'We gaped at the Grand Canyon, we ate at a classic American diner on Route 66, we had butterscotch malts in a 1950’s style soda fountain, we had a ride in a stagecoach.'

Helen Angove goes on that quintessential American vacation - the Road Trip.

Even in LA, January can be depressing. I can’t really expect those of you in the UK to sympathise, but we have had torrential rain on and off for the past week (the weather here does not pull any punches - when we get bad weather, we really get bad weather) and it is cold! We are huddled up in   jumpers and woolly socks - although admittedly, our visitors from the UK last week were wearing T-shirts. How quickly one becomes used to a hot climate.

It is at times like this that one’s thoughts turn to summer holidays. And last year, we had ourselves the quintessential American vacation - the Road Trip.

I am ashamed to admit that up until last summer, I was just a little bit scathing about people from the UK who chose to spend their holidays in the USA. Why visit somewhere with a culture so like your own when there is a whole globe’s worth of new and exotic experiences out there?

I am still not much of a one for city vacations in this country - if I have to take my holiday in a city I’d rather go somewhere with a language and culture I haven’t experienced before. But there is so much more to this country than the cities!

Once you are out of California (where the roads are awful) the freeways are wide, well-maintained, and largely empty, and they stretch off in straight lines to the horizon. And the scenery in Utah, Colorado and Arizona was just spectacular. You really do get to see this continent at its best - the grandiose geology asserts itself across wide sweeps of the landscape, dominating hundreds of miles on a scale you never really get to see on our own tiny island.

We got used to keeping an eye on the petrol gauge, knowing that if we missed a gas station, the next one could easily be an hour away. One night we stayed in a tiny little place whose apparent sole reason for existence was to service the road traffic - practically the only buildings it contained were hotels, gas stations and fast food joints. It was literally a hundred miles away from the next gas stop. Its population was a thousand people - yet, endearingly, it described itself as a “city” and even contained a “city hall” - a sweet little building about the size of a bungalow.

A whole culture is built around the concept of a road trip. Ubiquitous are RV’s - Recreational Vehicles, the American equivalent to a camper van. We quickly learnt that a “campsite” didn’t necessarily mean somewhere you could pitch a tent, but rather, a site that provided hook-up points for RV’s. These vehicles crawl over the States like an infestation of titanic cockroaches, each one containing its obligatory white, middle-class, middle-aged couple who never stir more than fifty feet from the steering wheel.

To be fair, however, the holiday allowance of most jobs in the US is so stingy that few people have the opportunity to take long vacations pre-retirement, and most of the sightseeing does not lend itself to moving great distances from your vehicle.  

If there was one thing I found difficult about the trip, it was that America’s most popular and spectacular wilderness areas are extremely carefully (and superbly) managed to prevent environmental damage, and this means that one is shunted around in one’s car, on narrowly prescribed routes, stopping at each prescribed viewpoint to take a few obligatory snapshots (thank goodness for digital cameras).

In many places, getting off the beaten track involves acquiring permits or even guides, or simply a degree of organisation not possible for the casual tourist. If I ever get the opportunity, I would greatly love to revisit places like Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde with sufficient leisure to actually get away from the press of other people and into the real American wilderness.

But altogether it was a fabulous experience. We gaped at the Grand Canyon, we ate at a classic American diner on Route 66, we had butterscotch malts in a 1950’s style soda fountain, we had a ride in a stagecoach (to make the experience even more authentic of the “Wild West” one of its axles broke, stranding us miles from, well, anywhere) and we spent a night in Las Vegas (Mecca of all that is tacky and commercial) and watched people feed the slot machines. A holiday I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

Anglican priest from the UK, who moved to California in July 2003.

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