I’m currently sat with my right leg raised on the sofa. My knee started to complain shortly after we had embarked upon this next phase of our adventure. The rental car was dispatched on Sunday and the remaining journey up the Eastern side of America is planned on Amtrak to avoid having to navigate our way through city traffic. Given this section includes a lot of walking having to rest isn’t exactly great!
As previously mentioned in my post “Discovering the Differences between America and England” we are definitely culturally different. Here, in no particular order are a few more of my observations/opinions:
FOOD:
When we planned this extended trip of adventure starting in Europe for three months, popping home for a couple of weeks and then flying across the Atlantic to discover America, everyone who knew us and thus our normal eating habits warned us about America. “The portions are huge!” “The food is unhealthy!” ” It’s all takeaways and processed food!” were just a few of the comments aimed our way.
The reality has been something different.
There are huge amounts of fast food both on offer and no doubt consumed.
According to the World Obesity Federation you might be surprised though to hear that the USA ranks at no 14 worldwide, not number 1, with 36.47% of it’s male adult population categorised as obese whereas the UK is at no 29 with an obesity rating of 27.88%.
The “good” thing for us, however, is that contrary to popular belief in the UK, healthy options are not hard to come by in America.
Every supermarket we have been in offers fresh fruit, vegetables and salads and more to the appoint, for us as travellers, a really good array of prepacked/ pre-made salads. There is a far wider choice here than I’ve ever seen in the UK and despite trying a huge variety we haven’t, as yet, found a single one we haven’t enjoyed.
Buying protein to sit alongside this is also not difficult whether that is chicken, salmon, seafood or meat. The shrimp here has been decidedly cheaper than in the UK, much better quality and cooked in a bit of garlic, really yummy!
However nearly everything in supermarkets is expensive here when compared to back home and, in the case of fruit and vegetables, often not as fresh. Maybe this is because it has to travel longer distances?
A lot of the fruit doesn’t taste the same? We have struggled, for example, to get strawberries that taste like fresh strawberries or in some cases a mango that is just ripe enough to eat and not as hard as a rock! We gave up on raspberries fairly early on.
We happily bought from roadside vendors when we were on Route 66 in the hope that we were buying home grown.
The “Bad” part is there is a huge amount of processed food here. It doesn’t feel as if the ordinary American is as conscious as we are about what goes into their food. Maybe the average family cannot afford to make that choice?
Hotel and motel breakfasts are often geared up to the majority. We struggled to eat healthily when breakfast was included in the nightly rate. So much of what was on offer was highly calorific and/or processed such as the liquid batter that families were happily queuing up to place in waffle and/or pancake making machines!
Bacon is unreal. It’s just pure fat. We even tried buying some ourselves and cooking it under the grill or in the oven in the hope of creating a healthier option but the amount of fat that poured off would have kept my Dad, bless his soul, in “dripping” for a week!
Soda machines at breakfast are again just “alien” to me. How can you offer such high sugar content drinks at breakfast? It’s like feeding a sugar addiction.
Over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates have tripled in the U.S., and today, the country has some of the highest obesity rates in the world: one out of six children are obese, and one out of three children are overweight or obese. Watching some of the children at breakfast in America filling themselves up on processed food, sugar laden drinks and manufactured cakes and muffins this really doesn’t surprise me!
The UK is governed by the Trade Description Act which clearly states that you cannot advertise an item of food or otherwise as something it is not. My best example within the food category in America is scrambled eggs.
Advertising and offering guests scrambled egg which are, in fact, made from egg powder whilst out on Route 66 became quite common. It wasn’t long before I could spot them without tasting them. There is no comparison, these scrambled eggs honestly taste as if they’ve never actually seen an egg and back in the UK would have to be described as “like scrambled egg” or even “artificial scrambled egg”!
Not really knowing what is on your plate, for me, is the Ugly side of American food.
VISITOR ATTRACTIONS:
Maybe because America has the benefit of lots of space, visitor attractions don’t feel as confined as in the UK.
Museums, for example, are huge. Most would take at least one day or more to visit properly. They also appear to be much better set up for families than we are in the UK.
There are more than adequate clean and stocked rest rooms (toilets in the UK).
There are always places set aside indoors and outdoors for visitors to eat their own picnics. If your own food is not allowed it clearly states this in the description on the website.
There are always interactive elements within museums geared at families as well as question sheets or treasure hunts to complete. The whole experience feels more inclusive.
The only negative is that maybe because there is so much space some of the museums go into information overload! I can normally cope with four hours of input and then after that my midlife brain starts to frazzle and thus I am sometimes leaving feeling as if I need to come back and finish it later.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS:
Again maybe because everything is so vast Americans have this down to a tee.
When they go to the beach they don’t turn up with a beach bag and a towel or more importantly expecting to find deckchairs, sun umbrellas or sunbeds to hire. They “pack it out” as we started to call it. We found this such an amazing sight to behold.
Arriving early, predominantly before 9-10 am they have everything for a complete day at the beach which doesn’t usually end until the sun starts to go down!
They bring chairs (that even come complete with back carriers)
Family size gazebos, to provide shade, with muck buckets they fill with heavy sand to secure the legs in so they don’t blow away.
Buckets and spades for the younger children, footballs and/or bats n balls for the older ones.
Boogie boards, surf boards, inflatables and kites.
Adults often read or play cards at a plastic table with detachable legs.
There are multiple cool boxes for food, soft drinks and alcohol. Paper or plastic plates or picnic sets to eat off.
Portable barbecues if they are permitted.
Fishing gear to catch their own tea and so the list goes on………
Americans, on the whole, maybe because their average official working holiday entitlements are less than ours really know how to make the most of every day out!
When it comes to National Parks, these are again huge compared to most of what we have in the UK.
They are again really well organised and we were quite shocked on our first visit to one.
Entry is by ticket only and you pay per car not per person. Annual passes are available even for UK citizens if you purchase them in advance of travel from the UK.
Camp sites and even RV parking are commonplace in some of the larger parks and I assume you pay separately for this.
There is a lottery system for entry into some of the more popular parks, information can be found on line. They are doing this, quite rightly in my opinion, to limit tourism numbers and preserve the land for the future.
There seems to always be a visitor centre where you can acquire all the information you need before going any further.
You can pick up a map and information about the driving routes as well as the trails leading off of these. We imagined these would be like “public footpaths” back in the UK but they are actual trails that are clearly marked and properly laid allowing you to venture further by foot and explore more. (An example is shown below.)
We didn’t try any hiking trails but assume these are more like” do-it-yourself” paths where you need to be armed with a proper map, some adventurous spirit and an awareness of being “out in the wild”.
As I told one park ranger during our trip ” I come from another country where no animal can kill me unless you include a human!’
Here in America we visited The Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, it’s not a National Park, more like a National Trust property back home except the lakes come complete with alligators and 38 varieties of snakes live within the woodland and swampy areas! This was a bit of a learning curve!
TRAVELLING:
My final section on this post covers travel itself.
Maybe because, as previously mentioned, the Americans, on average, don’t get as much paid time off from work as we do they like to travel everywhere as quickly and as easily as possible.
When President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, the Interstate System became part of American culture. An adequate highway system was vital to the continued expansion of the economy to support the expected population growth and is now an integral part of the American way of life.
Freeways and Interstates criss cross America allowing cars etc to move freely and often at speed (as mentioned in my previous post – “Discovering the Differences between America and England”).
Rest stops alongside what we would call Service Stations are plentiful and well advertised. Again you don’t have to spend huge quantities of money on “Golden Arches” produce, you can bring your own cool box (es) and take a break at a clean picnic table
Families seem accustomed to travelling great distances to make the most of their holiday time and with petrol (gas as it is called in the USA) costing a third of the price it does in the UK it’s cheaper to drive than fly!
We met a retired couple, for example, at the Midpoint Cafe in Northern Texas who were travelling from Houston to Colorado for an annual Independence Day break. “It only takes about 17 hrs they explained. We tend to take an over night stop now we are older!”
A family at Lauderdale by the Sea had travelled from Oklahoma City for their annual one week break, a journey of about 1500 miles and 21 hrs (71 miles an hour)!
As Brits these distances are somewhat unbelievable. If you drove from Cardigan in West Wales (on the Atlantic Coast) right across to Great Yarmouth in the East (on the North Sea) it would take nearly 7 hrs to cover 335 miles (about 48 miles an hour). Alternatively Lands End (the furthest point in the South) to John O’ Groats in Scotland ( the furthest point north) is 854 miles. This would take you nearly 16 hrs, that’s about 53 miles an hour.
This is definitely a case where the road system in America is just bigger and quicker. Not all of us, however, wish to take advantage of this and we are proud to say we traversed America from Chicago to LA on Route 66 with only small parts of the journey spent on freeways when Route 66 just disappeared!
There is a heavy reliance on cars in America. In 2021, 91.7% of American families had access to at least one car. Compare this to the UK in the same year and you are looking at half this with only 45% of households.
This becomes very apparent when you start looking at the supply of public transport in the USA. America is recognised as having very poor public transportation when compared to Europe.
Instead of building highways first, which tends to make neighbourhoods auto-centric and de-prioritises transit, European cities tend to put transit first when they built new neighbourhoods.
Interestingly the US has the most railroad tracks in the world, the majority of that infrastructure, though, is used for freight. While the US was a passenger train pioneer in the 19th century, after WWII, railways began to decline. The auto industry was booming, and Americans bought cars and houses in suburbs without rail connections. Highways (as well as aviation) became the focus of infrastructure spending, at the expense of rail. The amount of money to now upgrade this becomes cost prohibitive
The major cities in America do operate public transport and we certainly found it easy to travel around Chicago and Washington for example.
In Florida, however, when we needed to travel around the Lauderdale area we found bus drivers on the whole unfriendly, unhelpful and routes hard to follow. It’s certainly not like jumping on a bus at home where drivers usually smile, say hello when you get on and, if asked, are usually happy to let you know where you need to get off.
When you do need to use public transport in the US we found you definitely need to read up beforehand. Every city is different in terms of how you pay for your fare and often paying for a tube or metro is different again to paying for a bus.
Looking to the future diverting car owners from gas to electric certainly seems like an upward struggle for the USA but this is a subject along with recycling that I might touch on later.
My third post about our differences will surely be politics and religion so look out for that in the future!
A Midlife Adventure 