In 1996 Nigel and I drove from Fort Lauderdale Florida to Los Angeles California over a couple of weeks.  What we learned was that the landscape in the US is varied and different and very atypical of exactly what you would expect. Louisiana is all swampy and misty and Arizona is all dusty and cactusey.  What it doesn’t do is change very quickly.  So when you drive for hours and hours through desert and cactus it gets very mundane.  You need to be able to amuse yourself in the hours of travel.

The Amtrak train from Chicago to Seattle was exactly like that.  The views and scenery changed, just very slowly.  We had a cabin with a small bathroom (thankfully) and in the evening they would come and make up the bunk beds for you.

All meals were included and every meal you would be seated with another couple.  We seemed to be the only foreigners on the train as everyone was very surprised to find some New Zealanders on there.  Everyone we sat with had the same story.  We’ve always wanted to do this trip, we didn’t realise it would be so much movement on the train and so difficult to walk and the food has been surprisingly good.

Having balance issues in the first place meant for me it was technical difficulty HIGH to be on a heaving rambling lurching train.  But we stopped for a few minutes at a number of stations along the way and so that was the ideal time to try and have a shower, or try to move around a bit.  That’s when we would zoom to the dining cart before we started moving again.

The rest of the time we watched the world go by and napped and just generally enjoyed our time together.  On the final night I woke being violently ill (thank god for the bathroom) and spent the whole night trying to keep bottled water down.  Dammit!  Food poisoning I thought. I felt quite a bit better by the time we arrived in Seattle though and our gorgeous friends Simone and Gareth picked us up to go to their amazing house in the woods just outside Seattle.

We had drinks and snacks (I took it easy) and then had a lovely dinner until Nigel got afflicted with the same bug.  Because Simone came down with it a night later we can only assume that Amtrak gave us Norovirus.  We also felt like the worst friends in the world.  Thankfully though it was a one day bug for all of us and so we were able to carry on our way.

So how to rate our trip.

Did we enjoy it? Yes                                                                                                           

Were we late?  Yes, two and half hours late (after a near miss with a car, some technical issues, high winds, a near miss with a walker on the tracks and some signal issues).

Would we do it again? Probably not

Would I have used more hand sanitiser? Yes

I’ve always wanted to go to Maine, for a couple of reasons. Firstly it’s supposed to be incredibly beautiful (which it is), it’s supposed to be especially beautiful in Autumn (which it is) and Stephen King lives there.

I have read every Stephen King book he has ever written. Most of them I have read more than once and I have read IT more times than I care to remember.

Almost all of his books are set in Maine as that’s where he grew up and where he still lives. He sets many of the books in a fictional town in Maine called Derry, which is actually based on a real town called Bangor.

Many many years ago I told Nigel that one day we would go to Bangor and we would go and see all the Stephen King sights. Every time we saw a Stephen King movie, I would tell Nigel about the places in Bangor we will go and see as they are so explicitly described in his books. He said “yep” and really didn’t think much more about it. Next thing you know “We’re going to Maine!”

Before arriving in Maine we had to go through the Canadian/American border. 

I’m not sure that some of the more remote parts of the US border see too many New Zealanders who are travelling for four months, have been to 12 European countries in the last eight weeks and forget that they’ve been to Turkey twice in that time.

“Turkey? What do you want to see in Turkey?”  “Umm Istanbul?” “Why did you go twice?” “Umm we are flying Turkish Airlines and it hobs through Istanbul?” “What are you doing to do in the US?” “Ummm going to see Stephen Kings house?”

After a bit of discussion as to whether NZ is a visa waiver country or not we got our passports back and we were on our way! ‘Land of the Free… Home of the brave… in the midst of a very contentious election campaign, which means it may not be free and people are possibly not so brave’. What an interesting time to be in the US, but kind of glad we will be back in NZ when it gets decided (or litigated)… and as Forrest Gump says… “that’s all I have to say about that!”.

Bangor didn’t disappoint and proved that sometimes someone goes to the Science Museum for a day and sometimes someone drives their wife around a small American town to take photos of random buildings and drains. That’s love.

From Bangor to Salem to get our absolute Halloween fix even if it wasn’t even October.

In the late 1600’s, the English Puritan immigrants had a period of hysteria which ended in 29 people being accused of and killed for being witches. It all started with two girls in one family, who according to legend either ate too many fermented grains or were actually possessed by a witch (although they could also have been a couple of teenagers wanting attention). These girls (plus no understanding of who was actually in charge at the time) convinced a whole town to turn on each other to rid the town of evil witches. It’s a great Wikipedia read if you ever have the chance. 

What the Salem Witch Trials has done for Salem is given them an annual tourist Festival of ghouls and witches and cauldrons and costumes and decorations that epitomise Halloween.  They make millions from the tourists it attracts to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere USA.  It’s a really fun vibe and the streets can be packed. We were there at the end of September and spent more than a half hour trying to find a car park in town. Hocus Pocus (movie from the 1990’s) was also filmed there and so you get Hocus Pocus girls weekends where they turn up wearing matching teeshirts, smoking legal marijuana and on the search for the nearest Cocktail bar.

There is a statue in the town of Samantha from Bewitched the TV show of the 60’s-early 70’s. The tourists love it, the locals hate it. They regularly protest its existence and she’s been covered with paint and all other types of graffiti to get her gone! 

The opinion is that the witch trials are not something to be trivialised or romanticised, they should be recognised for what they were as a rather abhorrent aspect of history that should never be repeated. 

Half of the walking group we were on were “they should just get over it”, the other half were “I can see the point”… and that’s all I have to say about that.