos. It was the sort of place where we finally had to call a halt and declare, 'not one more photo!'.

Yesterday we only saw individual bison. Today we saw whole herds out on the meadows between the mountains. A truly majestic sight!

15-16 September

Jackson Hole – West Yellowstone

In the latter part of the 19 century the American Bison (Buffalo) were hunted to the brink of extinction. Mounted hunters on horseback were more than a match for the buffalo in this uneven struggle. Today, it's Buffalo v cars in a much more evenly matched contest. It must be called at about evens. We saw buffalo close up beside the road through Yellowstone today and we'd rather not tangle with them, even in our rented Nissan.

The buffalo fared better than the first wildlife we encountered. Somewhere in the back blocks of Idaho a poor unfortunate coyote bolted out in front of us. A much more uneven contest.

Another uneven contest occurred as a daredevil driver turned across the lanes in front of us. An incensed Paul reached carefully for the stalk in order to flash this recalcitrant.... and washed our windscreen!!!! Hilarity ensued in our Nissan, specially as this was a repeat of an incident in Brisbane. But back to more serious matters...

Yellowstone was exactly as advertised. Spectacular! Good weather, clear skies and temperatures in the mid 20s only enhanced the experience. Old Faithful blasted off on cue for our arrival, several other geysers obligingly spouted as we walked past and the pools were spectacularly beautiful with their rainbow of colours created by the mineral salts.

The crowds in the National Park were far greater than we have experienced on previous visits to the US. Hundreds of RVs filled the parking lots and the traffic crawled along the roads between attractions. Overwhelmingly, our fellow travellers are American 'Grey Nomads'.

14 September

Salt Lake City Utah

Who said deserts were boring? Over 1000km of Nevada and Utah deserts have kept us interested through the long haul from Reno to Salt Lake City. Interstates in this part of the US are in the sort of condition that we remember from previous trips. With speed limits of 75 mph (120kph) and super smooth roads, it's a bit like flying at ground level!

It is hard to believe that a country with over 300 million people has this much open space. Europe is much the same physical size and there never seems to be more than a few kms between towns. Out here, it's more like Australia, where 200kms between towns is the norm in isolated areas. Storms and rain showers out on the desert added to the interesting light on the desert landscape.

Just over the Nevada – Utah border, the Bonneville Salt Flats are blindingly bright, even in the half sun of this partly cloudy day. It's here that the world land speed records are regularly broken. The current mark is somewhere above 600 mph. How do they keep on the ground? The Interstate here runs for 20 or 30 miles in a straight line through desert brush and salt-encrusted flats. Semi-trailers pour west in a steady stream while the traffic in our direction is extremely light.

As is our custom on road trips like this, we have been using our portable kitchen to cut back on costs to cook in motels. Sounds cheap skate we know, but on long trips, eating meals out can easily double the cost of a trip. Wal-Mart supermarket allows us to equip a full mobile kitchen with cooking plate, saucepan, toaster, frypan and eating gear for well under $100. To give some idea of how cheap cooking equipment can be: we paid $7.00 for the toaster!

This afternoon, when we did an early recon of Salt Lake City, we got lost walking downtown to pick up our dinner supplies. Like most US cities, (LA and NYC excluded!) it is very open with broad streets, gardens and well-managed traffic, so, once we'd realised we were heading in the wrong direction after a couple of blocks, it was easy to find our way back – a big contrast to European cities and towns whose streets meander all over the place.

Tomorrow we'll have a wander around the Temple Square of the Mormon Church and head off for another long drive to Jackson, Wyoming, on the edge of Yellowstone National Park. Wonder if we'll see Yogi and Boo Boo!

10-13 September

Winnemucca Nevada

We have a good excuse for being so lax with our blog. The past couple of days we've been visiting with Paul's cousin Michael, his wife Courtney and their family in Roseville just outside Sacramento. We had a great time meeting some of Mike and Courtney's family and friends, but we still managed some 'tourist time' in Old Sacramento, a restored part of the old town. Not much of Old Sacramento is original, but it shows what the city would have looked like in the late 19^th, early 20^th century, when the railway was king.

Tonight we are settled in our favorite US cheapie motel – Motel6. The northern Nevada desert surrounds us for hundreds of kms. Contrasts on this trip so far have been spectacular. A couple of days ago we were wandering by the beach and pottering around old Monterey harbour front. Earlier today we drove through the Sierra Nevada mountains, stopping off at the small town of Truckee before heading off into the desert just beyond Reno. The Interstate improved significantly once we crossed the Nevada State line; speed limits of 120km/hr made the day fly! The nothingness of the deserts is reminiscent of our travels through western Queensland. Petrol (Gas) stations are few and far between, as are motels. We have more hard miles ahead tomorrow as we head through Utah towards Yellowstone National Park. This part of the trip was an after thought. Apparently the long haul to Chicago along I-80 through Wyoming and Nebraska is deadly boring, so we've elected to take a small 1000km detour!

8-9 September 2009

LA to San Simeon

Flight delays aren't a rare event in this day and age, but we've mostly been lucky in our travels. Not this time! Our flight from Brisbane was delayed more than 3 hours. A long day later we were in Santa Barbara, both in somewhat of a trance! Never mind. The weather was warm and sunny and even LA traffic was manageable. US highways are legendary. However, the legend is becoming a little tarnished, at least in California. In the 'land of the clean and the home of the green...' rubbish lines the Interstates and some surfaces are so bad that they would be closed down on European motorways.

Wild fires have ravished much of Southern California. It is dry here. Extremely dry! A smoke haze hangs heavy over the northern suburbs of LA and the country is tinder dry for hundreds of kilometers. Recession seems to have bitten hard here. The state of California is basically broke. Infrastructure is beginning to crumble and, in comparison to our recent memories of Europe, if California is any indication, the US is in a deep recession.

Highways US-101 and US-1 follow the Pacific coast north from LA to San Francisco, winding through small coastal cities and towns that are 'classic California'. Laid back and extremely friendly, these towns have a feel of home. It might be the ubiquitous eucalyptus trees, or the sun and heat, or the casual dress styles, we're not sure? Whatever! It feels great! Today we saw a restored 'woodie' surfer van parked at Pismo Beach. No bleached blond surfer dude, this lad. Instead, a grey -haired retiree, young, or at least younger at first glance “surfer chick” in tow. The Californian Grey Nomad?