While the lonely few strive to finish the Great USA Song Contest, I would just like to sum up the trip. The highs and the lows.<\/p>\n
The highs!<\/p>\n
The Museum of the Cherokee. Top notch museum, and a great story. When it comes to telling their own story, the Cherokee are magical. The narration is done in a manner that would have any Western film maker crying with envy. The voice alone is worth the trip. Met the guy who tells the story. Got an autograph. And learned so much about the Cherokee Nation.<\/p>\n
Little Rock, Arkansas. A great little city that has gone through the slumps and re-invented itself. A genuinely nice place to wander around. The quirky wooden trams, and the riverside views. (Would you have expected to see a submarine in the centre of the USA?)<\/p>\n
Okla City. The Memorial. A moving experience, and so sensitively done.<\/p>\n
The food ‘Out East’. Wafflehouse St.Johns Florida (just off I95). Worth the wait, just to eat there. The best!
\nWaynesville North Carolina. Two Fat Buddies. Ribs excellent. Burgers great. They give you a bucket of hand wipes (which we are still using!) and a kitchen roll. Fashionable? No way! Classy? Absolutely!<\/p>\n
Universal Studio Tour. Worth the effort, and the other attractions will undoubtedly appeal to many. So much better than the Florida Universal Theme Park (no tour for a start). We did the Tour previously, in 1987, and it was better, in our opinion. But still good.<\/p>\n
Driving Route 66 over the Sitgraves Pass. A truly terrible road, but a fantastic drive. (Spare underwear advised!)<\/p>\n
Wildlife West Nature Park New Mexico. A tough task performed well. The animals benefitted, and we had the opportunity to see them.<\/p>\n
Hackberry General Store Arizona. Everything that is Route 66. Essential stop.<\/p>\n
The lows!<\/p>\n
Nashville. Wet, miserable, and the motel was a joke. Maybe, when the sun shines …
\n… or maybe not.<\/p>\n
Okla City. Not open for tourism in March. And not open for tourism in the morning. The tourists are there, people. Come out into the daylight and see them. To be fair, a heck of a lot of the USA closes for the winter. Pity that winter lasts for 6 months! Midpoint Caf\u00e9 in Adrian Texas. Closed. North Carolina. Closed.<\/p>\n
Beverley Hills. Like a celebrity magazine. Full of low-grade ‘stars’, indulging themselves. How can so much money be lavished on achieving such a cheap, trashy result. If this is paradise, you can keep it.<\/p>\n
The food ‘Out West’. Country gravy, potato peelings masquerading as ‘fries’, greasy hamburger rolls. It was so much better, 25 years ago.
\nPlanet Hollywood Las Vegas Nevada. Before you moved your location in The Forum Shops, it was great. Now, it is overpriced, lacking in variety, and crap.<\/p>\n
Keepers of the Wild Nature Park Arizona. If you saw the Billy Connolly Route 66 series, he was delighted by being able to play with lion cubs. Sorry, Billy. You didn’t really take a close look. It was just a dry, dusty, cramped zoo. Such a disappointment.<\/p>\n
Motels in general. We usually go cheap between timeshare weeks, and Motel 6 is very good and effective when it comes to booking. The prices are good, mostly. Unfortunately, this time, we seemed to find the dreadful ones – usually the more expensive ones, at that. Use them if your budget is very low – they do have some really good ones, and a bad area is not necessarily indicative of a bad motel. But if the price is high (Nashville and Hollywood), be very sure that you want to stay there!<\/p>\n
Like all journeys, some good, some bad. Glenrio Texas was a poignant moment where we saw the past that was lost forever, but the images lingered on. Hollywood, where glamour was invented – then forgotten. We drove up mountains – and down – and crossed featureless deserts. I am sure that we missed a thousand places that would have enthralled us, but, in the real world, we only had 4 weeks to do it all.<\/p>\n
We did our best, and we enjoyed it all. Even the bad was worth the visit – and the good just kept on coming into view.<\/p>\n
Do it! Do it now if you are young. You can always do it again when you are old. We did!<\/p>\n
And we will do it again …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the lonely few strive to finish the Great USA Song Contest, I would just like to sum up the trip. The highs and the lows.<\/p>\n
The highs!<\/p>\n
The Museum of the Cherokee. Top notch museum, and a great story. When it comes to telling their own story, the Cherokee are magical. The narration is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-having-a-say","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tachras.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}