NYC to LA by road: The only way to experience USA - by Dinah Hatch

Everyone said it was a daft idea but we just couldn’t resist. The thought of hiring a swanky American car and cruising across America, coast to coast, seemed like the best holiday idea we had ever had – even if we did only have three weeks to do it in. That’s all the leave I could get from work and it just wouldn’t sound the same, saying we had driven from New York to Alabama.

We fixed up an open jaw ticket with United, packed our suitcases with everything from warm chunky-knit polo necks (well, it was January) to skimpy shorts and t-shirt for LA and, armed with a Rand McNally US roadmap and far too many CDs (you can’t do a driving holiday without the correct cruising tunes), we set off for Heathrow.

Eleven hours later, as our 747 banked at JFK, a snow blizzard was in full swing. “Hope you like skiing”, joked the pilot as we filed off and my husband Ben and I looked nervously at each other.

But the hesitation wore off the second the car rental staffer led us to our new motor. As the fat snowflakes silently settled on our heads, we turned and smiled at each other. Perfect – the gleaming ruby red Cadillac we had planned was finally ours.

Ben jumped behind the wheel, nodded excitedly at the rental man’s pep talk and revved the engine. He slung it into drive, I threw the suitcases into the boot and we roared off towards New Jersey.

With Bruce Springsteen (who else) as our soundtrack, we cruised through the Garden State, discussing the Sopranos and anything else we could think of connected to New Jersey. It was just as we had imagined – moody landscapes of factory chimneys and cooling towers, lit by the hard glare of sodium street lamps and flashing neons calling you to the nearest Arbies or Wendy’s.

That night we motelled up in Laurel, just south of Washington DC, and then headed for a local bar where the waitress popped open two of the best Coors we had ever tasted (boy, did we need them) and we debated our route over nachos, the TV playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in the background.

The next day we crunched out to the Caddy, scarfed and hatted with milky coffee and warm doughnuts in our bellies, and took to the road. And did we go some. Approximately 570 miles later we had driven through Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and right up to the South Carolina/Georgia border. It was a marathon journey as we headed into the southern states but the scenery was awesome.

We checked into a Holiday Inn Express (($68 a room – we persuaded them to give us the Association of Retired Pensioners rate) and flopped on our candlewick bedspread to discuss the day. We had enjoyed the scenery, the mountainous regions and coastal plains, but the real fun had been in the driving. I was in charge of radio station selection and we had hooted with laughter when the seek button hit upon a station which proclaimed itself “proud to be broadcasting from bobcat country”.

When tales of tracking timber wolves began to pall, we stuck on a talking book and sat in companiable silence, staring out at the vast American landscape and listening to Bill Bryson’s tall tales.

Even filling up the car seemed fun – “gas” costs a fraction of what it does in the UK and when we went to pay we would take it in turns to select the most bizarre American snack we could find. I won, with a pack of “Funions” – strange-shaped corn snacks that tasted of beef burgers.

By now we had reached the warmer climes of Atlanta, Georgia, and, both of us journalists, we decided to take a trip to the CNN Studios there but it was hard to concentrate on what the your guide was saying as every so often giggling would break out in our tour group as a famous face would waft past, miked up for their piece to camera. Oh, the glamour.

After the tour we headed off to get some miles under our belt. Over the next few days we passed through the Appalachian Mountains in Alabama, crossed the muddy Mississippi, all marooned, rusty boats and floating casinos, and into swampy Louisiana, stopping to eat deluxe cheeseburgers and fries and chat with waitresses with gorgeous Southern drawls.

We were bound for Dallas and the famous Sixth Floor Museum, which charts the life and death of JFK. The museum is excellent, setting out the historical context of the assassination and its aftermath but we couldn’t resist crossing the road to the much less official Conspiracy Museum, which examines the shocking Zapruder footage of the assassination and is curated by a wonderfully eccentric conspiracy theorist.

After the obligatory photos taken of each other on the grassy knoll, we checked into a Ramada Inn in Fort Worth and headed off to a state rodeo. The Calmeta Cowgirls show got the crowd going and the hilarious commentator whipped everyone into a frenzy during the bareback bronco riding, the steer wrestle and the kids’ scramble, which involved tots in giant cowboy hats running hither and thither and, from our stand in the gods, resembling hyperactive tintacks.

Next stop was Roswell, New Mexico. Ben had always wanted to go here after reading about the supposed alien landing here in the fifties. And he wasn’t disappointed. Every shop in the high street had a model of an alien in the window (even the bridal shop). The town museum was stuffed with accounts of alien sightings and the foyer had a bizarre tableau of CIA agents operating on an extra-terrestrial life form. Gold dust.

We took it all in, bought a green, blow-up alien for the back seat, and sped off towards Tombstone, Arizona, where we wanted to catch an re-enactment of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral.

The gun slinging shenanigans at Tombstone were something only the Americans could pull off, with the actors swaggering around the reconstructed Wild West town between performances and chatting to punters in Big Nose Kate’s bar. We sucked at a Budweiser, stared at the commotion for an hour and then headed back to the Caddy for our journey up through Flagstaff and onto the Grand Canyon, then Vegas and finally Los Angeles.

Ben had been to the Grand Canyon before and told me, with just two days left before our flight home, I had precisely 15 minutes to get out and look at it once we had got arrived. He even kept the engine running. I walked to the rim and stared out at the expansive hole. So this was it. I fell into a quite reverie as I watched the breeze ripple through the flora in the Canyon but was interrupted 14 minutes later. “Right, you’ve seen it now” he shouted.

I climbed back into the car reluctantly, the tangerine sun setting at our backs as we headed ever westward.

With $50 left in our pockets after a giddy hour at the tables in Las Vegas the night before, our last day arrived. We pulled off the highway and swept down into Hollywood Boulevard and picked up a map of the stars’ homes. We cruised Beverley Hills, stopping to point at very high bushes that concealed hacienda-style mansions containing pampered Tinseltown royalty and then sped off to Venice and giggled at the show-offs on Muscle Beach.

Then the moment came. Our flight was due, our trip of a lifetime was over and we had seen some of the States’ best bits but there was so much more we had yet to experience. We arrived at the rental drop off at LAX and handed over the Caddy’s keys. The holiday was over but our love affair with driving holidays had only just begun..