The road to ammo-land

The day dawns humid, windy, cloudy. We’re sadly reflecting upon our experience with the Crowne Plaza Hotel’s rather inexplicable indifference to our double episodes of bathroom flooding as we drive off along Dallas’s Northern Tollway.

The Tollway has had us a bit tricked.

At first I was jangling change eagerly to be ready to pay the tolls. But it turns out it does not take money. It posts toll costs such as $1.48 but it has no tollbooths in which to pay them. It seems to photograph cars and then what? We have now been up and down this Tollway many times and undoubtedly been photographed. So will the hire car company get a toll bill we have to pay? How do they enforce this? It is the mystery toll of Dallas.

We’re photographed one last time as we whoosh off through all the overpasses, out of town along courses of powerlines, past ploughed fields, car businesses, road construction and a vast ghetto of huge and handsome corporate office buildings - Merrill Lynch, Ciber, BMW, Alliance Data, Legacy Texas, fancy banks…

Oh shit. We've missed a turn. Did you see that exit, says an indignant Bruce. Round and about we have to go, Even Siri Google is confused. Finally, we are on the Sam Rayburn Tollway, a big, clean six-laner.

Out through the burbs and fields of cows we hum, heading north through Texas.

Today we hit the 11,000 mile mark on this trip, says Bruce as another toll camera records our visit. Landscape whizzes past as it has done for these almost five months.

Fields, a massive cinema complex, power lines stretching away into the distance.

Oh, grief, we are driving in the sky. So high! Scary. This is one hell of an overpass. I hate heights.

The speed limit is 70mph. Some seem to think it is not enough and whisk past us. They’re scary, too. Here comes a place called McKinley - and another huge cinema complex. They really like movies around here.

More car yards. Another ubiquitous strip mall featuring all the usual chain stores.

More vast car yards.

Sign: Need an Attorney? Call Malcolm Miranda.

Sign: Criminal Attorney - Bill Knox

Good to see the hungry lawyers.

The road opens up to scrubland and crops. A lake. Fields. Vultures circling aloft.

Oh no. Big slowdown. A bottleneck. Four lanes have narrowed to one.

This is big road construction. They are making massive new roads. Sleek and lovely. Aha. That looks like house developments over there. They must be servicing new satellite communities with new roads. Oh, how this great, big, busy country just grows and grows.

Oh, and now another one. Unbelievable. Another huge development, a sea of tan-coloured rooftops stretching out into the landscape. And there is a water tower under construction for them. And now extensive tracts of ploughed land with big Land For Sale signs. The next phase of development, I guess.

My, it is a busy future-driven landscape out here.

A town hoves into view. Van Alstyne. And here’s the Grayson County Line with a service station and a folksy old motel. We whoosh through. The speed limit is 75mph.

A huge hoarding shows a picture of a baby and the words The Future is in Your Hands. True.

And here the farmland is still being farmed. Great expanses of fields all freshly-ploughed and milky chocolate-coloured.

Above them, a beautiful big puffy cloud blue sky. The day has cleared right up.

A row of hoardings: Cowboy Chicken, Lone Star Inn, Cowboy Boots.

A place called Sherman features Angels of Care Therapy Paediatrics - and nothing much else until, get this - Stinky’s Scrap metal. What a juxtaposition.

Here come some more buildings and hoardings. Smile - Dr Ashe; Peanut Festival; Texas Healthcare $1 Billion Lottery; Tyson High Security Society.

Now a huge aluminium factory. Aloominem, I correct myself.

And a sign welcomes us to Sherman where, another sign adds, Dr Ashley Blunt Delivered Our Baby.

Isn’t that nice.

A chain of signs: Home Health, Collision Repair, Home Best Health Care.

Oh, a newspaper building. The Herald Democrat Newspaper.

Close by, Lucy Stop Tobacco and Discount sits pleasingly close to a Public Health building and a blocky edifice called Texoma Medical Centre which claims to be nationally recognised for exceptional heart care.

Sign: Are you curious about weight loss surgery?

Hmm.

I see Eisenhower State Park over there.

The road has turned vile. High speed, lousy surface. I have no idea what I am jotting on my notepad.

Jolting is the operative word.

Siri pipes up. Welcome to Oklahoma.

Immediately the road improves. Thankyou Oklahoma.

Oh, a warning about speeding. They might be strict here, I hint to Bruce. Not that he has not been exemplary throughout the road trip.

This is strange. There is a very different feel now. Just over the border, and there is a neat, old-fashioned feel to the world.

A lot of mowing has taken place. Big medians are sleekly groomed. Verge grasses are trim.

Farms and fields look super tidy.

Signs advertise an Amish Store and fudge factory with 75 cheeses and peanut brittle.

There’s a farm stand, a sign promoting All You Can Eat Catfish. A sign: AnewYou, Advanced Medical Systems. Sign: Slim Generator Weight Loss.

Beautiful sign declares we are in the Choctaw Nation.

The county is Durant. And here is a colourful cluster of commerce which may appease our hunger pains.

Oh, its the Amish Fudge and Cheese Shop with its 75 cheeses.

When we get out of the car, we are slapped by fierce, hot wind. The sky has cleared but it is a nasty sort of day.

The shop is lovely, cheerfully adorned with pumpkins and flowers. The Amish send their cheeses in from Ohio, it turns out. But the peanut brittle is made here. We taste and buy. And use the nice, clean Amish unisex rest rooms.

A Sonic burger joint is next door. That will do. We have not tried Sonic

and I have liked the old-fashioned line-up of drive-in bays. We drive in and order electronically. I am disappointed the girls are not on roller skates and there are no car trays as in the old days. We take our food and eat at one of their outdoor tables. Their burgers turn out to be rather good.

Back on the road.

A huge swanky Choctaw casino presents itself - and our road has become smart black bitumen. We hum along smoothly. My notes become legible.

A little down called Durant. There’s not much to it but it declares itself the City of Magnolias. No, there is another sign. It is no less than the Magnolia Capital of Oklahoma. Wow.

We look for magnolia trees. See a few.

Along the highways of neat Oklahoma we now see a walk-in, no-appointment medical clinic and hospital. Mini storage. Family dentistry. The SCOK State University. The State Fish Hatchery.

Soft undulations on the landscape and pastoral views out the widow. Dry grass. Pastel sky. Mown fields and windbreaks of established trees.

The wind outside is buffeting the car.

Stands of old trees, more mown fields, a signpost to stockyards, open grazing land.

It is a handsome, cared-for landscape. Soothing.

Cattle graze, white cattle, black and white cattle. In some fields, they lie sated under trees. It is all gentle and bucolic.

A community called Caddo. Mown expanses of grass surround the highway. The speed limit is 70mph.

Open space with cattle.

Oh, a sign offering Used Shipping Containers for Sale.

Traffic has thinned out here. It is peaceful, rural, wide open spaces land.

But it has mini storage of course.

And, hmm, police stopping a car for speeding. That warning sign was serious.

Here’s a glorious signpost juxtaposition. A Death and Dying Lawyer straight in front of Brown’s Funeral Service.

The road is lovely. Smooth and open. Landscape neatly cultivated. Lovely.

We cross Clear Boggy Creek and wonder if there is a Muddy Boggy Creek or a Murky Boggy Creek.

Now we cross Fronterhouse Creek, then Little Tushka.

Interesting names around here.

A sign advertises Crappie Minnows. Poor little things.

Now a farm stand and, huh? Boggy Botto Antiques? What’s with the Boggies round here?

We are passing Atoke which must be big because I can see a Walmart among the churches.

And a another policeman picking up another speeder.

We’re on cruise control, never fear, says Bruce.

More police. This time they’re escorting an oversized load. Huge. We are all stuck behind it. Trucks are all pulling into the overtaking lane to get a go at passing. It is not happening. We daisy chain, big and small. An almighty great trailer truck drives up impatiently on the inside lane beside us. Big white bugger. Heavens above, of all things, it is an Amish truck. Delivering 75,000 kinds of cheese, perhaps?

Our massive convoy rumbles on, past a Choctaw casino and, oh, look, finally the Muddy Boggy Creek, When, many miles on, we pass the wide load, it is a big transportable home.

We’re now in a landscape of low hills and dense scrub.

And, don’t laugh, North Boggy Creek.

Patient vultures are wheeling aloft as we pass a little community called Daisy and another Choctaw casino, rather nicely designed, this one.

A bit further on, a great big jail, a very fiercely-secure looking place with layers of savage wire and windows which are nothing more than narrow slits.

Onwards past mixed forest, lovely curly-looking foliage. Outcrops of rocks. Rounded hills.

Then ridges and tree-covered hills.

Quite suddenly, the land looks dryer. The undergrowth is stunted and scrub-like.

Oh, and bloody road works.

And, guess what! Another police car nabbing a speeder.

Of course, road-works speed restrictions are a classic trap. Vigilance, Bruce. Nagger, he responds.

We are entering Choctaw Nation land.

Farms with horses and, wow, a working oil well in that back yard.

A little township called Savanna.

I am just commenting on the lack of Trump signs when we spot a Trump sign.

And signs to the US Army’s Ammunition Plant.

Ye goddesses. This is where they make their ammo.

All the US Army’s shells, bombs and hand grenades are made here. The plant covers 50,000 acres, says Bruce.

There’s a motel with a God Bless America sign. Yes, indeed. Bombs and all.

Sign: Choctaw Family Services - a non-abusive family is a happy family.

Sign: Larry Buggs for State Senate and a pic of a grey-bearded bloke in a 10 gallon hat.

Sign: Get Cobel Cox for death and injuries.

Sign: Pick Your Dr Pepper.

All these signs show that we are entering a significant Chocktaw casino. A massive Life Church.

Happy Days Motel. A cinema complex including a defunct drive-in.

Sign: Dr Chat E Crawley - joint replacement specialist.

Siri pipes up. Your destination is on the left. The Holiday Inn Express on Peaceful Road, McAlester.

It had better be peaceful, say I, as we head to a huge and well-appointed room in the hotel. That ammo factory is a bit close for comfort. What are we doing here?

Just a co-incidence, says Bruce. McAlester is a nice town and it is well placed for a stop. The population is about 17,000, big enough for a Walmart. 4000 is big enough for a supermarket. 9,000 for a Walmart. The ammo facility is a big boost for this town - the main employer.

Hmm.

We unpack and go for an exploratory stroll. The wind has not abated. It is a bit on the nasty side. We decide we will only walk to the nearby Chili’s Restaurant for dinner.

And back to our lovely hotel room. We have not stayed in a Holiday Inn Express on the trip and we are so impressed with its space and comfort and we wonder why.

Bruce sinks into the sort of contented sleep of someone who has worked in the spheres of American defence and finds everything perfectly normal.

Not so easy for me. I pitter pat on my laptop and watch endless annoying election dissections on TV for hours on end.

I mean, surely I am not expected to sleep with the entire explosives supply of the American Defence Force as my neighbour?

White knuckles through Texas

Since the windscreen is yukky with sticky insect impact, we make a quick detour to Walmart to buy Windex wipes before heading north for the next leg of jour journey. I buy a notepad and a couple of pairs of knickers. I love Walmart undies. $3.48 a pair versus $16 or more in Australia. My checkout chick is an incredibly gnarled old chook. A hundred if she is a day. I suspect she may make the record for elderly checkout workers. Scraggle-toothed and wispy-haired she is. I find this a good thing. I am so impressed by the workforce of seniors in the US. I’m told that some of them are working because the pension is so inadequate - which is a negative. But the thing that impresses me is that they are in the workforce at all. Imagine this in Australia. Hah. Ageism rules. But here in the US, retail employers are employing older people in droves. From Walmart to upmarket department stores, there they are, seniors working alongside juniors. No sign of ageism here.

Bruce is always eager to get back on the road. Today is only a three-hour drive.

With sparkling windows and fresh mango spears as a snack, we alert Google Siri to our destination and head north out of Galveston.

It is only 46 miles to Houston but it is a bit of a white-knuckle drive. We whoosh over the 8-lane bridge onto the mainland and up through the corridor of refineries. Huge billboards advertise the Space City Dialysis Centre, Texas City Dike Converter, Drive Safe Eat Messy and more insistent invitations to sell your car, sell your car, sell your car.

Then we come to the Sell Car turnoff. This is the exit. We couldn’t see evidence of traffic flooding off the road to sell itself at all. We could see car yards. We could also see an outlet mall and a complex of mini storage.

So, the people who came off the highway to sell their cars could have a splurge at the mall with the money and then, since they didn’t have a car in which to carry their purchases, they could put them into storage.

Or so we fantasised in gales of laughter.

Perhaps after all these months on the road we have a spot of cabin fever?

The furious traffic thickens as we near Houston. It is the third largest city in the USA.

More advertising lines the road. Eye Clinic. Attorney. Mercedes Benz. BMW. Mattresses.

Oh, no, and more Sell Us Your Car.

Bubba’s Restaurant has a huge model dead shark hanging from posts. No thanks.

Houston is close. We approach the lattice of sleek cement sculptures - overpasses and underpasses. Over and under. Upper and lower. Cement cement. A network of tiered roads complete with baffling roadsigns.

There stands Houston in hazy silhouette.

The air is not the best. The sky is pale blue with an iodine brown hue.

We whiz past medical and dental centres, a massive white building which seems to house one gobsmackingly huge law firm.

The traffic has become seriously intense, a big shiny, gleaming moving mass of metal.

All these cars. They show the stupefying scale of things in the US, says Bruce.

More overpasses and more relentless cheek by jowl commerce.

More billboards: Live like people not like bees. God listens to 84.3KSB radio. Need an Attorney?

And we enter the City of Houston in a choke of traffic.

It is a handsome city, if you don’t count the heavy haze.

A picture of children playing with a white rabbit on a Montessori school strikes a note of irony. Not in this air.

The lovely buildings of Houston flirt with the eye. This city has a glory of aesthetic architecture. It also has grackles lined up on its electric wires. Those sleek and interesting birds have gained some sort of extraordinary dominance in the urban landscape.

We’re not staying in Houston, just pausing for lunch and driving around to get a feel for it. It is huge.

We find a Chili's Restaurant. One of my very favourite chains in the USA. Therein we get freshly-brewed coffee and gorgeous, zesty char-grilled chicken breast on rice with broccoli. Light, clean, my cup of healthy lunch. Then menu reveals that it is only 420 calories.

Finally, we are gunning our way out of handsome Houston on the Interstate 10 beltway, when we spot the sign:

Yo Quiero Yo Car.

Ye gods. You must be kidding. Do these people never stop? The sell-us-your-car people have gone bi-lingual.

Eek. Don't look up. Now there are four storeys of overpasses above us.

And an ad about pelvic floor problems.

What an odd country.

An Ikea gives one a flicker of normality. Then again, we are on a 14-lane highway and everyone is speeding.

White knuckles.

Buildings are still big around us. We are in the outer commercial burbs of Houston. Memorial City to be exact. There are massive medical centres, Costco, Best Buy, more high-rise apartments and hotels. Oh, and overpasses of five levels above us. They are very high. Very high indeed. Daunting.

Here's a Texas thing we don't see elsewhere. Boot City which sells those glamorous Texan boots, of course. On a big scale. Of course. Car yards. Siri directs us to Old Katy Road. also known as Route 10.

A electronic sign says Ozone Alert Today.

Why am I not surprised?

Omni, Marriott, Raddison…hotels, hotels. The city goes on and on.

Houston, we have a problem. Space City, we can’t seem to get out of you.

But you are very impressive. Heading northwest, there is the handsome Methodist West Hospital.

Urgent Care, Animal Care. Kohls. Walmart, A Halloween store has a giant pumpkin face strapped on the top of it.

More massive, towering overpasses. Medical plaza, Boot Barn, Dollar Tree, Nail Salon.

This must be Katy. There is a Katy water tower. And Katy Mills.

Oh, we are leaving Young Harris County. Didn’t know we were there. Second time we’ve run into Young Harris. There is another in Georgia.

The roads take us north through wastelands and car yards, past a medical supplies factory which is the size of a city block. Scrub, wasteland, big sky. Igloo Ranch makes eskys. It is massive. We’re on a plain, Hay. Flocks of birds.

Here we are, flat as a pancake Texas, says Bruce.

More hayfields. Low pine scrub.

Open road.

Well, apart from the heavy transport speeding along it.

We ignore the turnoff to San Antonio. We pass Sealy with its big Sealybration billboard.

Nothing much to Sealy that we can see. A caravan yard.

But they are serious.

Another sign says: Looking Forward to Being Home. Exciting to be Here.

Open land. Cattle. Low scrub and grassland.

It is ranch country.

Oh, and Trump/Pence country. Lots of signs.

A feedstock processing plant. A quail farm.

Farm machinery. Vultures aloft. Not the prettiest part of the world.

Siri instructs us to take the Austin turnoff on Texas 71 West.

Cattle sparsely in the fields. Buzzards circling low.

It’s now rough road. 81 miles of it ahead.

Mesquite is appearing in the roadside scrub, indicating a change of climatic conditions.

Smallholdings and big properties. Occasional grandioise ranch gates at the roadside.

Flat land gives way to gentle undulations and thick scrub.

A big gate announces the Bald Eagle Outback Silverado Ranch. It sure is big.

Over the Fayette County line and into Ellinger. Reduce speed.

The town is down at heel.

The lovely scent of fresh-mown grass wafts into the car. They are mowing the verges big time with lots of men and machinery. Prisoners, we wonder?

Hayfields and big sky.

And now the shores of Lake Fayette with towering chimneys and puffing smoke from a big coal plant. High tension wires.

Roadkill. More circling buzzards.

Moving north we find low hills and greener pastures with cottonwood trees showing the courses of streams and creeks in the landscape.

And then, out of the blue, a huge car yard out in the middle of the fields.

Some things are hard to explain. Why is it out there? There is no ostensible crop. Just cars.

We’re on the Texas Independence Trail.

Trump/Pence signs adorn a First Baptist Church. They can’t be too offended by his predatory sexuality exposed, we laugh.

Black cattle. Fancy ranches. One is called LongHorn Frog Ranch. Hmm.

Oh, look, actual long horns out there.

We’re hammering along at 80mph.

The Ladybird Loop invites us to a scenic point. Nah.

It’s only 30 minutes to Austin.

Here's Historic Smithville with open agricultural lands, more vultures aloft, a hotel, a garage, a store. Goodbye Smithville.

Hello Colorado River - the Texas version, Crockett Ranch, Black Tree Ranch…more Trump/Pence signs.

Stark trees where once a fire must have gone through. Scrub. The Hillbilly Sawmill.

We have to lower speed. Traffic congestion. A junction with traffic lights.

Bastrop. And here comes the usual commerce - mattress store, Lowes, TJ Max, mini-storage.

The Bastrop First Baptist Church may be the squattest ugliest church I ever saw. At least it has no Trump sign.

Oh, but here are some, outside a mini storage facility.

A petrol station says $1.79 petrol. That’s 70 Australian cents a litre.

Why are we ripped off for petrol in Australia, laments Bruce.

Aren’t we there yet?

A hoarding asks: Does advertising work? It just did.

A pecan shed. A McDonalds with buzzards overhead and grackles in a row on the telegraph line. Farm land. Hay. Sorghum?

A sign to Circuit of the Americas. A huge motor racing complex. Out of town. For here we are, at Austin’s outskirts. We can see the city on the skyline.

Up over the highest and scariest motorway overpass and here we come, at long last. Adelaide’s sister city, Austin, Texas.

On the road again

Odd, some of the things

one sees from the window of the olive green Rogue.

We are traveling through eastern Ohio. There, in stately isolation in a break between a vast flat landscape of cornfields, sits a “Gentlemen’s Club”. It is far from any town. Are those gentlemen not so gentlemanly? Have they

been exiled in their pursuits? One can only wonder as more world reels past the window.

We’re tucked in behind a truck, both of us keeping a steady cruise control pace on this pleasant country road called East 250.

It is easy, relaxed driving in a soothing agricultural landscape.

Corn, glorious corn. Low carpets of soy crops. More corn, corn, corn as far as the eye can see.

We are used to it but not sick of it. There is something deeply satisfying about being in the fecundity of the corn bowl. It has not always been good for everyone. We see many failed businesses and tumble-down barns along the way.

We see quaint businesses like Grandpa’s Cheese Barn.

As the landscape begins to undulate, we see tidy little farms with fenced vegetable gardens. Invariably, there are a lot of parked cars on properties. Boats, too.

A town called Savannah, dense with beflagged two-storey clapboard houses, has a handsome Presbyterian church and a “Cattleman’s Restaurant”.

Fields, barns, silos..,

A sign to Ashland, population 20,362, ethanol factories and an amazing claim to fame: The World’s HQ of Nice People. Perversely, we skip the townsfolk and drop in on Walmart.

A great, big, cavernous box of a place it is!

Is that an Amish woman shopping in

this devil’s world of cheap foreign-made products?

I wonder what she is seeking.

Not what we are after, I’m sure.

We have come in for glue and a high-beam defence torch, as recommended by the chap we met in Milwaukee. I adore torches and can't help collecting them. This one has me fiercely intrigued. Want.

We head for the gun department.

It is deserted, apart from lots of guns, of course.

They are behind glass. All sorts of rifles and

shotguns. There are other weapons around us on the shelves. Lots of crossbows and hunting knives and other sorts of guns. There all sorts of holsters.

There are ladies’ guns and heavy-duty guns.

What there is not, is a gun shop assistant. Bruce rings the counter bell over and over and over.

We forage around looking for defence lights and find all sorts of torches, most of which I adore, since I never saw a torch I didn’t want. But not what we seek.

We are on the verge of leaving when the funniest looking woman emerges from a backroom door.

She is rotund and squat, heavily bespectacled

with terrible skin and thin, furry hair tied in a topknot. She is not the smartest but she could not be more willing to be helpful. She suggests the motoring department has gadgets which can break car windows. Interesting. I am after a torch, though.

Back to the passing corn fields. Roadsigns warn us to beware of horse and carriages.

Yes, it’s Amish country.

Rowsburg pops up, settled in 1835. It is serene and sedate with historic old red brick buildings.

Corn, corn. Little farms.

New Pittsburgh? Unlike its old namesake, it is a

tiny town featuring a huge barn and silo - and cornfields.

We turn off 250 onto 30 and find ourselves rolling into a valley.

Wildflowers abound on the verges by the cornfields. A sign encourages us to stop for peaches.

Yes, please.

We buy from girls in a barn beside cornfields. The peaches are not

grown around here, they say. They grow corn hereabouts. The fruit is from South Carolina.

Suddenly the road is lined by trees. A great wall of trees. It is like the eastern-state roads. We are on eastern states time. I guess I’m going to have to get used to this landscape. Bloody trees which steal the light and the horizons. With the horizon removed, one becomes more aware of the clouds - and they are thickening.

Another historic town. East Canton. 1700s. It’s a plain little town.

Mapleton comes along. It’s a bit scrappy and workmanlike. Old beer-bellied blokes in the street. I wonder if they do some of the mowing around here. There are large expanses of immaculate mowing. This is one of the great hallmarks of the USA - mown lawns and parks and fields. However scruffy the property, the mowing is always fastidious. They mow carefully around old car bodies and piles of junk.

Even trailerparks. And there goes one.

Ah, open country again. I’ve missed it. Corn and soy fields stream past the window.

A town called Minerva with a lovely old Lutheran church and a main street dense in old two-storey wooden houses.

What the...? A giant blue cow? We must be in dairy country. Can’t see cows. There are some abandoned farms and Kensington, a run-down darling little town. It has an icecream parlour. Icecream flavour of the day: Cow Tippin’. Some things I just don’t understand.

Hanoverton, population 408. Another down-at-heel town with a lot of American flags. Serious flags. Big flags. Among them a banner saying “By the grace of God, save our nation.”

Bet there’s a lot of guns in those old houses.

And so the roads roll on, winding a bit now as the landscape becomes a mixture of woodlands and fields.

There are ponds and Christmas tree farms.

SKUNK! The unmistakable smell of skunk leaks into the car. There’s no describing it. Pungent. Poor little creature. Did it just spray in self-defence or has it been hurt or killed somewhere.

Motorcyclists thrum past. They are not wearing helmets.

Lisbon, population 2,821, bears signs saying “Live. Love. Grow”. What a lovely town. Cute and touristy. It has a local theatre company. Steel Trolley Diner with the word “Oldies” in the window. I just love it. I want to stop.

But we are on the clock. We swing right to route 30 and, suddenly, there’s a mountain in my face. We’re on a four-laned highway winding into the hills.

It’s steep valleys. There’s a truss bridge over a huge river and East Liverpool, a big, beautiful town.

And look, look! A sign says : "Welcome to West Virginia”.

Yes! A new state.

It is gorgeous. I love it.

And, then, suddenly, it is Welcome to Pennsylvania.

That was just the tip of West Virginia, says Bruce.

Winding roads, scruffy fields. This seems more a suburban world than agricultural.

Look at that. “GOT FAR WOOD”. It is a sign with an accent.

The landscape is drier here. There are crops but they look stunted. There are greenhouses. It looks a bit more like Australia.

It’s 89 deg out there.

Shit. A detour. A sign reveals that a bridge is out.

We pass Clinton, a big development. Gee, there are a lot of towns called Clinton.

And there are a lot of roadworks on the American interstate highways.

The country roads are lovely. The big ones are a mess of red cones, narrowed lanes and work machinery. This detour is a biggie. And the signs are hard to follow. So near and yet so far. Pittsburgh was right there and now we are going away from it.

Stop, start, look for signs, take an exit, swing onto another main road…

It is a 45-minute diversion and then we are finally entering Pittsburgh.

Oh, it is fantastic.

Pittsburgh, I think I love you already.

My gosh, it's Oshkosh

Six weeks now. The olive green Rogue, loaded

to the gunwales with “stuff”, is the one constant thing in our roaming world.

The landscape ever changes, even when it doesn’t.

As we purr into Wisconsin, we are still amid lush rolling farmland with corn, corn and more corn.

I find myself using the word “lush” a lot. Lushness prevails. These are rich, productive realms. Rural Wisconsin is just gorgeous. Streams, woodlands.

It is field and farms, darling barns and silos, silos, silos.

Every farm has its own silo.

Wisconsin is the great cheese state of the USA. At sporting events, Wisconsin people proudly wear absurdly ugly yellow giant faux cheese chunk hats and call themselves “Cheeseheads”. Truly.

We start seeing cheeseries.

We pause in Osseo for lunch. It is not much of a town.

But it has Moe’s Diner which makes up for everything. Out there on the landscape it sits as a classic American diner. It's huge sign brags that it is "almost world famous:.

Inside it is the whole experience - the red-topped bar stools, shining tubular steel, laminex table tops. Interestingly, I note the use of little diamonds of carpet on the wall as a decor feature.

We order proper diner food from the proper diner waitress, who is all good cheer. The food is absurdly ample. Bruce has meatloaf and mash. I have a fried chicken sandwich which comes with a mountain of the most exquisite french fried potatoes. Of course, one cannot and must not eat mountains of chips, however yummy. Of course I leave most of them on the plate just as I have seen everyone doing all over America. Restaurants are hooked on oversupply of french fries. I’ve been noting the mountains of leftovers in cafes, restaurants and diners across the country. Incalculable millions of tatties are being turfed. The country is swamped with homeless people asking for money for food and restaurants are throwing out ton upon ton of potatoes.

As we pass towns with odd names, it entertains us to moot how to say them in the Americans’ fractured French. St Croix is pronounced Saint Croy. Wonder how they say Menomonie. What a dire name for a town. I wouldn’t like that as my address.

We’re off Interstate 90 and on the lovely, easy country road called 10.

Shiny milk trucks. More corn and now some forests,

accompanied by roadside watering holes such as Lady Lumberjack’s Restaurant and Saloon, the Speakeasy Saloon…

We pass Neilsville, a neat little town with lots of car dealerships and even a car show. More green and luxuriant countryside with bars and round-topped silos.

We find a cheeserie and swing in to do the right cheesy Wisconsin thing. There’s an immense range of cheeses from parmesans to cheddar curds, We buy a caraway cheddar which turns out to be sublime.

Maple syrup Is on sale down the road.

A tiny town called Chili.

More miles of agriculture and dear little towns with homes and barns and Lutheran churches.

Ponds and livestock.

A settlement called Rudolph. We note they don’t post the populations in Wisconsin.

Ron Paul, the Libertarian former presidential candidate, is on the radio advertising freeze dryers to preserve your food for long storage - up to 20 years, he touts. This razzes us up a lot. How far can a presidential candidate fall? Advertising goods for survivalists?

We are so amused that, oops. We miss a turn.

Now there’s a huge a building with an elephant outside it - in back yonder Wisconsin? How exotic. It turns out to be a taxidermy store.

We cross the Tomorrow River. Then cross it again. And then again.

From taxidermy to the Bard.

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace

from day to day…”

And then a roadside sign: “Fudge and Free Wine - Turn Now.”

What an hilarious combination. A complete turn-off. We don’t turn.

Lots more prosperous farming land. We cross the Rat River.

The sun is shining and the corn shimmers and glints in the fields.

And here comes Oshkosh, population 60,083.

Yikes, and lots of them dead. There is a cemetery lining one side of the road into town

and it goes on and on and on. An on!

This is a massive cemetery. Welcome to Oshkosh.

The town itself is quaint and olde-worlde, a little bit camel coloured, crumbly and down at heel, but characterful.

We will be staying in the Best Western Riverside Hotel.

I’ve booked a river view room and when I say I hope it

has a lovely view, the receptionist tells me that it is only a partial view. But I booked a river view. Not all river views are the same, she says. Huh? That is bait and switch. I booked a river view. Well, the river view rooms are taken and we can’t move people, she says with more than a bit of attitude. I am not impressed.

So the room has a view of the river across the expanses of parking station and buildings. It is a partial

view. But it is a view and it is also a big sky view over the carpark. In itself, it is a nice room.

We chug out for an exploratory walk, crossing the bridge, walking the length of the town’s main street, admiring the urban art and listening to the glorious mournful cries of the herring gulls which are wheeling proprietorially about the town.

There’s a funny old cinema called Time, looking as if time forgot it. There are some gorgeous old buildings. There is some striking urban art. There are lots of bars.

There is a shoe shop displaying Cher’s strident lime second-hand platform shoes. And Christine Aguilera’s red stilettos. And John Travolta’s black boots. They don’t seem to be for sale. Just there.

I want Oshkosh postcards. Or something bearing that famous name.

I pop into a couple of what I think are likely shops to sell Oshkosh postcards and maybe even an Oshkosh baseball cap. They look at me as if I am mad. No. No one has anything like that.

I check the hotel’s efficiency store. Oshkosh? No. We have Green Bay Packers things, though.

Epic fail.

We take a photo at the town’s information sign in the main street. Even there the name is not prominent.

But, hang on. Look at the sewage plates underfoot! Gorgeous. I photograph them as my official Oshkosh souvenir.

The hotel is perched right on the edge of the river with a fabulous restaurant both indoors and out on a riverside patio. We score a rock star table for two on the waterline and settle down with a glass of wine to watch Oshkosh at work and play. Luxurious speedboats putter in to tie up at little docks along the river path. Tanned couples, fit and rich-looking, disembark and merge into the restaurant and bar crowd around us.

Boats cruise to and fro. Bridges open for them. The Oshkosh sheriff is out there on a motorboat. We watch him picking up a boat and issuing a ticket right there in front of us on the water. We wonder why and ask a chap sitting beside us. “Making a wake,” says the man who turns out to be one of the local boat owners.

In the morning, after a stormy night, and a hearty breakfast, we resume my quest for Oshkosh memorabilia. I’ve become a bit fixated by the weird dearth of it. One of the girls on reception says that Walmart sells Oshkosh souvenirs. Off we go. I forage and inquire and find a couple of outsize t-shirts but no postcards let alone caps. We try a big service station. No. Nobody had ever asked for Oshkosh cards before. But Walgreens may. We try Walgreens. No, but we have t-shirts for the big air show.

We give up.

It’s time to hit the road.

But first, we investigate the massive military carpark we have seen across the river. A dense lineup of armoured cars and trucks and tanks. It turns out that, while Oshkosh no longer makes the children’s clothes for which it was once to famous, it now is the country’s leading manufacturer of defence vehicles. And here they are.

Good for you, Oshkosh.

Chockers with chookies

If you are one of those grouches who can’t abide the rooster’s jubilant dawn hurrah, Kauaii is your hell. This glorious Hawaiian island is literally run by chooks and the dawn chorus rings out way before dawn and, well, it goes on all day really.

It is one of the most exquisite phenomena I’ve encountered.

Well, I’m a chook lover - and this is chook island.

They are here in vast numbers just doing their own thing.

The chickens of Kauai are spread with neat territorial imperative all over the island.

And they are very beautiful chooks.

They’re known as Red Jungle Fowl and they are a very ancient breed of chookie.

They’re smaller than a Sussex or a Rhode Island Red but bigger than bantams. The girls can be a bit plain but the boys are showy with particularly perky tail feathers. The roosters have good red combs but the girls seem to have stunted combs and they all look like point-of-lay pullets.

They live in the carparks, on the road verges, in the hills, in hotel grounds, domestic gardens, even on the beach. Look down and a chook is quietly pecking its way past the sun lounge.

They are the welcoming committee under the plumeria trees at the post office.

Kauai has lots of golf courses, too, with grass so fine that it feels like carpet. Feral chooks are all over the golf courses….strutting proud roosters with little hens and packs of chicks. Golf links are prime chook real estate and the golfers just have to put up with it and try not to hit them. I suppose it happens sometimes and the golfers claim a real “birdie”.

They are not in any way domesticated. They are not owned. They coexist with people. They are pleased with scraps received but they are not hanging around for them.

They are not like seagulls, even if they are all around the beach.

Actually, there are no seagulls on Kauaii.

There are remarkably few birds.

One has to remember that this island just popped up as an isolated volcanic land mass far, far from other islands with ecosystems.

Most of the life forms made it here as the result of storms. The were literal blow-ins, whether they liked it or not. Little spiders flew in among the clouds and dropped down on their parachute silks. Plant seeds blew in. The Nene geese probably arrived by navigational error or weather trauma error in a migratory event.

Not the little zebra doves however, These hapless Asian immigrants arrived as caged birds and were cruelly liberated by their owners to fend for themselves. Fend they did. Tiny, sweet little creatures with absurdly short legs, they have become dominant birdlife.

The chooks were brought by humans and bred for the usual purposes - eggs, meat, feathers, fertiliser… But one day, along came the ferocious Hurricane Iwa and it blew away not only all the hen enclosures but all the hens.

Free hens.

There was no getting them back. They have been free range ever since.

They keep the gardens tidy. They are terrific pest control. They aerate the soil.

They’re happy scratchers, thriving on forage.

Don’t try to get too close. They will artfully dodge away.

No one seems to kill them. They seem to love them.

They have become an emblem of the island.