Our Route

Since returning to Devon, we’ve often been asked “which place did you enjoy the best“, and the answer to this question has been different for everyone who has asked. This trip was never about the destination, rather it was the journey to get there and beyond and ultimately to return home with new experiences and adventures to share. Often, our favourite ‘place’ was the café or observation car on a moving train. Somewhere to watch the landscape unfurl whilst enjoying chatting with fellow travellers. Sometimes we’d spent a whole day riding the Amtrak in that special place only storing our backpacks in the rack above our designated seats.

The beauty of this trip was that it was in the most part governed by where the train stopped. The only exceptions were through choosing to visit friends in Bideford‘s Twin Town, Manteo North Carolina, which doesn’t even have a bus service, let alone a railway; and similarly, north of San Francisco to see other friends in California’s wine region. The only other detour, albeit by bus, was the four hour trip up to Nashville from Atlanta, somewhere that used to have a major passenger train connection with a grand old station but sadly is disconnected nowadays.

I describe this as beauty, because of the freedom through restriction that it gave us. If we could have chosen to go anywhere in the USA on our East to West journey, we could have chosen all the significant stops along the way. Essentially, the traveller’s guide to a journey through America, hitting all the major sites and living the shared experience of thousands of travellers before and after us. however, our journey was always going to be our journey. We threw the guidebooks away many years ago. And the benefit from this approach has been that even in the more obvious tourist destinations, like New Orleans, our visit was uniquely ours. The road less travelled is sometimes only a block away.

Another question that everyone asks, often with a note of concern in their voice is “how did you find it?”, “have you noticed any changes?” and similar, referring to the political upheaval and division in the country. Some of these worries were expressed back in the UK before the election result was even called. In fact, some of our friends were genuinely worried about our safety to the point of “will we ever see you again?”.

Our planned journey through the Southern States could have been written for a researcher of the American Civil War, the civil rights movement and the Texas Revolution. Every State on our itinerary, by California, had voted for Trump‘s Republican party. We had watched the 2024, near future, dystopian film Civil War in advance of our trip. Our only solace beforehand was that we knew our American friends in Virginia, North Carolina, Arizona and California were by and large Democrats, and were confident that they would look after us if we needed it. We also had faith in our Republican friends because there are many good people on the right of the political spectrum.

Rather than experiencing the divided, dog eat dog, dystopian world we had come to expect we received welcome and friendship from strangers everywhere we went. But what we also witnessed were the reasons that the country voted the way it did. Poverty, manifest in massive numbers of homelessness was evident everywhere, especially the big inner cities. People who have been failed by the American system, often through the soaring cost of healthcare, living on the streets, underneath freeway bridges, and in tents populating city parks.

The last paragraph touches on another question we were often asked, “How has it changed?” Our answer was always that everything was more expensive than last time we were there. And not just expensive like regular year on year inflation but as a direct comparison to the cost of living in the UK. In 2019 food, goods and accommodation was all cheaper in the USA and has been since our very first visit in 1996. But now many of the basic grocery items are twice as much as the UK. In February the average cost for a dozen eggs in the USA was $5.90 (£4.50), whereas here in the UK a Tesco or Sainsburys Large Free Range Eggs 12 Pack was £3.15 ($4.12).

Returning home was now two months ago and back in America massive changes have come into effect. It started in our last few weeks away; there was a heightened anxiety about the Southern border, whether it would be safe to cross and if we would be able to return. El Paso was considered too dangerous to visit. We did step across from Naco AZ, a tiny crossing just south of Bisbee, with some American friends for lunch in Mexico. This experience in Mid-January couldn’t have been easier. We checked with the American officials on our way out if we needed any other id and if our ‘sightseeing’ afternoon was wise. They were very friendly and assured us that there would be no problem. They were as good as their word. It was so quiet; it seemed as if we were the only people crossing the border. We were welcomed back into American with a smile. Of course, we all had valid passports, and these officials were clearly local people who were used to Americans popping across the border to eat out and buy cheaper prescription drugs etc. They are also used to Mexicans crossing every day to work as we had witnessed in December when we had previously crossed the border at Del Rio. Our young waitress at Patty’s Restaurant had told us her story of happily living with her parents across the wall in Ciudad Acuña and her short 9-mile commute to work.

In our last week in Tucson one of our friends fell victim to Elon Musk’s DOGE force, receiving an email to tell her that her job, working in a federal funded foodbank, was ended, and without notice would need to look for something else. This was just the start of a massive cut in the workforce of federally funded programmes including many that we personally would have benefitted from in the past like National Parks and Museums.

Trump’s Tariffs didn’t come into effect until 2^nd April “Liberation Day”, so we gained no firsthand experience of their effect. Trump claims that the price of eggs (see above) has “plummeted”. However, at the time of writing there has been no change in the stores. Most experts predict that prices are likely to go up across the board. The Yale Budget Lab estimated that textile imports will be hit particularly hard, making clothes prices rise between 18% and 33%. Fresh produce could rise by 6.2%, with food prices overall going up 4.5%. The poverty and homelessness is likely to get far worse before it gets better.

Imagine miracle on 34th Street, well when you take whatever life throws at you it’s never anything like you imagine! On our travels across America, we seem to hit most of our stops on the wrong day, just after a Christmas event or just before it was to start….

We thought we were in luck as we arrived in Lafayette the day before their Christmas parade but unfortunately 24 hours of rain put a stop to that! Meridian Mississippi fared slightly better: as the doors of the train opened the carriage was filled with Christmas music and excited voices, a child shouting ‘It’s the Christmas train’ and families making a long line to enter the said decorated train to visit Father Christmas. Many of the Town and City centres were sparsely decorated, even Houston’s display, sponsored by Shell Oil, was just gold and silver lighting wrapped around live oak trees. However, as we travelled further West and it got closer to Christmas itself, more and more started to appear. It might also have been the influence of Mexican culture, more colourful and celebratory, as we hugged it’s northern border through Texas.

We hit the city of San Antonio at a perfect time. We went to a Mexican restaurant Mi Tierra, for example and it’s absolutely jampacked with colour lights and decorations. Also, there is a river walk that runs 5 miles through the city centre.  This is a very accessible narrow canal like walkway which is bustling with restaurants cafés and bars – like a contemporary American conversion of Venice. At this time of year it is beautifully decorated with lots of lights, music and decorated, a huge attraction for both locals and visitors. As well as walking around a lot of people would take small boats, decorated with Christmas lights, and are transported around under the numerous bridges often with Christmas music coming out of them but also guided narratives from the boat drivers.

The small border town of Del Rio has a wonderful colourful decorations in parts of its old town, close to where we were staying, that we came upon by accident on a hike back from the Mexican border town. Decorating of houses and outdoor spaces tended to be done a little later than in Britain. We have noticed a distinct lack of visible Christmas decorations in lounges in front rooms of houses, not like the UK where we traditionally do that and have curtains open in the evening so you can look and see decorations on Christmas trees. But this may also be because of the outdoor culture here where people are as likely to be sat outside around a fire pit than huddled up indoors to keep warm and dry.

We witnessed a spectacular annual festival of lights in Austin Texas at Zilker Park. We were fortunate to be there for their free Thursday in their opening week, an evening where the park was filled with families, parents and children, many we’re sure who were there because they would not have been able to afford to all go in on a paid night. But these families were clearly loving the spectacle and we could enjoy their joy as well as our own.

In Tucson, where we are staying through the holiday season, we visited Winterhaven; a neighbourhood dedicated to decorating every house and garden for the season. It is a massive event that attracts thousands of visitors walking through the closed to traffic streets to see house after house decorated to perfection celebrating a different theme of their own choice.

The other interesting thing is the weird Disneylandesque theme of characters that appear in front yards, Winterhaven and Zilker Park, with lights and inflatables that are often actually deflated, lying like oversized discarded plastic carrier bags on front porches! They are generally not traditional characters such as Santa, Christmas angels, wisemen, Shepherds or nativity scenes. They tend to be characters from movies a lot of Star Wars, grinches, and gremlins. A secular celebration of the holiday season..