Last fall, my husband and I set our hearts on renting an RV for a road trip from Los Angeles to Florida. We envisioned picnicking on mountaintops in New Mexico, sleeping under the stars in Texas and grilling shrimp (the RV comes with a grill, of course) on a Mississippi levee. In the end, our 2,200-mile trip to America was memorable, but for none of those reasons.
“We cannot accept anyone over 70 with a British driving licence,” insisted the woman on the phone. I am 83, but I think I am a fast 60, and my husband, John, is 76. No one warned us about this potential obstacle. If they had the same age cutoff for Americans, I thought, the RV business would collapse.
We called another company. Their representative said he had not heard of any age restriction. “No problem,” he said. “We have the perfect RV for you.” Except it’s 45 feet long. The thought of parking something the size of a London bus was too much, even for my gung-ho husband.
Common sense prevailed, and we rented a Ford Explorer.
New Mexico
Salsa and sticker shock
We are overdue to rest. Aside from my usual job eating cake as a judge on “The Great British Baking Show,” I am doing trial runs of my a woman’s stage show in Britain and the United States, and it’s exhausting.
So, before we embarked on our great adventure, we rented a mobility scooters for two and hit the boardwalk at Venice Beach, in Los Angeles. But our crawl through the deafeningly loud music, junk food and stands selling shorts emblazoned with lewd words and messages like “Beat Me” did little to revive our spirits.
The day we left California, it was pouring with heavy rain. By the time we crossed into Arizona, the sun had burst over the hills in a glorious display of opera lighting.
We made it all the way to Santa Fe, NM, where our hotel, the Vanessa, a charming collection of wooden buildings around a courtyard is, like everywhere else, suffering from a lack of staff. The lone employee handed us a laminated notice: “Our restaurant, room service, and bar are currently closed. A $30 service charge will be added to your bill.”
happy, Vara Vinoteca, across the street, is open. We ate small padrón peppers stuffed with cream cheese and cumin, tuna ceviche and pineapple salsa, and a small bowl of warm, lightly curried mussels in the shell, all served in a flight of four glasses of the California variety cabernet sauvignons.
I would have been happy to have all our meals in that simple little room. But Santa Fe is full of great restaurants, unique architecture, art museums, and shops full of desirable things, so we started exploring. John falls in love at a hatter’s shop, where he buys two real Stetsons. He also spent a large sum of money on two baseball caps for his grandchildren. Is there a difference between a $41 and a $5 baseball cap? Probably.
John was equally mesmerized by my lust for an irresistible $150 necklace made from cut-up plastic water bottles and splattered with red, black and gold paint. Vibrant, bouncy, light as a feather — it’s a work of art. But apparently this was a piece that, at least for us, couldn’t be bought with money: The store’s credit card system required a US ZIP code, and cash was not accepted. We gave in.
The prices continue to amaze us. The exchange rate has made the US shockingly expensive for Brits, and taxes and tips on top of that? I’m a little offended that I’m expected to tip when buying coffee at a counter. And now with touch screens suggesting tips of 15 percent and up, a latte feels like a big purchase. Only petrol seems cheap, at half the price in the UK.
Texas
Where astronauts dare to eat
“Boring, flat, brown, goes on forever”: Everyone said we don’t like Texas. But we loved it. Maybe because I grew up in the vast areas of South Africa, my heart was touched by small towns with nothing more than a windmill and a church.
We stopped for lunch at to Dirka Lubbock diner packed with locals eating chicken tenders, sticky ribs and burgers, all drenched in gloopy barbecue sauce and followed by donuts or pancakes in a lake of syrup.
The waiter seemed confused when I asked, “Do you have any green vegetables?” Then he smiled and said, “Oh, yes, we have green beans.” They are canned beans in a cloying juice.
We’re also puzzled by the way American waiters regularly greet you with your menu selection, rewarding you with “Good choice,” “Excellent” or even “Awesome.” Want fries with that? “Awesome!”
When we arrived in San Antonio, we were ready to drink. A waterside cafe amidst raised flower beds, paved walks and roving mariachi bands of River Walk served first-class margaritas (freezing, salt only on one side of the glass, not too sweet) and warm tortilla chips. Watching the young waiter make guacamole by the riverside is a delight: the knife is sharp, the chile is fresh, the avocado and tomato are ripe. And his judgment was sound – a sliver of chopped raw red onion, a decent squeeze of lime, and a generous grind of pepper and salt, all mixed together gently rather than coarsely mashed. I found myself eating very slowly, just to hold on to that flavor as long as possible.
We had the worst meal of our entire trip not far from a Texas Hill Country tourist town Fredericksburg, which prides itself on its German heritage. We spent a fun morning touring the shops, museums and galleries of the north end of town, and had a lunch of fried chicken sandwiches and banana walnut pancakes.
So we have high hopes for the south side. But sadly its historic houses are full of tourist junk like plastic stein mugs and Barbie dolls tucked into lederhosen. We returned to a restaurant whose menu boasted authentic German dishes. We were served pork chops ruined by overly sweet gravy, flavorless sauerkraut, sweet and vinegary red cabbage, and potato mash that was obviously made with a powdered mix that hadn’t been boiled. We left our plates and returned to our motel to microwave emergency rations of Campbell’s tomato soup.
The next day, on our way to Houston, we passed a roadside church whose great store urged us to “Give Up Lust — Get Jesus.” I thought that sign might be my most lasting memory, until I spent some time in Space Center Houston. I never thought I would be confused by topics like the geology of the moon and how NASA astronauts train underwater.
But in the cafeteria! It’s amazing, the best I’ve seen anywhere in a public building: brioche or sourdough sandwiches, homemade soups, hot roast and grill, fresh tortillas, a salad bar to tempt the most die-hard carnivore , and no junk food in sight. It’s a far cry from NASA’s standard fare of freeze-dried food in pouches and tubes.
Louisiana
How to take care of a hangover
Louisiana is famous for its gumbos and étouffée, so I looked forward to the gastronomy as we crossed the state line and drove to Rural Life Museum of Louisiana State University, a Cajun heritage village in Baton Rouge. I guess I’m too optimistic. The jambalaya and black fish at the cafe were tasteless and dried out. I like Cajun food better in London.
Plantation Alley, along the Great Mississippi Road, with its half dozen “Gone With the Wind”-style estates, now open to the public, blew me away. The most beautiful of them is Oak Alley, with its avenue of 250-year-old Southern live oaks, their branches creating a wide green tunnel. But I don’t understand how the spectacular trees are obviously older than the house. It turns out that these oaks are native to the area, and once grew throughout the estate. When the house was built in 1836, enslaved laborers were made to dig up 28 of the massive 60- to 70-year-old trees, with root systems the size of their canopies, and replant them in an avenue down the Mississippi. levee.
The Great Mississippi Road eventually led to New Orleans and the famous French Quarter, with its balconies of elaborate wrought iron — a picture in the sun of Victorian good taste. We, ignorant Brits, had no idea that at night on Bourbon Street, that “good taste” became the taste of daiquiris, pizza and hot dogs against the backdrop of bands belting out rock ‘n’ roll, small kids kicking trash cans, big-ups playing jazz, and the raucous noise of drunken tourists until 3 am
But I liked the party atmosphere, and I’m mighty partial to a daiquiri, so we started on a pub crawl. I now know that the secret to a good mango daiquiri is fresh mango, and not bottled mango syrup. And the next morning, after too much mango delight and too little sleep, I learned that shrimp and grits, with a nice grating of cheese, is the perfect hangover cure.
Florida
Turkey, sweet potato and slice of modern Eden
Our road trip ended, as it began, on a beach. Only this one is a merciful distance from the Venice boardwalk.
We rented a house for a week in the small Florida Panhandle community of Seacrest Beach, on the Emerald Coast along Highway 30A. This eight-mile strip — a kind of manufactured, perfectly designed modern Eden — consists of 16 neighborhoods on white-sand beaches between Pensacola and Panama City. Developments with names like Rosemary Beach, Seagrove Beach, Alys Beach, Grayton Beach and WaterColor share perfect sand and the coveted 30A address.
Everyone rides bikes, and perfectly tanned moms gossip about kombucha and wheatgrass at sidewalk cafes. Even kids look straight through an upmarket catalog.
Friends of friends, during the holidays, invited us to their Thanksgiving dinner — turkey with all the trimmings, sweet potatoes, pecan pie and ice cream. In thanking them, I said something about the pleasure of such generosity, closeness to the family and politeness of their children. Our host laughed. Because we are from the South, she said. It won’t be the same in Chicago. Maybe for the next road trip I’ll take the northern route to see if that’s true.
I’m glad we failed to rent my dream Winnebago back in Los Angeles. If we had succeeded, we would never have experienced the traditional American family Thanksgiving. We would have been in a trailer park, eating takeout. Thank you, Lady Luck.
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