Just Drive! John & Bob in the USA: 2012

Many backroads lead to nowhere in particular

Yes, we're off to the USA again in May. We hope you'll be able to follow us when we depart Bag End in about 3 weeks time. All thanks to our volunteer house/cat-sitters, Brenda and Jean & Dave. Thank you so much, guys!

This trip has no particular theme but includes three big roadtrips. These journeys are about what we really like doing. Choosing a road and travelling it. It's not the getting there, it's the going. Just drive!

(If you don't know this track, please play it. It's the inspiration for this trip. To view in a separate window, press the "PLAY" symbol in the middle of the box, then click on the YouTube logo, bottom right of the window. Or just Play it while you read on further. There's more music to accompany this Blog at the bottom of this page to get in the mood).

We always have a "landmark city" on our itinerary and this time it's Los Angeles. Looking forward to the old MGM (now Sony) studios there.

Then it's a drive across Southern California to Las Vegas (hooray)....


View this route on GoogleMaps

and then, off the beaten track, following old bits of Route 66 into Arizona and on to Flagstaff,


View route on GoogleMaps

then, through some beautiful country round Sedona, finishing at Phoenix.


View this route on GoogleMaps

After a short flight to Kansas City, we drive on a collection of empty Kansas roads through nothing in particular but following the route of the "Pikes Peakers": gold prospectors leaving the Midwest to find a fortune in the Colorado Mountains. On the way we call into Marshall Dillon's home town of Dodge City. Eventually we end up in Denver Colorado via a railroad trip up Royal Gorge, the place where Doc Holliday met his maker and then Buffalo Bill's grave. This route was inspired by an article in True West Magazine.


View this route on GoogleMaps

Finally, after another short hop, from Denver to El Paso, it's a drive through West Texas, along the Mexican Border and the Rio Grande, through the little visited Big Bend National Park, ending this trip in Fort Worth. Yahoo!


View this route on GoogleMaps

We hope you will join us on this exciting journey.

Your comments are always welcome, nay, vital when the incentive to type this blog is not always there! Thanks in advance.

Gee pardners, we can't wait!

We’re on the train having enjoyed an excellent hot breakfast served at our “Preferente” seat by a bevy of RENFE staff and all included in our fare, (discounted 40% thanks to our “Tarjetas Dorada” or Old Codgers’ cards). Shades of good old British Railways 1st Class restaurant car, but with Hispanic style. Scrambled eggs with mushrooms, butifarra sausage and a fresh tomato sauce with some lovely fresh bread rolls, croissant, a choice of butter & jam or virgin oil & tomates, fresh juice and coffee. Absolutely delicious.

Before the stately arrival of our train, Murcia station was bustling with excited passengers travelling to Madrid or, on the other platform, to Valencia, Barcelona & Montpellier in France, mixed with bored commuters from Alicante, Cartagena and Lorca. The obligatory pair of nuns was waiting impatiently for the Madrid train, inexplicably attended to by a couple of dishy young men managing their vast amounts of luggage.

Our perfect train journey was marred somewhat by the arrival in the seat in front of a young man who boarded at Cieza. Shaven and tattooed head and T Shirt bearing the word “Vengeance” or similar did not bode well. Fears were confirmed when his mobile phone started twanging and clanking every 22.5 seconds, whether he was using it or not, all the way to Madrid. Why do these annoying people always have to sit in front of US?

John plugged his headphones into his laptop but, at last, the most annoying mobile phone in the world stopped emitting noises. Maybe we are out of range?

Now in Hilton, Madrid Airport. A top notch hotel at an affordable price, with a AAA discount code, thanks to our membership of the Royal Automovil Club de España. Plus, Bob’s Hilton gold card brings us a room upgrade to “Executive Floor” with free snacks, drinks etc etc in the young executives’ lounge, plus free internet plus free breakfast in the restaurant. All for the cost of a nice, pleading Email to Hilton HQ!

We’ve now been travelling to the US since 1981 and so we are beginning to get the hang of all the wrangles and wrinkles available for those cheeky enough to ask for them. I’m guessing that the freebies for this one night’s stay is worth in excess of 50€.

We were not going to pay Hilton prices for dinner, however. So nice young Tomas on Reception drew us a map to show where we could find some local cafeterias for a Menu del Dia. The map took us in to Madrid suburbia and a subway station but no sign of a café. A local, after some skilled questioning, revealed we were actually standing right outside one, though it was hidden in amongst some suburban trees.

At 4pm we were still not too late for the lunchtime menu. For 10€ we got 3 courses, bread, drink and coffee. I had spinach with prawns and Bob an enormous tuna salad for starters

and then hake “ventricles” or fish fingers, freshly made for John, Bob taking the pork chop for main course. An ice cream and a custard (natillas) rounded off an excellent meal. Chips nearly as good as our favourites in Mazarron.

It was a hot walk back but worth the effort.

Our ultra modern room is best illustrated by the fact there is a glass basin in the divine bathroom. Sliding glass doors abound and Arthur will not stop playing with them, though there is little chance he will spend long behind the shower one.

A splendid hotel which gets excellent reviews at TripAdvisor.

Miami tomorrow!

Oh yes: no planes? We are only a couple of hundred metres from Barajas airport and it suddenly struck us we had not seen or heard any evidence of any aircraft whatsoever. We thought that maybe a sudden general strike had been called. But no, a glimpse from our window and we just caught a BA jet coming in to land. Phew!