My story continues in a city that I later learn is called Charleston. It is here that all three ships land and once again we are shackled together and marched out of the bowels of the now stinking hold.
As we walk through the streets of this city white people dressed in fancy clothes stop and stare, they make comments that I don’t understand and once again we are locked together in an overcrowded wooden pen. It’s not dissimilar to the type of enclosure I built back home in the village to secure our animals.
Time moves slowly and I lose count of how many days we are confined here. The heat is unbearable, sweat sticks to my body and although we are fed, it is mainly with bread and water. When it rains, it is a relief to feel the cold water on our bodies but at the same time I fear becoming ill as I have seen others suffer. I need to stay alive. My companion from the boat is shackled nearby and our whispered conversations add brightness to my days. He speaks several African languages and is often able to pick up snippets of conversation that he conveys on to me. It is through him that I learn about the other boats that sailed with us. One of the vessels carried just women and children and whilst I hope that my wife managed to escape captivity, I also wish her to be here so I can once again set my eyes upon her face and know she is alive.
One morning bright and early we are shackled together in a line of six and marched out of our compound. Lined up in a row we are each forced to strip off our clothes, wash our bodies with a bucket of cold water, a rough cloth and a cake of white soap . Still naked we are taken to a small hut, inside is a white man with a blade. We are each forced to sit down on a chair, our heads and faces are shaved. There is no point in struggling, this only leads to punishment from the canes and leather straps held by the guards. As I leave the hut I feel like my manhood has been stripped away from me. I have never been bold since I was a baby. Leaving the hut we once again line up and are given a small cup containing oil and one of the guards demonstrates we are to put this over our bodies. Only then are we given some clothes to wear that cover our manhood.
Once this process is complete each chain of men are led through the street. There are groups of white men gathered alongside, they prod and pinch us as we proceed, sometimes they stop the procession to look at our teeth or to check our arm muscles. What is happening to us? I try and ask my friend but he cannot hear me and soon we come to a rest. In front of us in the middle of the street is a raised platform. There are several lines of African men in front of us. I have completely lost track of some of the men from my village that came off the ship with me but eventually I see some of them being individually unlocked from their leg irons and hauled up onto this wooden stage. It reminds me of the small markets back home where we would go to buy and sell our vegetables and crops. But these white men are competing to buy us! My spirit, at this point, feels broken. I am not for sale I want to shout but I know my words will be spoken in vain. We are totally outnumbered here and the punishment for disobeying these men is not worth the fight. My friend is now for sale. I look into his eyes and I can feel his pain. A white man on the far left eventually ends the bartering and my friend is led away.
My turn comes all too quickly and I pray to my gods back home that if I am to be sold in this way it is to the same man as my friend. Together I know we can survive but without him life will be harder. I make a point of looking at the white man, trying to catch his attention, I smile, I flex my arm muscles to show how strong I am and when the bidding finishes I am lucky and join my friend. We are in a new pen alongside several other young African men awaiting our fate.
As the sale of the men finishes there is a brief pause in activity before I see women and children also in chains being marched down the street towards us. Some of the children look no more than ten years old. They are scared and frightened and do not understand this new world they have been forced into. I had no idea these white people were selling young boys and girls in the same manner as I myself have just been sold. Some of the children are chained to their mothers but are separated at the point of sale. The cries of the children and screams of the mothers resound all around us, this is a living hell.
Then suddenly I recognises a couple of the women, they are from my tribe. My eyes search the lines behind them in the hope of seeing my wife. Suddenly I see her. I am so happy that she is alive. My instinct is to shout out to her, to get her attention but she cannot hear me above the noise of the market.
Soon it is her turn to stand on the platform and she is sold too but I cannot see the man who has bought her. I hope against hope that she will soon join us and I scan the crowds of people but she does not appear…………
Sam, along with his fellow Africans are now slaves. They are moved to a plantation on the coast of South Carolina, cut off from the mainland and accessible only by boat, the chances of escape are minimal.
They work to create rice fields from the swamplands that surround them. It is a continuous fight to stay alive, to avoid the punishments metered out by the overseer for acts he considers defiance. The swamps are full of alligators and snakes, of which half a dozen are venomous. The heat and humidity during the long hot summers bring endless swarms of mosquitos.
They are forced to forgo their heritage, their language, their beliefs and customs and to adapt to this New World. Sam learns English in order to understand those who have enslaved him. His basic needs along with those enslaved with him – rest, cooking, making and mending clothes, tending the sick, the young and the old – are met in the short hours at the end of the working day or sometimes on Sundays.
Sam never saw his wife again. He had no idea what happened to his unborn child. His life expectancy on entering the plantation was five years. Sam was a slave for eight years, he died alone and in hope.
When we were planning our trip to America, in addition to spending time travelling from coast to coast and exploring the Eastern seaboard, I wanted to extend my social historical knowledge and learn more about:
The Demise of the Native American Indians The Slave Trade
My previous posts “Our Navajo Spirit Tour Guide” and “The Western Movies Lied to Me” outline my new knowledge of the first sector. I still have more to learn and have two books to read on my return to the UK which may well spur me into delving even deeper into this subject.
Back in 2019 we had ventured to the North West of England on a short road trip and whilst travelling we had stayed in Liverpool. Here I spent a considerable amount of time one day at The International Slavery Museum based right on the waterfront at Liverpool’s Albert Dock, at the centre of a World Heritage site and only yards away from the dry docks where 18th century slave trading ships were repaired and fitted out. I had worked in Liverpool in the early 90’s before this museum ever existed and never realised it was a major slavery port and that its ships and merchants dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the second half of the 18th century. The city’s wealth was derived from this sickening trade and it laid the foundations for the port’s future growth.
From about 1500 to about 1865, ships from Liverpool carried about 1.5 million enslaved Africans across on approximately 5000 voyages, the vast majority going to the Caribbean. Around 300 voyages were made to North America – to the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland and it was this I wanted to explore whilst we were here in the USA.
As part of our travels up the East Coast of America we stopped at Hilton Head to take part in a Gullah Heritage Trail Tour. The Gullah/Geechee people of today are descendants of enslaved Africans from several tribal groups of west and central Africa forced to work on the plantations of coastal North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Hilton Head was separated from the mainland by many waterways which made travel off of the islands difficult and rare. The slaves who worked this land, therefore, were cut off from once they had arrived. It wasn’t until 1956 that a bridge was built that allowed cars to travel across these waterways.
We also visited the Magnolia Plantation in Charleston. This is one of the country’s oldest plantations dating back to 1676. Thomas and Anne Drayton built a house here and owned the rice plantation for the next 15 generations utilising slave labour to build a network of irrigation dams and dikes.
The Old Slave Mart Museum is also in Charleston and covers an important part of Charleston history. This is one of the few remaining buildings once used for securing slave labour. It was constructed in 1859 and once formed part of a much larger slave market taking up an enclosed space between two major streets. It was established by a local sheriff after a ban on public slave auctions and operated until 1865 when it was closed down by the Union forces when they occupied the city.
Finally we visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC which devotes a whole floor to the slave trade ensuring that all visitors can be educated on this part of American history.
I still feel that people, particularly those in the middle to higher classes of our society here in England, fail to even try to understand how these people felt or to accept our responsibility as a kingdom for it’s existence. Maybe this story will help you, the reader, to understand…..
” My name is Sam. This isn’t my real name but the name I have now been given here in this New World. I am originally from West Africa. It was a wonderful place full of sunshine and laughter. I am in my mid twenties and I lived a happy life with my wife. She was expecting our first child. We had a home together in the village, that provided shelter from the blazing sun and the yearly rains that fall. My father taught me how to propagate rice. Food was plentiful and I enjoyed the camaraderie that I shared with my fellow peers. Young men and women that I had known all my life. The traditions and cultures of my ancestors were passed down through the generations. Life was good.
One day whilst I was busy working on our land, my life as I knew it was torn apart. I’d heard tales from other tribes of the marauding English merchants who were capturing local tribespeople and taking them away in chains but not for one moment did I believe they would venture this far inland and arrive at our village. With the onset of gun shots I immediately ran back towards the village intent on finding my wife and escaping somehow into the surrounding bush. I tore across the rice fields, my feet treading without thought on the crops I have nurtured and grown. Smoke started to rise from the village and my heart was beating fast within my body as I ran faster and harder.
The screams of the women and children can be heard as I approach the outskirts of the village. I have no form of defence and then I see them, the white enemy has arrived. They use their weapons to force the villagers to their knees in the centre of the huts. My wife is crying and clutching at her pregnant belly looking all around for me. I run towards her but before I can reach her, to protect her, something hits the back of my head and I crash to the floor.
When my eyes reopen I am on the ground, it is nearly daylight. My ankles are chained together along with my wrists and I can barely move. My head is sore and I can feel the dried blood coagulated where I was struck. There is no sign of the women and children, only the male villagers remain. Many, like myself, are nursing injuries brought about while defending their homes and families. As dawn breaks so I am forced to my feet and more chains are used to bind us all together in one long snaking line of humanity. Leaving behind my home, my village and my way of life we are forced to march from sunrise to sunset for many days. A share of water is distributed two or three times a day. Food maybe once a day and even then it is nothing I recognise, no taste or flavour but I know I have to survive for no other reason than to have the strength to find my wife.
Days melt into one another, my feet are sore and wounded. Older less fit members of the group struggle to stay with the pace. The men who have taken us have no feelings. Those who collapse on the journey are left to die with no water and no food. I estimate that about a third of those who set out from the village are no longer with us. I knew them all, elders who I was brought up to admire, who shared stories of our heritage but there is nothing we can do but move on. Eventually we arrive in a bustling town, large boats, bigger than anything I have seen, are moored to the quayside.
These men who have captured us speak their own tongue and we cannot understand their commands but they make them known through their actions. Pushing and shoving us into a stone building. There are many others already inside and as the door is shut and locked behind us we all want to sit down on the dirty floor and rest, but there is very little room. Some of those already inside look ill and it is hard to avoid staring at them. Everyone is quiet but I try to converse and at first no one answers me, but eventually someone responds. He understands my tribal language and begins to explain that some of them have been there for many days and nights even weeks. Food and water are scarce. He explains that the boats arrived over the last few days and the cargo from within has been off loaded. He has heard that we are to be loaded onto the boats tomorrow. I try and explain about my wife and tell him I cannot go on the ship, I cannot leave this land, my home and my family. He laughs and asks me who I think is in charge. We have no choice he says. “Do you want to die” he asks me? I consider this question for a few moments before nodding my head in refusal. “Then do as you are told” he says to me.
Dawn breaks the following morning and with no food and only very little water since our arrival I can feel my body weakening but I must remain strong. As predicted we are led out of the gate and onto a ship. We are taken down into the depths where it is dark and damp. More and more tribesmen from other villages are brought down. We are packed together below deck and secured by leg irons. The space is so cramped we have to crouch or lie down. The man I had spoken to the previous day is close to me. “There must have been more stone buildings we could not see” he whispers “there are too many to fit!’ Eventually the door is closed and we are left here not knowing our fate. I try to rest, to close my eyes and sleep.
When I awake I can feel the boat moving from side to side and back and forth and I realise we have left and are now at sea. My country is now far behind me, once again I wonder what has become of my wife. I must find her and to do that I must remain strong. The air down here is foul and putrid. Men are being sick as a result of the constant rocking and the heat is oppressive. The journey is tortuous but a routine is soon established by our captors. It seems in good weather, when the sun is shining and the boat is steady we are brought on deck midmorning and forced to exercise. We are fed twice a day and those refusing to eat are force-fed. The food is unfamiliar and tasteless but without it I know my strength will weaken and I must stay alive. Those who die are thrown overboard. It is evident also that we are not alone as when we go on deck we can see two other ships, in close proximity, heading with us across this great expanse of water.
As our journey progresses some of the men become sick. I try to avoid them and focus solely upon myself and my need to remain alive. Others make attempts to escape often during our time above board. Their punishment when unsuccessful is not worth the act. They are tied to wooden posts and we are all forced to watch as they are whipped and then often thrown overboard! The actions of these men also result in daily inspections of our quarters below deck by the crew and even minor acts of resistance are punished severely. Some of my fellow Africans cannot cope with this imprisonment and throw themselves into the sea wishing for death over this existence.
Time passes slowly and each day seems to blend into the next until one day there is great excitement above deck and it is not long after this that the ship finally stops. There is a loud noise as if something heavy is being dislodged from the core of the boat and then suddenly the light streams in from above and we are being marched up onto the deck and off the ship. About 50% of the men who came from my village are now dead. I feel lucky to be still alive”.
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!
When I was planning this trip with its two different adventurous road trips, I also had a couple of subjects in the back of my mind that I wanted to learn more about. One of these was the Native American Indians.
Having visited the Museum of Westward Expansion in St Louis my knowledge of these people who roamed throughout America for up to 20,000 years before Columbus arrived and their consequent removal from their lands following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 had improved. However my opportunity to understand their unique culture and heritage came to fruition when we were up in Monument Valley and booked a sunrise excursion with the Navajo Spirit Tours.
We left the comfort of our hotel room to meet up with our Navajo Guide at ten past five in the morning! It was still dark outside and the surrounding landscape was eery as we drove to our meeting point – The Navajo Welcome Centre. Arriving early we sat alone in the deserted carpark until spot on time we saw a safari style truck pull up along the roadside with headlamps on full beam. Our guide had arrived and it transpired that we were the only two on the tour!
He introduced himself as Sean and gave us the typical Native American handshake. In their culture a strong handshake is deemed to be overbearing and even offensive and so only a light handshake is used. Similarly Navajos value personal space and have a larger area of personal distance than non-natives. They consider eye contact as impolite and admittedly I did find it slightly disconcerting on first meeting Sean that he looked down or away and never at me, but weirdly I soon became accustomed to it.
After a brief introduction to the tour we set off at a pace towards the entrance to Monument Valley. There is a 17 mile drive that anyone can do, once the park is open, but by joining a tour you not only get a Navajo guide but you protect your car from the dry, rutted, dirt roads and have an expert who not only knows how to navigate the tracks but can take you beyond what everyone else sees.
The Valley itself is truly breath taking and Sean happily explained its spiritual significance to the Navajos. It was of course brought to the public’s attention by John Ford, the master Director of Western movies. This is ancestral Navajo land. When the Navajo were forced out of Canyon De Chelly in New Mexico by the U.S. Army during the “Long Walk”, some took refuge in Monument Valley. An 1868 treaty allowed their return to their ancestral homeland and established the Navajo Reservation with other parts being added in 1884. Monument Valley, itself, wasn’t given back in its entirety to the Navajo until 1933 after it was declared useless for mining by the white people!. Today the Navajo Reservation stretches over 26,000 square miles, a portion of which we had passed through travelling here from Flagstaff, 180 miles away. A desert style landscape with scattered homesteads, scrubland and virtually no signs of working life or schools. Four Corners where the four states of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado meet also sits on Navajo land.
The sandstone buttes, for which the Valley is so well known climb from a height of 400 feet up to 1000 feet and at this time of the morning we were fortunate to see the moon still glowing to the west, framed by two such buttresses whilst the sun was rising on our left, to the East. It was a once in a lifetime sight.
Throughout our journey Sean stopped to point out various sights, talked about the geology of the region and the fauna and flora.
Up to 100 Navajo still reside in the Valley, depending upon the season, most without electricity or running water! Over 400,000 people from around the world visit here each year thus tourism is a high income generator for the Navajo who live in the area.
Sean was happy to share his hobbies and interests with us. He carried his camera with him in the front of the truck, sometimes taking photos alongside us if there was a particular vista that caught his eye. He talked about his hiking trips out into the park during the low season when the sun is not beating down on the sand and rocks all day. A keen archeologist he spoke about the ancient Ancestral Puebloan (also known as Anasazi) sites and ruins dating prior to 1300 A.D that have been identified here. The valley was abandoned by the Ancestral Puebloans in the 1300’s, as were other areas in the Four Corners region.
The date of the first Navajo settlement in Monument Valley is unknown. For hundreds of years, the Navajo raised sheep and other livestock, and farmed small quantities of crops in the valley.
Sean explained to us the significance of the houses or hogans still being used on the valley floor. Traditional Navajo homes are called a “hogan”, and vary slightly in appearance depending on whether they are “male” or “female”. Male hogans are square or conical, with a rectangular entrance, whereas female hogans are six to eight-sided houses. Both are made of wood and covered in dried mud, and their doors always face east to welcome the sun each morning.
Traditionally, male hogans were used for sacred or private ceremonies, and female hogans housed family life – where children would play, women would cook and weave and men would socialise.
Sean was happy to answer our questions. I was keen to understand what life was like here on a reservation so I spoke to him about the vast emptiness of the region and how hard it must be to gain employment. Outside of the tourist industry Sean explained how many fathers, including his own, had been forced to leave the reservations to go away to work to earn money for their families. They worked in the oil and mining industry or took work trucking.
Given the matriarchal structure of Navajo homes the absence of his father didn’t vastly affect his homelife. Descent and inheritance are determined through one’s mother. Navajo women have traditionally owned the bulk of resources and property, such as livestock. In cases of marital separation, women retained the property and children.
He had also explained to us earlier that whilst Sean Holiday was his name, when a child is born Navajo they receive four additional names. As they grow up and have to introduce themselves, it is more than just telling someone their name, it’s about sharing who they are and where they come from. This starts with their clans. Each clan comes from a different area of the Navajo Nation, with their own meaning and a story. Each person belongs to four different clans.
“When you meet someone and shake their hand, you are telling them your whole story,” explaining that a person’s story is told by their hand, each finger representing a clan. “You are your thumb and then you introduce your four clans. The first finger is for the clan of your mother (nishłį́), the second is the clan of your father (bashishchiin), the third is the clan of your maternal grandfather (dashicheii) and the fourth is the clan of your paternal grandfather (dashinalí).
The grandparents play an important role in educating their grandchildren in Navajo life and ensuring they grow up within the cultures and traditions that have been passed down through the years. They often take full responsibility for the child’s upbringing allowing the parents to work and earn money to support the household. Unlike many tribes, the Navajo have succeeded in keeping their cultural heritage alive. Over 97% of adults still speak the Navajo language, and many tribal members continue to practice the ancient religious and ceremonial ways.
I was intrigued to know where his Mum shopped for food in the wilderness that surrounds his home or where he went to school. “My Mum shops every 2-4 weeks. She drives to the nearest large Costco in Flagstaff” he explains. That’s a 5 hour round trip! The roads may be straight and easy to navigate but 5 hours to buy food!
In America children from kindergarten through grade 12 in high school can go to public school for free. The city, state, or federal government fund public schools so you do not have to pay. Education law says everyone has a right to free education.
But how did that work in areas such as this where there were vast expanses of seeming wilderness? Progressive educators viewed buses as a step toward modernising rural education. By 1932, there were 63,000 school buses on the road. Sean describes to us the rigours of a 2 hr bus journey to school because at that time there weren’t any schools nearby to educate him or fellow Navajo students. He tells us about the new school that has opened in Monument Valley funded not by the Government or the State but by donations! Given the enormity of the task faced by Sean to gain an education I was truly amazed by his knowledge, his thirst for more understanding of the land he called home and his appreciation for life!
Surrounded by the magnificent vistas of Monument Valley when the sun was rising in the sky I had taken a moment to just stand and breath. To really take in the panorama of the country around me and in that moment I felt more at peace that I probably ever have. There is something unique about this place, a peacefulness, a history, a spirituality that calls to me.
Armed with a better understanding of this wonderful land and the people who call it home I left it behind taking with me only the photographs I’d managed to capture of its beauty but with a deep yearning to one day return.
When you come to America on holiday for a couple of weeks, as we have done previously, you don’t really take a lot of notice of how daily life plays out. You are solely focused upon the plans you have to enjoy yourself and take in the key sights wherever you are visiting.
On this trip, however, we are travelling right through the USA from East to West, meeting loads of people en route and definitely absorbing our differences before embarking on another drive up the East Coast. There are no right or wrong ways to live life but considering we fundamentally share the same language I hadn’t expected to learn so much on this trip about how different our lives are, but they are! There are so many differences that I know already that I could probably write a small book!
Let me start with the one thing that I currently experience every day and to me is probably top of my list of differences:
DRIVING: We have already spent a week in Chicago, then driven Route 66 sticking as much as possible to the original road and definitely avoiding freeways and interstates. We have detoured to Monument Valley, The Grand Canyon and Las Vegas and we have celebrated reaching the end at Santa Monica Pier. In total I drove 3409 miles before departing LAX for Fort Lauderdale where, after a week chilling out, we picked up our second car to drive the Eastern Seaboard from Lauderdale to Richmond, Virginia. Here we pick up Amtrak to finish our trip in Washington, Philadelphia and New York before flying home with about five days left from within the ninety day time allowance permitted with our ESTA.
There are significant differences between driving in England and driving in the States beyond the obvious that we drive on the left with the steering wheel on the right and predominantly a manual gearbox. We cannot learn to drive until 17 and we have to pass a two stage test – Theory and Practical. Once we have our licence registered at our home address we have to follow the Highway Code, this is basically the law of the road. One of the major key differences is we get fined for disobeying the law, speeding being the first of these.
Additionally once a car is three years old it must be tested each year to check it meets road safety and environmental standards. This Ministry of Transport test is commonly known as an ‘MOT’ and without it you cannot drive your vehicle on any UK road.
You also get fined for failing to tax the car. Everyone has to pay an annual fee to the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) to have their car on the road.
You also get fined for failing to have insurance.
All of these rules alongside the obvious, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, are rigidly enforced. How?
Apart from the section of the police force that is dedicated to monitoring traffic particularly on motorways (the equivalent to the US freeways and interstates) we have cameras. Cameras are everywhere in the UK!
In towns and cities there are big yellow boxes on the side of the road monitoring your speed but on motorways they can be on tall poles to the left of the traffic lanes, on bridges over the carriageway or in a traffic police car. Sometimes, particularly during roadworks on motorways, they have boxes similar to the big yellow ones that measure your speed between two points in order to calculate your average speed. This average speed is then measured against the speed currently displayed for drivers to follow. If you get caught on camera the police just send you a letter through the post with the photographic evidence and you get an immediate fine which rises if you don’t pay within a certain time. You cannot avoid the fine because the number plate of the car in the photo is registered at the DVLA in your name, at your address and you are in the picture!
If you have moved address and failed to notify the DVLA and get caught you have to pay £1000 fine!
It is illegal to drive without a front number plate in the UK. If caught you will face 3 points on your licence and up to £1000 fine.
In addition to the fine for speeding you also get a minimum of 3 points on your license which stay on your licence for 3 years. Once you accumulate 12 points, at any point in your lifetime, you lose your licence for a minimum of 12 months.
If you fail to pay your fine you get prosecuted and ultimately can land up in prison. I’ve known people get caught on the same camera going to work and then coming home in the same day! If you are caught going 50% over the speed limit e.g. 45+ in a 30 mile zone you can get an automatic ban depending upon the circumstances.
The end result is the majority of people conform!
In the USA it feels like the huge majority of people just totally ignore speed limits. In fact when I have driven at the speed limit I’ve often been tailgated. The rationale behind this is that people know the likelihood of being caught is low!
Speed isn’t the only difference. In the UK we have different levels of driving licence. Once you pass your test you have a full driving licence (category B) which entitles you to drive conventional, rigid-axle vans or pick-ups that weigh up to 3500 kgs and have up to eight passenger seats. Additionally you can tow a trailer up to 3500 kgs.
In comparison a newly qualified driver in the USA can drive a vehicle up to 26,000 lbs, that’s 11,793 kgs, nearly three times the size before needing a CDL!!! You can also tow a trailer weighing up to 10,000 lbs which is about 4500 kg. If you want to drive the large coach style RV’s in the USA that is fine as long as it doesn’t exceed 40 feet. In the UK you would need to sit a test to get a higher level of certification, called a C1 licence. It takes three separate tests and the case study part alone is a 75 minute test!
I find it so hard to believe that I’m currently out on the road surrounded by drivers who constantly speed and feasibly that a newly qualified driver at just 18 years old could be driving the massive coach style RV next to me!
Finally there are the lorries or trucks as they are called in the USA. A lorry in the UK is limited to 60 mph on a motorway. In the USA it varies from state to state but like cars the truck drivers seem to take little or no notice. In the UK lorry drivers are limited as to how many hours they can drive for. The key rules include: 9 hour daily limit on driving. This can be increased to 10 hours, but only twice a week. 56 hours is the maximum weekly driving limit. In the USA this rises to between 11 and 14 hours of driving depending on the amount of hours off in between and 60 hours over a 7 day period.
When we were on our detour to Vegas and actually on a freeway, at one point I was going just over the speed limit of 75 mph doing 77 mph and was overtaken by an enormous truck!
My final comparison in this post is the lack of kindness. I’m used to people showing common courtesy to other road users. For example if someone is pulling onto a motorway in England the driver on the inside lane will either pull across to the middle lane to let the incoming driver on or if this is not possible they will slow down and maybe even flash their lights to indicate you can pull onto the carriageway. The same occurs when the traffic is heavy and someone is trying to change lanes or in towns when someone is pulling out of a side road onto the main road or overtaking a stationary vehicle. In America very, very few drivers show any courtesy, they will just not give way at all. I actually find this really disappointing.
I guess it’s not surprising, therefore, that the USA experiences 16.1 deaths due to traffic accidents per 100,000 cars on the road per year compared to only 5.7 in the UK.
One of my fondest memories of Route 66, alongside the road itself and the differing landscapes, will always be the people we met en route. This was brought home to me even more having flown down to Fort Lauderdale where I used my holiday ownership to secure a week at the beach in Lauderdale by the Sea. The photos I’ve included were taken on a river boat trip around Fort Lauderdale known as the Venice of America. The plan was to rest up for a week before embarking upon the second half of our road trip along the Eastern seaboard from Lauderdale to New York.
When we were out on Route 66 everyone we met was either a fellow traveller or someone who owned or worked on the Mother Road. Without exception they were all friendly and welcoming. Suddenly we were thrust back into a world where we were the “odd ones out”. We were travellers, the word itself didn’t resonate with the people now surrounding us.
We arrived mid evening at our accommodation in Florida and the keys were left in a lock box ready for us to check in the following morning. On leaving our apartment the next day at 10 am we aimed to pop into reception to get the formalities complete before heading out on foot to the supermarket for groceries. Descending the stairs we found ourselves amidst an unannounced “Welcome Meeting”. We politely stood to one side as each individual announced their name, where they came from and their favourite drink.
Given we hadn’t sat down amongst them I figured they would pass us over but no that wasn’t happening. I tentatively gave my name, said I was from England and didn’t drink. Amidst some astonishment at our non alcoholic lifestyle we were then suddenly declared the winners of longest journey. I decided to rectify this mistake saying we had flown down from LA . This led to me explaining why we had flown from LA.
Driving Route 66 from Chicago didn’t even register with these new visitors. They were proud timeshare owners who were part of the “Week 28” club. Guests who came back here the same week(s) every year. Don’t get me wrong I had done the same in the past. When I bought my first holiday ownership in 1999 I returned to my home resort every year for two weeks in the school summer holidays for about six years. The actual weeks I owned were in the spring but I could easily internally exchange them to weeks that suited my childrens’ summer vacation from school.
It suddenly came home to us that we were no longer holidaymakers but travellers and we were simply not on the same page as these people.
Memories of wonderful old Rose at the Route 66 Museum in Pontiac came flooding back. She was so friendly, so welcoming along with Robyn who worked in the shop and shared her own travel plans with us – see previous post “The Essence of Route 66″. Robyn fully understood our motivation and why we were heading out on the journey across America.
Whilst some of the guests at the apartment complex had travelled across states to get to Lauderdale, they had driven 12+ hours on the interstate, ploughing through the miles, SUV laden down with family, food and everything they were going to need for the beach and their one or two week break from normal life. They didn’t understand our need to take it slow, to follow old Route 66 and arrive maybe six hrs later at our next destination having only driven 200 miles. To them this probably seemed a waste of time.
People who owned businesses on Route 66 were genuinely pleased to see us. Robert at The Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari cheerfully showed us and a French family around the property before giving us the keys to our room for the night. Leaving us with the declaration that he made the best coffee in New Mexico and “be sure to come to reception in the morning and get a cup!’ My husband duly did so and as a bit of a coffee connoisseur declared it the best on Route 66 at the end of our journey!!
Cindy way out at the Jack Rabbit Trading post in Joseph City, Arizona greeted me with a cheerful smile and welcomed me to her store. She didn’t know me from Adam but she was genuinely pleased when people called in.
Mirna and Clarissa in Seligman at the Original Route 66 Gift Shop were busy taking an inventory of their stock when we popped in early one Thursday morning. They both stopped what they were doing, gave us a big smile and welcomed us, pointing us in the direction of Angel’s barber shop.
In contrast the owner of the Lauderdale property, in response to us being British said “we usually have a couple from London here this week but for the first time this year they haven’t booked. The Brits aren’t coming to Florida anymore!” My immediate response was “well the pound is back up against the dollar so maybe that will change”. I could have launched into an explanation of how inflation is still at 9%, utility bills have trebled and mortgage repayments have gone through the roof which has meant lots of families are refraining from taking holidays this year or if they are, they are keeping the cost down by only venturing to Europe but I chose to keep my response brief. Despite encountering the owner a couple more times during our week long stay her mood towards us didn’t improve! Instead of being pleased that we had chosen her resort she seemed to hold us accountable for the absence of fellow British holidaymakers.
As the week wore on it became obvious that the “Week 28” club had their own routines, events and get togethers. We, meanwhile, enjoyed our own company and reflected even more upon our Route 66 travels. Our conversation included new plans for the future, for example traversing Canada, travelling The Oregon Trail or even returning to Route 66 which brought to mind a previous conversation we had with fellow travellers. When we had been in Cuba, Missouri at The Wagon Wheel Motel there was a central area provided for guests to sit, chat and even gather around a fire pit if the weather was chilly. We were sat out there mainly because it provided better wifi than in our room but were soon joined by Brennan Matthews, his wife Kate and later his son Thembi. Brennan is the editor of Route Magazine and this was their third or fourth trip along Route 66. He had even written a book, recently published called Miles To Go about his first Route 66 encounter which I had duly purchased and read whilst we were completing our own journey. At this early stage in our Route 66 trip we thought this was a bit odd, why would you want to do this again and again? But here we were in Florida not even a week after finishing it and contemplating a return, talking about the parts we wanted to explore further, the detours we might do next time and how our plans would be more fluid second time around.
When we left our accommodation at Lauderdale it wasn’t with a feeling of regret but one of anticipation as to what our next adventure was going to bring as we set out on the road once again, knowing it would eventually end at JFK airport in another six weeks time.
We wouldn’t unfortunately be greeted here with delight as we had at the specially placed booth on Santa Monica Pier when we finished Route 66. Ian Bowen was so pleased to see us, we chatted to him for ages before entering our names in the Route 66 role of honour and receiving a signed certificate of our achievement alongside two other families who arrived around the same time, one from America and the other from Norway!
The people who drive Route 66 are travellers, a unique band of brothers who enjoy the open road, who share a camaraderie and welcome new members to their invisible club. We were now members and how we missed that feeling when sat amongst the holiday makers of Florida.
I can’t actually remember when I first read about Route 66 and decided this was a journey I wanted to take. I’d always had a spirit for adventure and organised my own trips from 1999 onwards. I guess seeing the world was my ultimate dream. My parents had never been outside of the UK but I couldn’t limit myself in this way. When I was twenty one I took a second job in a pub, working behind the bar, in order to squirrel away money to pay for my excursions abroad. When I had my own children I wanted them to experience the world with me and took them abroad for the first time when my son was three and my daughter was eighteen months old, on my own!
When hubby and I reunited after 30+ years I found a kindred spirit, someone who also wanted to explore with me and when we first sat down together back in the Autumn of 2015 listing places we would like to go I added Route 66. The idea of driving across America, through eight different states, on a road that pioneers had once driven really appealed to me. We had originally agreed to do it as our honeymoon in 2020 but Covid put paid to both the wedding plans and subsequent honeymoon. It then got postponed to 2021 but again Covid said no! When we eventually married in 2022, knowing that the trip would need an overhaul, I felt it was too much to take on whilst also organising a whole weekend wedding in another part of England so we went island hopping in Greece instead.
As we are both celebrating a big birthday this year it seemed like a good idea to bring it back onto the table. As I suspected some of our previously planned accommodation, excursions and meals out at traditional Route 66 establishments were curtailed as they hadn’t survived covid.
When we first left Chicago neither of us really knew what to expect but we welcomed leaving the big city behind and heading out into the countryside of Illinois. Surrounded by fields of corn and soya beans we enjoyed the solitude. The Route 66 navigation app by Marian Pavel and Jan Svrcek Sr plus the EZ66 book by Jerry McClanahan became our constant travel companions as we traversed this huge continent.
We had no idea, at this stage, that every state would be vehemently different and the greenery and crops we were experiencing at the start would slowly slide into a hot, desert landscape before hitting the outskirts of LA and the end of our journey along the “Mother Road”. We didn’t know who we would meet, the places we would find or the memories we would make. Where do you begin to summarise this road of dreams? Weirdly I’m starting at the end with a memory that will no doubt stay with me forever.
On our penultimate day we left our accommodation in Las Vegas, following a one week detour, and drove 108 miles, 1 hr 45 minutes south to rejoin Route 66 just north of Needles entering the hamlet of Goffs.
We had learnt on our journey across the USA that the descriptions of populace is different to the UK. Everywhere is a city or occasionally a town in America regardless of size whereas in the UK we are accustomed to a hamlet, village, town and city based upon populous. Goffs was nearly a ghost town.
From Goffs to our motel in Pasadena, where we planned to spend our last night on the journey, was 263 miles and 6 hrs 45 mins away. We planned to stop for a late breakfast en route and also looked forward to Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch just outside Oreo Grande. What we hadn’t planned for was the landscape of the Mojave Desert.
Excuse the pun but it was desolate. A landscape of arid, harsh conditions. What habitation we did see challenged our thinking. Why on earth were these people out here, in the middle of nowhere, with no real food shops, the odd petrol station and just miles of scrubby desert between them and the next signs of life?
They were living not just in solitude but often in what looked like poverty. We saw some nicely built bungalows where somehow land had been taken back from the desert, irrigated and green bushes and the odd tree had found a way to grow.
Then there were large mobile homes sometimes in sets of two, three or four where maybe an extended family lived close together, moving down the spectrum we saw trailer park style homes standing alone and then ramshackle mobile homes and wooden properties that looked like they were falling down around the occupants. We even saw a tent with a bicycle dropped outside on the desert floor just before we turned right and meandered into Ludlow where we stopped for our brunch. I couldn’t decide if this was a fellow Route 66 traveller or some complete lunatic. You surely would have been able to catch the drops of condensation inside the tent in a saucepan!
Cars, boats, RV’s and school buses had been abandoned on properties as if the land was so worthless that it was easier just to leave the automotives to decay amongst the wilderness.
We spent up to an hour at a time alone in this wilderness. Oddly, being British and unaccustomed to this climate, we were never afraid or concerned, we just revelled in the solitude. Route 66 had given us many lonely roads and quiet moments on our trip and this was the climax.
We hadn’t expected to see the two Chinese statues outside of Amboy. Why were they there? We were going to pull over and take a couple of photos but I wasn’t prepared to venture into the landscape where rattlesnakes liked to bathe in the heat of the sun!
The desert had an odd haunted quality to it and made me think about the people who had travelled west nearly a hundred years before, moving at maybe 20 miles an hour. What on earth did they think when they found themselves amongst this desolation? They would already of been on the road for probably several months and just as they could reach out and touch Los Angeles at the end of their journey they were faced with this: the heat, lack of water and facilities must have in itself been a real challenge. We were happily driving across in our air conditioned car with cold drinks tucked behind the seats!
When we finally reached Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch and pulled off the highway we found it devoid of human life. Elmer had lived out here with his family and when he was young would go out into the desert and collect odd bottles with his Dad. When his Dad died and left Elmer his huge bottle collection, Elmer decided to make trees on which he could hang these bottles. He fashioned metal stakes which he drove into the ground and somehow stabilised in the sandy terrain so he could place more metal spikes at various angles, springing out of the original central metal stem to resemble a tree. He then added more spokes to these branches so he could hang bottles on them. He then took great thought as to what he could place on top, a bit like a Christmas fairy. These ornaments from his vast collection included a bicycle, a set of typewriters and even a rifle.
Elmer unfortunately passed away on June 22 2019 at the age of 72 after a short battle with extremely aggressive lung cancer. Elmer was an inspiration to us all. Most importantly, those who met him talk fondly of how warm, friendly, and kind-hearted he was.
His son Ellsworth Hayes described him as: “A bad-ass Marine, husband, father of 3 boys, and of course, the ‘bottle tree man’ … He was my best friend. And it brings tears to my eyes knowing there are people out there like yourself dedicated to the love of his bottle trees.” Using materials that would normally be discarded, with desert land as his canvas, he created a destination that attracted visitors from all over the world and garnered international media attention–amazing!
This was one of my favourite stops on Route 66 because it epitomised the individualism of the people we had met en route and all my photos on this post are from the ranch. My Instagram account contains a video I took out in the desert. I really wish Elmer was still alive so I could have met him. I’m sure he was a great character. All credit to his son for allowing us travellers to stop by despite no one being on site. A couple of people stopped while we were there and were in n out in seconds obviously not understanding why Elmer created the ranch.
This is art in its most imaginative form, what an inspiration Elmer must have been. It’s lovely to know people show respect and take their photos leaving nothing behind except their thoughts.
When you leave Elmer’s patch of beauty behind you soon reach Victorville and the outskirts of Los Angeles and suddenly the journey feels like it is over. It feels like all the memories we have made together are left behind in those hundreds of bottles on Elmer’s ranch and civilisation has once again taken over.
I’m happy to share more of those memories of things we saw and people we met in future posts but for now I’m waving goodbye, with a tear in my eye to this dream that I’ve managed to deliver.
My History of Vegas: I had last visited the “City of Sin’ ten years previously with my two children whilst still a single Mum. It had been part of a bigger trip when I had taken a month off my career to celebrate key milestone birthdays that we were all experiencing in the same year. My son had turned eighteen that Spring and when given the choice of where to visit to celebrate he chose New York.
We had stayed there a week and then flown down to San Francisco. I wanted to celebrate by driving Highway 1 down the West Coast. I also saw Los Angeles as an opportunity for the children to visit Disneyland and Universal Studios one last time before they were finally grown and leaving home.
From LA we were originally supposed to fly down to Acapulco. I‘d always wanted to see the cliff divers and saw this as an opportunity to introduce my teenagers to a new culture but alas six weeks before our trip began all flights to that part of Mexico were cancelled due to issues with the cartel! I had, therefore, given the children the choice of our final destination: Yosemite, Lake Tahoe or Vegas and they had both chosen the latter.
Our journey across the desert wasn’t the greatest with a storm hitting halfway. My son and I, sat in the front of the hired car, could see the lightening hitting the highway in the distance and I inwardly panicked and wasn’t sure what to do but given everyone else was carrying on regardless I went with the herd!
After just 24 hrs in Vegas my daughter asked if she could fly back to the UK! She hated it with a vengeance. I was forced to adjust our plans and find alternative opportunities that took us out of the city. This turned into a blessing as we discovered rafting on the Colorado River, amidst country that could easily have been part of one of my Western movie memories (see my previous blog) https://amidlifeadventure.org/2023/06/27/the-western-movies-lied-to-me/ and best of all the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
And now here I was again, having taken a detour off Route 66 from Needles and travelled north. It certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice of place to visit but hubby had never been and wanted to tick it off his “travel list”!
It’s often said “that it’s not the place you visit but the company that you go with” and following this particular part of our trip I would probably agree. Las Vegas had never been at the top of my agenda of places to revisit but ten years is a long time and places change, some for the better, others for the worse!
Vegas Seemed to be Changing: In ten years more towering accommodation options had sprung up. Looking behind The Strip, on the right as you drive in from the south, there was little or no space left. What had once been scrub land and empty lots was now filled with an array of places to stay and stay they did in their thousands! Mainly weekenders arriving on Thursday night and departing on Sunday Evening or Monday Morning. Everyone desperate to grasp their freedom and return home hopefully that bit richer or at the very least thoroughly entertained.
The Vegas I remembered had grown up in ten years. Gone were the showgirls during the daytime hours looking for business, hoping visitors would stop and pay for a photograph. The touts were no longer there in the day either, giving out their endless stream of cards inviting you along to various strip clubs after dark.The city had cleaned up its act. Maybe because more families seem to be visiting or perhaps it was the clean up that made families feel safer to visit. The constant stream of litter that I remembered from ten years ago was gone too. Maybe because the daytime the touts has disappeared. People were still drinking on the streets, one of the attractions of this adult playground, but instead of beers and lagers most visitors seemed content with one of the extra long cocktails sold everywhere in long thin tubelike glasses and to be honest drinking was no longer in the majority as it had been back in 2013. Las Vegas in the daytime was definitely better!
Drawn into the city by the urge to play in whatever format appealed, the visitors came out in force once twilight arrived. They mainly chose to eat early as if by doing so they would have the rest of the night to play. As the afternoon turned into early evening the showgirls and touts also reappeared as if they had been on a curfew but in nowhere near the amount of numbers as I’d seen previously. The showgirls in their outfits of traditional feather boas and wings with all in one leotards or thong bikinis, fishnets and high heels were now, however, being threatened somewhat by the female visitors themselves.
Modern Style Dress: I’d never seen anything quite like it. Millenials and Gen Z girls brought up in the world of social media were no longer willing to just dress for their partners or on the hunt for that illusive Mr or Mrs Right. They were dressing how the hell they liked and no one was going to dare to comment. Regardless of size, ethnic origin, current status or age these girls were out to strut their stuff. I saw braless boobs hanging out of deep v necked dresses, slits so high you could see the lack of underwear, minuscule bikinis covered with crochet dresses and short tops. And if that wasn’t enough, God forbid that you were behind one of them climbing one of the many sets of stairs up to a bridge that criss crossed the busy car filled strip below. Hemlines so short that a glimpse of bare bum cheeks and occasionally more was not unusual.
It was like they were competing for some sort of prize for the most “outrageous, revealing outfit!”. Interestingly you didn’t see the “posing Instagram” crowd we had got used to and frustrated by in Europe. I’m guessing here the photos had been taken and posted before they even left their hotel rooms where provocative poses could be fully delivered sober until they were satisfied with the photographic result.
Ladies visiting with partners or husbands weren’t going to be outdone by the youngsters either with some of the over 40’s joining in on this new trend. Don’t get me wrong this parade of flesh wasn’t the majority but it was certainly a noticeable change.After all most of these young ladies were still in primary school last time I visited!
Call me old fashioned but whilst the old Vegas could be a bit “in your face” this made the city a worse place to be at night and certainly not one where I would want my teenage or young children present. I can only conclude that the skimpy outfits so often seen at film premieres, concerts and award ceremonies worn by the rich and famous and then broadcast across social media has had a massive impact and if you want to wear something like this to follow some Instagram idol where better than in the original City of Sin.
Alongside the new accommodation blocks there were also new shopping areas and it seemed as if the developers had taken into account the often extreme summer temperatures, as we were experiencing whilst there, and made sure visitors had to walk out onto the pavements as little as possible. There seemed to be more indoor air conditioned connections between the casinos, something that I definitely appreciated and saw as an improvement. Interestingly some of the shop windows were full of the types of dresses aforementioned. Whilst offering additional choices to those visiting I couldn’t help but think they also provided outfits for those girls who maybe arrived in Vegas unprepared for the current trends.
Downtown Vegas: This was still a bit of no go area when I’d last visited but with the advent of the Mob Museum and nighttime DJ’s and “light shows” in Fremont Street this seemed to offer another experience in the city. Along with the crowds we chose to jump on the “Deuce” bus and take a look. The Mob Museum definitely added to my understanding of how the city had developed and the involvement of the then mafia. More poignantly it also gave me clearer insight into how today’s criminal gangs operate worldwide. How making money illegally has grown expotentially and is often hidden in clear sight. Fremont Street was, however, like turning back the clock. Personally I felt like all the “old sleaze” had congregated in this roughly mile long stretch of covered street. Single entrepreneurs dressed as shirtless cowboys, high heeled dominatrix and silent dummies advertised their wears in the hope of soliciting money for a photograph with them or in the case of the dominatrix maybe more? Girls danced on bar tops or on the DJ stages in skimpy outfits reminding me of the days when feminists called this out as degrading the sex.
The homeless were present in greater numbers and the smell of cannabis, which had wafted daily in the visitor end of Vegas now pervaded the atmosphere. The majority of those crowding the pavements were either already drunk or swilling back the alcohol to achieve this state.
The “icing on the cake” was the old lady sat in her wheelchair holding a sign telling everyone she was needy and poor and if you paid her she would show you her tits! Money was obviously not as forthcoming as she hoped and so the sign was lifted anyway in an attempt maybe to encourage people to donate. I felt angry that she felt she needed to do this but also sad. Imagine if this was your granny! This definitely wasn’t for us and we made a speedy exit! In making the visitor area better it seemed like those who no longer fitted in were driven to Fremont!
Conclusion of Our Visit: This was the first time I had been accompanied to Vegas by “a man” much less “a husband” and it definitely delivered a different experience. As two like minded adults we were able to experience the many facets of entertainment offered by this metropolis. We visited museums during the day, appreciated architecture, gardens and sculptures. At night we sampled the Wynn buffet, two Cirque du Soleil performances, opportunities to photograph the city lit up at night and the odd flutter on a blackjack table.
It felt sophisticated and not sleazy as I feel Vegas had once been. Somewhere we could return to, if finance permitted, to sample more shows and entertainment and to properly relax during the day under the heat of the desert sun before venturing out in the evening.
As our visit drew to a close we retraced our steps back to Needles by car and set off on our final voyage along Route 66 towards it’s end point at Santa Monica.
As part of our Route 66 journey we entered New Mexico and having stayed at the famous Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari we travelled 195 miles north west to Santa Fe, following the original “Mother Road” as much as possible.
As you enter the city you are immediately struck by the wonderful adobe houses. History pours from the walls of these unique structures. Adobe is a mix of earth and straw, the walls are thick and thus work well with the desert climate storing coolness in the summer and heat in the winter. The American Indians started building houses with adobe in the 1400’s. In the 1920s, Santa Fe officials ordered that all buildings in the city be built with adobe in the Pueblo Indian style. The city also retains beautiful examples of Victorian, Italian, and Spanish architecture. It is this combination of cultures that helped give Santa Fe its most popular nickname, “the City Different.” You immediately get the impression that Santa Fe, America’s oldest state capital, is inviting your exploration, whispering to you to come and enjoy its history.
The following morning having settled into our accommodation we set off to do just that. The starting point has to be the Plaza. This National Historic Landmark is a gathering place for the locals and tourists alike surrounded by historical buildings such as The Palace of the Governors and the New Mexican Museum of Art. It’s a small central park lined with grass, trees and benches. It exudes peace and on both occasions that I was there you could sit and listen to traditional Native American music being played by a solitary figure sat by the fountain.
All around the plaza are more Native Americans. They sit on rugs on the stone floor selling their jewellery, crafts, pots and rugs. The tribal community of the Pueblo people are amongst the oldest in the nation.
We venture further into the streets surrounding the plaza and immediately our impression of Santa Fe starts to alter. This is a city made for shopping! You can wander up Lincoln Avenue to the west of the plaza to explore the many shops there, turn onto Marcy and there are even more. The area south of the Plaza — including Galisteo and Water Streets host even more shops. But this is not shopping for the everyday folk this is high class shopping. The windows are full of traditional American Indian jewellery, hand made rugs and pots. But take a look in the majority of the shop windows and you will see that the goods on display have no price tags! Immediately the old montage “if you have to ask the price you probably cannot afford it” springs to mind. It begins to make me uncomfortable, maybe this isn’t the city I at first thought. These shops are not teeming with customers in fact the exclusivity in some respects reminds me of the scene in “Pretty Woman ” when Julia Roberts goes shopping on Rodeo Drive and no one wants to help her.
Amongst all the expensive shops the city seems to have more than its fair share of art galleries and further exploration of Canyon Road, a must see we are told in any guides to the city, just underlines this fact. Further research reveals that the city is home to over 250 galleries, 100 of which are located on the winding half mile of Canyon Road. Santa Fe was apparently named the world’s best city for galleries and museums by an independent study in 2021.
My mind then switches back to the Pueblo people sat on the floor in the plaza. Why are they sat on the floor? It makes me feel uncomfortable that I am in effect looking down on these people as I walk by. Is there a hidden message here?
Further into our journey we venture north from Flagstaff up into Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon. This is the home of the Navajo who sell their goods on the side of the roads sat on chairs behind wooden stalls. They don’t chose to sit on the floor so why are the Pueblo people sitting on the floor around Santa Fe Plaza, why don’t they have stalls?
My inquisitive mind starts to question the disparity in Santa Fe. Is this another city where people are still not equal because of a default of birth? Where a shop owner gets to sell a Native American rug or piece of jewellery for thousands of dollars whilst those same Native American creators sit on the floor to sell their wares. This just seems like a city of contradiction?
Time is our greatest gift, we cannot buy any more of it but we can waste it, give it away to people who maybe don’t deserve it. We are all guilty of thinking we have time, time to do everything we want to, time to tell our loved ones how we feel, time to rekindle friendships, time to forgive those we feel have wronged us or time to apologise to those we have wronged. The truth is no one has an infinite amount of time.
If you have read any of my previous posts including “All About Me!” or “The Philosophical Me” you will know that I learnt at a very young age that life is not forever. As you grow older and in my case move into midlife you read more and more obituaries of people you have known or even famous stars who are of a similar age and realise that whoever you are you cannot escape time.
In life we measure time in so many different ways. There is the obvious, time ticking by on the clock. Then there is the years that go by whether that is measured in calendar years or from birthday to birthday. When we are young we often wish those years away waiting and hoping to be older so we can experience more of life. When we are older we might well want to press pause as our children grow older or life seems to be slipping by. The fact is none of us can control time.
Time for me is what drives my ambition to go out into the world and experience adventure. This quote by Randy Komisar gives me a perspective on time.
So why write a post about time? Because I’ve just left Oklahoma and whilst there the aspect of time was brought home to me loud and clear. In just one minute time can change your life, it can take away someone you love, it can throw your whole world upside down, it can leave you questioning why you changed your routine that day or maybe wishing you had.
On April 19th 1995 at 9.01 a.m. life is normal or as normal as it ever is. Tim McVeigh drives a Ryder van to the front of the nine story high Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in the centre of Oklahoma City. He parks the van and walks away. At 9.02 a.m. the 5000 lbs of explosives inside the van go off. By 9.03 a.m. life for the whole city has changed.
700 men, women and children are injured but survive, 168 die. One half of the Murrah Building collapses, destroying nine other buildings nearby. Inside the building was a children’s daycare facility. Another twenty five structures are seriously damaged whilst three hundred and twelve additional buildings sustain other damage. Nearby cars are incinerated.
The FBI investigation includes this narrative entitled “Where Are You Guys?”
“Florence Rogers, head of the Federal Employees Credit Union, was in her office on the third floor of the Murrah building that morning. Seated around her desk were eight credit union employees, some of whom Rogers had known and worked with for decades. Although they were having a business meeting, spring was in the air, and there was talk of the women’s colorful seasonal dresses.
When the bomb went off at 9:02, Rogers was thrown backward onto the floor, her desk and other office items landing all around her. When she looked up, every one of her colleagues had vanished. “I started hollering, ‘Where are you guys? Where are you guys?’”
In the next moments, before building and car alarms triggered by the blast began to howl, before fire engine and police sirens wailed, and before cries rang out from the trapped and injured, Rogers experienced an “eerie silence.” Alone on a narrow ledge—all that was left of her office floor—below which was a deadly, open pit, she wondered where her colleagues had gone. She wondered why she could see daylight where walls and ceilings should have been. And later, after being helped to safety, she would wonder at the miracle of her own survival on a day when so many had perished.
One minute is all it took to change lives………………..
The story of this bombing is told in detail at the National Memorial Museum. They make no excuses for the presentation. Utilising exhibits, theatre and interaction you learn about those who responded to the bombing from the emergency services, hear from those who survived, see how the city reacted and visit the Gallery of Honor to those who died.
On a more positive note you get to see how the investigation progressed and how those responsible were brought to justice. You get to witness how such a tragedy brought the city together.
Then you get to step outside to see The OutDoor Symbolic Memorial.
You get to visit the Survivor Tree, the American Elm tree which is nearly a century old and somehow stood tall and resisted the effect of the bomb. It stands at the top of the memorial as a symbol of strength and resilience.
The Field of Empty Chairs is located where the Murray Building once stood. The chairs are arranged in nine rows which reflect the floor where those who were killed were at 9.02 am. Each chair is etched with the name of a person killed. The nineteen small chairs represent the children killed. All the chairs light up at night as a beacon of hope.
The only remaining walls of the building are etched with the names of those who survived.
A Midlife Adventure 