The Kirks

This is just a general entry on driving in the USA. We will have done about 3300 miles in our Chevrolet Tahoe and we’ve experienced pretty much every type of driving from LA freeways to dirt tracks so it’s about time to summarise the whole experience.

The first thing to say is that driving in the states is actively enjoyable. In general the roads are incredibly quiet. The Interstates which are the equivalent of British Motorways appear very quiet to those of us who have been on the M25 at rush hour. They’re easy and fast at the broadly observed speed limit of 75mph. However, they’re a little soulless and the real enjoyment is to be found on the highways which are the equivalent of UK “A” roads. Generally just one lane in each direction they’re straight and they go through towns and villages. Compared to “A” roads in the UK, they’re virtually deserted. Although you meet the occasional RV (of which more later), passing them is easy and non-stressful. This is definitely the right way to travel in the US. We drove from Rapid City to Interior (a distance of 76 miles) without passing a single car. Before now, I have never really understood the point of “Cruise Control” on a car. Why would I in the UK where it’s a constant stop start and jockeying for position in various lanes? Here, you just set it for 65, stick one arm out of the window and cruise along.

Compared to roads in the UK, the roads are also clean. I assume it’s due to the extremely popular Adopt-A-Highway programme where businesses and families take responsiblility for removing the rubbish and cleaning up a stretch of a road. In return, they get a little sign beside the road saying that “The Kirk Family” or “Goldman Sachs” is responsible for this stretch of road. It is, apparently, very successful.

An additional thing that makes driving in the US easy is the almost obsessively complete and correct signage on every stretch of road and every junction: Every cross road is marked no matter how small; every mile is numbered and marked; every passing place is signed. Once you understand how it works, it is very comforting and almost impossible to get lost.

In the west beyond Las Vegas, the road users split into four groups

• SUVs. We’ve got an SUV (see above). But, they’re comfortable and large and easy to travel long distances in. They come with 4 wheel drive which is useful getting out of the WalMart car park. These are the cars that look so huge in the tiny medieval streets of Cambridge and in the UK, we think of them as enormous gas guzzling behmoths. However, that’s because we don’t have…..
• Monster Trucks. I thought our SUV was a big car until a Ford F350 Superduty pulled up beside us at a set of lights. Even our giant SUV looked like a BMW Mini next to this car. There’s something about these cars that’s some sort of supernormal stimulus for men (well, for me anyway). I’ve started dreaming of owning a Dodge Ram (5.7 Litres guys!) so I can drive over other cars on the school run. However, on the giant car stakes, there’s one thing that dwarfs even the monster truck….
• The RV. The recreational vehicle is basically a mobile home on steroids. They’re huge. We’re not talking a Volkswagen mini bus here, we’re talking a giant single decker tour bus. They’re so big that you can’t use them for anything else so the RV drivers humiliate the monster truck drivers by towing a monster truck behind them to use as a runabout while they park their RVs in an RV park. It’s not clear to me what percentage of the RV owners are using them as a holiday vehicle and how many actually live 365 days a year in the RV but a significant percentage do live in them all the time. The drivers are almost exclusively over 60 and seem to be having an awfully nice time just pottering around this gigantic country. But, they seem to annoy our final group…..
• The Bikers. We’ve been passing through the high plains just before the annual Sturgis Bike Rally so it’s not surprising that we’ve seen a lot of bikers. They’ve got cap sleeve leather vests, leather chaps and no helmet. Almost exclusively, they ride Harley Davidsons. Sometimes you see the occasional Honda Gold Wing but you know that they’re just saving up for a Harley. They move in packs, they’ve got their babe on the back and lots of leather pack and frills. Unfortunately, the whole image is somewhat spoiled when they stop and arthritically creak off these beautiful bikes and the pot bellies bulging out the leather vest and sagging bottoms cupped in frilled leather chaps become so obvious. It’s a lot less of this and a lot more of this. But as long as you don’t notice the gray hair, the bikers are definitely the hippest people on the road and it’s got to be the best way to travel. Not for them the buzzing insanity of a race tuned Ducati or Yamaha, just low end grunt and growl at 55mph along the deserted highways with the wind blowing in what’s left of their hair. Time to lay my cards on the table: I want one of these…really want one. In fact, I have to buy one complete with all the associated gear and cruise up and down the streets of Cambridge in the summer. Before people post comments about “midlife crises”, I’d just like to completely agree with them. It’s a sad, fortysomething thing to do to buy a giant Harley but one of the nice things about being fortysomething is that I can afford to not care.

We’ve stopped a lot in little roadside diners. We’ve completely avoided the chains (of which there are just so many). Not for us McDonalds, Burger King, Arby’s, Hardee’s, Dairy Queen, Taco Bell, Taco Joes, Pizza Hut and all the rest. It’s the A&M Diner or Dirty Annies truck stop (no, really). This is also a great way to eat and see things and is one of the reasons to avoid the Interstates. The food is fairly standard and relatively good. The portions are large and for breakfast, it can’t be beaten. It’s also very very cheap as is all food in the US. We can easily eat ourselves stupid for $30 and famously, we can buy a 64oz diet coke for $1.29. To put that in perspective, that’s 1.89 litres of coke for 74p. Fabulous value!

So, besides discovering a previously hidden desire for a 5.7 litre truck and a Harley Davidson, what else is there to say? Not much really. If you’ve got 2 weeks or more in the USA, there’s really no better way to see the country.