The scary road to Tucson

Back in the olive green Rogue on a mild and cloudy morning. It is 265 miles to Tucson. A pleasant drive.

We head out from Las Cruces on 10 west. It’s a 65 mph speed limit and the trucks are doing every inch of it as hard as they can. It is a heavy trucks day. Dammit.

Past cattle and horse sale yards we whizz, over the Rio Grande which looks like a trickle today and out into the world of ploughed fields and thriving pecan orchards, clearly to blame for the river being at a trickle.

Soon we mount a hill and swoop into a world of mesquite, creosote bushes and arid grasses. The trucks are shocking. So many of them. All off them wanting to be in front of the one in front.

We pass the UAS Flight Test Facility, airport and National Guard, and a sign announcing: Prison Facilities. Do not pick up hitchhikers. One can’t imagine anyone hooking a thumb in the face of these rushing trucks. The speed limit has gone up to 75mph.

It is a world of pink sandy soil sometimes with pinkish mesas in the distance, sometimes those astonishing cinder cones.

Bruce is waxing lyrical about our time in Las Cruces and White Sands. It felt good to connect with his roots, he purrs.

Here come the Indian Trade Post billboards, one after another: moccasins; blankets; fireworks; Kachina dolls; pottery; kid stuff; jewellery; Exit Now. The trading post itself is a quaint little roadside thing. It must be simply crammed with all that stuff.

Glorious yuccas polka dot the landscape amid creosote bushes and mesquite. The hills are all grassy tufts. It is a very handsome desert. We are loving it, despite the trucks.

There are pointy blue mountains here, there, and everywhere on the horizon.

Heavens, another Border Patrol. We slow down and enter past all the cameras. A sign says Dogs On Duty. We don’t see any. We pull up beside the Border Patrol officer who is all army greens and guns. Just the two of you, he asks. Yes. Have a nice day. That's it.

Off we go on the open plain with its yellow grass and spiky low shrubs.

A sign warns that Dust Storms May Occur.

Another sign says simply: The Thing. Hmm

Mountains rise again, almost serrated against a sky with sunshine and rolls of cumulus cloud behind them.

Not sunny where we are, though.

We have driven under big grey flat clouds. Low. Spots of rain hit us.

The greenish groundcover on the desert makes it look even flatter than flat.

The rain makes up its mind and splashes down hard. The drops run up the windscreen.

Heavier. Louder. Great vicious hammering splats.

We should not have washed the car last night.

Akek Flats has another Indian Trading Post. Fudge, kachinas, fireworks, Mexican imports, and opals.

We’re in the Apache Homelands.

Use extreme caution, says a sign. Zero Visibility Possible. Drive Safe.

Hmm. Are they talking about this rain?

It suddenly eases and the sun pops out. We hiss and splash past grey nomads and trucks.

Oh, hell, roadworks. Trucks are all backed up in a chain.

Green crops one side of the road. Rail lines on the other.

The town of Deming is close. There’s an overpass and signs for hotels. Rail yards spread out beside the road, commerce.

We swing in for petrol and lunch. Not much going in Deming. The petrol station looks like something from the 1940s. It does not even have a canopy. A rather gnarled old cash girl, buxom with long, well-dyed jeune fille tresses, is standing outside smoking a cigarette. She stubs it out when Bruce goes in to pay.

Since there is little choice, we drive in for a drive-in Sonic burger.

We know they’re good. Their set-up is a bit odd, though. One drives up and parks diagonally beside one of a line of big menu screens and orders food by shouting at it.

Eventually, a gorgeous young girl comes out with bagged orders on a tray. No roller skates. And no car tray. Not like the old days of drive-in burger joints. We don’t feel like unwrapping everything and eating on our laps so we take it to one of a few tables Sonic has out front. It’s a bit windy. We huddle over the burgers and squint at the the back end of Deming. I have a jalapeno

burger. It comes with pickled jalapeno chillies. What a great enhancement to a burger. A little peppy zing burger. I am surprised how much I like it.

Back on the road, there are volcanic vent mountains, cinder cones, all around us . Yuccas cover the land. Caravans and trucks cover the road.

What on earth is that big fortified facility out there in the fields? Unidentified, unidentifiable. A secret experiments set-up? We scoot past quizzically.

Bigger yuccas now spike the landscape. They stand aloft, beautiful and sculptural over the desert grasses. The shadows of the clouds partnered by blazing windows of bright light are moving across the ground bringing out the colours of yellow and green from the grasses and shrubs.. The mountains are a blue and red backdrop. It is a glorious vista. They call this desert? What I am seeing is a vast arid garden.

Here comes more rain.

This is not so nice. Big storm clouds are massing out there. Two groups. They are forming that tornado shape I have seen in so many weather documentaries. This is scary. I see Bruce glancing more and more frequently in their direction. I can see he is concerned.

I pull up my Weather Channel app.

The radar shows fierce storms moving beside us, great red and purple cores to orange and yellow

Can we beat the storm which is heading our way?

Bruce is positive. He says we can. But I know he is just telling me that. He looks worried.

I marvel that we can watch the storm on radar and in real life as we travel.

I put the radio on AM and we listen to the lightning crackling. Uh-oh.

We race to get away.

This could be serious.

Black cattle out there. Poor things. We’re at 4585 feet Continental Divide Elevation. If that matters.

The Weather Channel App shows us in the path of the storm. We are the calm little blue dot moving along the landscape. This technology is incredible.

A sign says Caution, Dust Storms, Zero Visibility Possible.

Ironic.

The plain remains green and yellow and vast outside. Trucks keep coming in a relentless stream. We seem to be beating the storms. Passing a natural gas well, a billboard for Kranberry’s Chatterbox Breakfast, a small jail, more hoardings, a cross roads, a race track, low motels, a McDonalds… it is an unglamorous settlement called Silver City. It is gone in a moment and we are back to the beautiful desert plains.

Thanks for Visiting New Mexico, says a sign.

Aww.

Hello, Arizona.

There’s a police car picking up a semi-trailer at the roadside. Yess. Then again, those full-time road users are generally pretty good. Just the odd rogue out there.

The endless straight road takes a curve. We cheer and fuss about it.

The vegetation changes again. It is now grassless with tiny stunted shrubs. We seem to be in a big basin ringed by mountains.

We reflect on the scale of this country. Mountains in all directions. A train line out there parallel with the road.

Sometimes areas with lots of yucca plants. Then none, just low dry grass.

A salt pan appears. It reminds us of our own Whyalla country.

We see willywillies out there twirling in the desert.

Water is lying at the roadside here. Big rain has just been through.

Indeed, the clouds are spectacular - grey threatening low bands and high, sunlit layers. They seem to blow in different directions. The big sky provides a big picture of extremes, of moving patterns.

Two massive goods trains are out there, also going in different directions. They have three engines each. Sulphuric acid on one. You have no idea how important sulphuric acid is to the economy, says Bruce, not for the first time.

More trains, crawling steadily through the mountains and across the plains, double deckers full of Yang Ming Chinese products.

Oh, now we wind through a mountain pass and out to a changed desert landscape. More warnings of dust storms. Pull of the road and leave your lights on, says the sign.

Another huge stack train out there.

A sign says lane changes are prohibited. We don’t change lanes.

Ah, it’s for a weigh station.

The landscape changes again, now orchards on both sides of the road. Pecans! It is an oasis of farming here. San Simon.

The sky seems huge over the ribbed form of mountains around us.

More desert.

More rain. Not hard. The clouds are catching us. Damn.

A sign advertises The Thing, 57miles ahead.

A little deserted farmhouse is in the middle of nowhere out there.Two almost-dead trees outside. Lost dreams in the desert.

Low scrub surrounds us. Ah, those bands of weather are reaching out to us again. The radio is alive with the crackle of lightning. Damn.

Yuccas are back on the landscape and in the highway median. Lovely.

We pass a truck and the radio interference is deafening. What? Refrigerator truck, moots Bruce. Interference from the electric motors of its refrigeration.

More goods trains.

More orchards, Pecans and walnuts. Huge orchards. Wow.

More interference on the radio. Yikes. That was a lightning strike right in front of us. Sign to Bowie. 100 miles to Tucson.

Green plains, low scrub, the odd yucca, mountains still out there on the horizon Sign to Safford.

A canopy of nasty grey clouds has gathered above us.

We smell the rain before it finds us.

We see the lightning flashing as we hear it crackle on the radio.

The rain starts splotting loudly on the car.

The brown landscape looks as if it needs this rain. Happy yucca. Unhappy us.

Thickening traffic warns us that we are approaching civilization. Over an overpass. Nice, it has cattle designs around it. The town of Wilcox.

The sky is a challenge of sunshine and dark clouds. I pull up the Weather app again. We are in the rain but we are skirting the core of the storm.

A Border Patrol vehicle speeds by. Cops have another car at the roadside. A sign offers 3600 acres for sale. Another sign promises Thing, Mystery of the Desert. Turn off here. We don’t. But I do Google Thing and find it to be some sort of sad mummified mother and child.

Sunshine is breaking through and illuminating the soft undulations of mountainside, dotted with low mesquite and yuccas.

We pass through Texas Canyon to be surrounded by fabulous rock formations. Huge rocks are perilously balanced one upon another like those prayer stone rock piles people like to make. We ooh and aah.

Through the pass we come upon a vast open basin, another great plain surrounded by yet more mountains.

No rain now. Just puffy big low clouds.

The town of Benson.

Another Border Patrol vehicle, this one a lockup ute. We wonder if any hapless wetback is inside.

A sign indicates The Road to Tombstone - courthouse and state historic park.

The road descends in to Benson. Huge mini storage. The San Pedro River.

Sign: Spur Western Wear.

The AM radio is still on and has sunk into right wing hate talk. They’re offering guns as prizes. Defend your family. Win elite guns.

We’re gaining height again. With a 75mph speed limit, the road is a new hell of trucks. It is an endless chain of these lumbering transporters hauling things to and fro across this immense network of roads. The trains are out there, too. So many of them, double stacked with containers.

The scale of American consumerism is demonstrated all around us.

We keep trying to find our place amid the jostling trucks. Over dry creeks, mountain passes, and great straight open roads.

The landscape changes again. Prickly pears suddenly cover the mountain slopes.

We cross a bridge and, eek, that’s a huge canyon down there. It's fabulous, says Bruce.

Done't look, just drive, says Sa stubbornly looking the other way.

House are appearing on hilltops.

Vinyards, buzzards, adobe architecture. We’re in Arizona.

More mountains, cactus. This is a whole new look. Just like that.

Cactus. Cactus. They are called Saguaros and, to my ear, it seemed to be pronounced Sa-wah-rosse.

Dense Saguaros forests reach up the hillsides. Verticals as I’ve never seen them. Like a crazy spiked hair style. Punk mountains.

We arrive at the outskirts of Tucson, passing a gobsmacking acreage of old planes . What? The US’s old air power all sealed up and immaculately parked, mothballed for ever and a day. Both sides of the road. Acre upon acre. The Davis Monthan air base, says Bruce casually.

Siri Google gets to work and leads us through to Tucson burbs towards our destination. I’m drinking it all in with the eye. This is beyond amazing. The world is all cactus. Adobe houses and cactus gardens. There is an absence of architectural vulgarity.

These are nature-loving people who have built in harmony with this incredible ecology. It is not a world of people with stunning arid gardens, it is a stunning arid garden with people.

With the Presidential Election only days away,

the people also are showing their colours. Unlike the New Mexicans, the Arizonans are leaning right - heavily, according to this sign.

Hah. The storms have been here ahead of us. Tucson is washed and

clean. Moving on, the storms are producing a massive rainbow above sparkling wet cacti.

By the time we pull into Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, a great big old almost bauhaus style hotel nestled against the face of the mountain, the sun blazes and then has gone.

The colour of the city turns pink and brown, a sky almost adobe-coloured in the late light.

What a beautiful place.

I think we need a drink.

Surprises of Tulsa

You can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t judge a town from first impressions.

Tulsa belies its appearance.

On initially driving around the town in search of a wine store, we found ourselves in rather down-at-heel and grim environments. Crumby neighbourhoods, a bit

threatening in that decayed urban way.

We wondered why on earth our friend Miriam would live in such a place, let alone seem so happy about it.

Visting Miriam is our mission to Tulsa.

We find her house in a very socio-economically mixed street near the downtown area.

Miriam is a paediatrician, who teaches medicine as well as practising it. Osteopathy is one of her specialties. She is an old Yale buddy of Bruce’s.

So we find her address a bit odd. But not her house, where we staying. It is an eclectica of art and slightly hippie aesthetic. It has an

above ground pool on an expansive deck out the back and a view of the river with petro-chemical plants on the other side. We sit in the sun on the deck, meet the dog and cat and listen to the birdlife. We sit in the kitchen drinking wine and nibbling Amish cheeses and we talk and talk and talk. Miriam has been diagnosed with rectal cancer. There is much to talk about as well as the good old days.

For our first night we decide to take Miriam

out for dinner so we can keep on talking and not be interrupted by the practicalities of cooking. We have a short time and we have our priorities. We are old and wise. So, as we cruise the streets, the car becomes a bubble of babble - new sights and old memories. And also news of new people Miriam would like us to meet. How to juggle the time?

We decide to have a dinner party the next night with Bruce cooking his special smothered pork.

But first, Miriam, who has taken the day off work to be with us, takes us on her official tour of her city - of her downtown area and the uptown area, the theatres, the handsome CBD streets, the river, her hospital and her

medical practice.

We have a glorious lunch in a modern cafe overlooking the river, the Octoberfest fun park, and the petrochemical plants which are very much a part of the city aesthetic - twinkling lights and beautiful by night, says Miriam.

We get to appreciate that industrial prettiness later from her back deck

- the oil refinery against the setting sun.

It is a divine, sunny day in Tulsa. The people are hospitable. The food is fresh, healthy, tasty. I purr over a seafood jambalaya and salad. It is all very civilised.

And we visit the most sublime formal gardens, the Philbrook Estate and Museum, Philbrook being a mighty Tulsa oil

magnate who created for himself a magnificent reproduction Italian villa which is now a Tulsa treasure. There is a splendid exhibition of contemporary native American-designed formal evening dress which takes the breath away. Well, not Bruce’s. He is antsy to get to the garden. And what a garden. It provides an utterly lovely walk. It must be one of the most exquisite formal gardens in the world.

It is a joyful treat, a feast for the senses. We talk to gardeners about the butterfly plants and the population of monarchs, about the future of bees in the garden and the world, about herbaceous borders.

We marvel at the perfect reflection of the villa in the great pond.

We go to a fabulous Reasor’s supermarket to buy up supplies for dinner and, while Bruce is cooking, Miriam sneaks me out to a chic fashion shopping mall looking for, and finding, black slacks I long have been fruitlessly pursuing.

Friends Diane and husband Boodi join us for dinner. They are warm and interesting Tulsa establishment. Boodi’s blood runs strong with Native American on one side and blueblood Mayflower American heritage on the other. We talk of blood and history. Bruce offers up that he is the oldest son of the oldest son of the oldest son back to an officer in the Continental Army of George Washington during the Revolutionary War, a line of descent which makes him eligible as one of the Sons of

Cincinnatti, one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. Very small. Of course, he never joined up.

Our dinner party- convivial and delicious. Bravo Bruce. And we all pile into cars with chocolates and pecan brittle to see the third US Presidential Debate.

No, incredibly, our friend Miriam does not have television.

For the last debate, we were staying with our friends in Fayetteville,

Georgia - and they did not have a television. Dan took us to his grandmother’s to watch on her telly.

Here in Tulsa, Miriam also does not watch television so is taking us to her partner Dan’s place to watch this piece of history on his telly. Dan is out of town but due back later tonight.

Dan’s place is something else. He is a collector. His large and handsome house is a magnificent and extensive museum of ethnographica, art, and collector eclectica. Wonderful touches of whimsy and originality are all over the place, including arraying his extensive tie collection as an embellishment to window curtains and amassing marbles in glass-fronted cabinets. He has a lot of marbles.

Oddly, Dan does not have the Internet. Bruce sets up his phone as a hotspot. Miriam hooks in to work on some medical notes and I hook in to participate in the Twitter discussion on the debate.

We all hate Trump and are pleased that Hillary shows an edge over him in the debate. After Diane and Boodi have gone, Dan arrives home

and takes us to a wonderful old city entre hotel, gracious in its fastidious period preservation. The foyer is most imposing. It's fashion drawcard for the millenials, however, is its swish rooftop bar where we get to see the city of Tulsa spread out and sparkling.

And so it is that we see Tulsa in the light of our friends - a place rich in theatre life, in emancipated politics and vibrant arts, excellent shopping, and historic districts going hand-in-hand with gentrification and renewal.

We give Tulsa a loving tick as we hug our host goodbye the next day, and hit the road again.

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.

Chancing upon the Trump legacy in Atlantic City.

We’re so sad to leave New York City that we leave it one day early.

Doh.

We're suffering our first disaster on this epic road trip. It is the great peril of retirement. We often don’t know what day it is.

In this case, we have juggled dates and moved from our original schedule - and then forgotten that we have done it.

Doh, again.

We do not discover our error until lunchtime - following a lovely swim at

the Gansevoort’s gorgeous rooftop pool and a pleasant drive through the Sopranos' territory of New Jersey, marshes, and oil refineries.

It’s very flat land.

As we drive past Newark Airport, planes seem to be landing on roads right beside us. Well, they are. It is just that their roads are called runways.

South West planes are painted purple, red and orange. Aerial chic or aviation garish? Such are the profundities one ponders on the road.

As we rumble through a landscape of heavy industry, the NJ motto of The Garden State seems odd. But the marshes are green and pretty and when we get onto the seven-lane Garden State Parkway, well, this is the best road in the world. If it is not, it is my favourite road in the world. It is so smooth and leafy, sleek and forest-lined. Superbly maintained. It has no trucks.

We stop at one of those massive service areas for lunch. This is not a nice one. It has burgers and hot dogs and fried chicken, junk food rampant in confusing queues. We pick up cheap and nasty hamburgers and Bruce rings his old Yale roommate, Jim in Philadelphia, to liaise our imminent meeting in Cape May.

Except that, as Jim points out, it is not imminent. It is tomorrow.

We go into a flurry of damage control.

That’s why the room staff at the Gansevoort were cleaning the room when we came down from the pool. We were not on the departure list for another day. Oh, that lovely room is still ours. Is it too far to go back?

No going back, says Bruce.

Let’s have an adventure instead.

Let’s go to Atlantic City.

I whiz into my Expedia App and see what I can find for tonight.

Look, Bruce, this old golf resort looks romantic. Shall we? Two seconds later, Expedia whizzes a confirmation into my phone and off we go.

Sucking Strepsils as we drive. We’ve managed to bring that ubiquitous New York cough with us as a souvenir.

We pay tolls to very cheerful cashiers. It would seem to be an awful job yet they are so perky. We ponder this as we drive through fascinating pine forests. They are the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

We remember scenes of them in The Sopranos.

Swamps and ponds. A sign to Little Egg Harbor.

Flat open land and a big horizon. A vast expanse. Yellow and green marshland. I love it.

We turn off to Galloway and find ourselves in big, green burbs.

And then we are at the Stockton Seaview Hotel which is set beside a golf course amid the marshes. It has a sweeping drive. It is very old-time resort grand.

Middle aged valets fall on us as we drive up and insist on unloading the luggage even when I am saying I’d rather wait until we’ve checked in. Prescient, as it turns out.

Across a vast expanse of lavish olde world lobby, I find the Reception desk and Heather who gives me the bad news. They don’t have the booking. It has not come through. I give them the Expedia reservation confirmation number.

Heather, the receptionist, says that Expedia has not sent it. No. It is not there. No, there is nothing she can do. And she won’t give us a different room because Expedia is pre-paid. Hmm. After much humming around, she promises to phone as soon as they have the room.

We have to leave the luggage with the valets.

We head off to kill time waiting for the call. We take a road to see the sea.

It turns into a rough, pot-holed dirt road through reeds to a little marshy boat ramp and a nice view of Atlantic City across the water. I get out of the car to take a photo. A couple of desultory seagulls are hanging out there, along with a lot of vicious biting flies. I get back in the car.

We decide to take the plunge and drive into Atlantic City itself.

The road is appalling. There are

great windmills and several spectacular buildings, a glorious golden round one called Bongok. Billboards all along the road proclaim the Trump Taj Mahal. Lucie Arnaz is promoted in concert. Lucille Ball’s daughter. How interesting.

There’s a huge white elephant on the road into Atlantic City. Another promotion for the Trump joint. It towers on the horizon.

We drive through some scruffy backstreets looking for the famous boardwalk.

Now we’re passing the entrance to the Taj Mahal. And, what’s this? Industrial action? It is surrounded by strikers, all in red shirts and waving placards declaring that they are being denied their proper work conditions.

Well, this is a big red flag to an old journo bull.

Finding a street carpark, we head off the meet the strikers.

It is meltingly hot.

Many of them are sitting on a low wall while others take turns at the active picketing. I sit

down with the most articulate of them. A lovely African American fellow who worked in one of the casino’s restaurants as a baker. He told of cut hours, no holidays, overwork, underpay, insecure conditions with no contracts. The casino does not belong to Trump any more. It was sold off after bankruptcy. But he did give contracts to his workers.

The strikers ask us to report on what things are like inside the casino. Since we are going in there for a snoop anyway, we agree.

It is fairly quiet inside. But, oh, so huge and glittering. I never saw so many chandeliers. I never saw such big chandeliers.

A few croupiers are at tables. But there are scores and scores of tables. So much gambling real estate. And, oh, the slot machines!

Pokies….acres of them. I mean acres. Very few people playing them. It is like a winking, blinking, bright electric wilderness.

We walk seemingly for miles inside the casino, exploring the upstairs arcades and the restaurants. The upstairs corridor is like a long, carpeted street, so long and hollow that a lonely security guard is patrolling it by Segway.

There are restaurants with big Closed signs. There's a theatre. Of course, that is where Lucie Arnaz will perform. Dark now, of course. She is not billed for months yet. Finally, we potter out and report in to the strikers. They say Tuesdays are usually slow, anyway.

And we move on to take a walk on the famous Atlantic City boardwalk.

It is ghastly hot.

It is not too busy. There are lots of ticky tack shops. One after another, packed side by side.

Usually, I love ticky tack. I am a sucker for kitsch and seaside souvenirs. I am looking for a tank top.

I find not a solitary thing I would want to buy. Bruce sits in the sun while I make little forays. There are surly Indian shopkeepers at the rear

of each store. Their prices are very high and their stock is very inferior. I see a plaintive sign above one shop “American owned” and I realise that these miles of commerce are the new face of the Atlantic City boardwalk.

We return to the car and drive through the Atlantic City suburbs, which are fascinating. They extend out into another township called Ventnor. Flowering trees. Topiary.

Flags. They’re lavish homes and holiday houses reaching beyond opulence into the realms of palatial. Grotesquely fanciful. Over some immeasurable top. Oh, look into that one with the vast bay window. There’s a grand piano. The furniture is all gilded. Move over Louis XIV.

We drive down some side streets to the water and find that the marvellous boardwalk is still going. It goes all the way from Atlantic City along the coast. How superb. The beach is all swept and smooth. The sand it coarse and dirty and very, very hot. People are down near the water’s edge. I have to feel the water. Bruce does not.

The hotel still has not called. Hours have passed. We are tired and a big woggy. We really want home comforts. I call the hotel. No, no news. Nothing from Expedia. They are supposed to be sending a fax but they don’t have it. Perhaps I would like to call Expedia. This is all very odd. Expedia has been very efficient in the past. On a number of occasions I have had the impression that hotels do not like it very much and do not give its customers the best treatment, but Expedia, along with booking.com, have been exemplary. A fine service for the traveller.

I try to call. I get through to an Australian number and am presented with a lot of options to key in. I realise that the confirmation number is in the phone and I am on the phone. I hang up to access the number. Then I ring the hotel number by mistake and speak to a man who says Heather has gone home and, yes, he has the booking and the room is ready.

Relief.

We hurtle back to the hotel.

It is a very faded grandeur old thing. The lobbies are expansive and one has to cross several to reach the reception desk. We check in and the valet brings our luggage and escorts us to the room - which is a long way. This place is immense.

No, he can’t take the loaded luggage trolley into the room. He has to unload in the hall and bring everything in piece by piece. There is a lot of it, since the overkeen valets had zealously unloaded everything from the car.

This is quite a performance. I note that the room smells very musty and that the beds are a bit dishevelled.

Looks like someone was sitting there, says the valet as he disappears down the hall. Er, yes. And there is stuff in the bins. And the soap is unwrapped.

I call reception.

We’ll send the maid. Do you want to swap.

Look at all the luggage, mutters Bruce. Too hard. The maid arrives and flurries around sprucing the room.

The room otherwise is OK. It is a decent two double bed room. Not much of a view.

But it is just one night.

We make the most of it.

It does smell musty, though. I spray with Fabreeze and Lysol airfresh.

I travel with an armoury of fragrances since I have an annoyingly sensitive sense of smell. It runs in my mother’s bloodline with our super-smeller schnozzles affectionately known from her family name as “Hutton buttons”.

We have booked a table downstairs, thinking with all the sporty seniors we see going to and fro in the lobbies that we will need a reservation. When we get down, the grand dining room is a sea of beautifully-set tables, but it is not in use. We are directed to the bar grill where an older wait person is loudly apologising to a diner for serving him an undercooked burger. Hmm.

A beautiful young African American girl shows us to a corner table where we have a good view of the room. I order a dry martini. It has been a jangling day.

We watch the older waiter thundering about the place. Shades of Fawlty Towers. He was not born for this job. He is loud and anxious. Our lovely laid-back girl, on the other hand, might well have another job. She tends to us in sporadic cheerful visits from somewhere behind the scenes. The food is pretty good and we are enjoying the theatre of this high-ceilinged wood-pannelled room. There are wonderful old 1940s menus from the hotel’s heydays on the wall. Grand old days when a lobster thermidor cost $4 and Eastern Diamondback turtle was featured on the menu. We imagine the elegant New Yorkers converging here on rich and chic sporting vacations, dressing expensively for every activity. The downstairs dining rooms, lobbies, parlours seem drenched in redolent spirit.

We go naughty and order the chef’s dessert assortment and swoon for a while. Lovely. The waitress has vanished again. The old chap is thumping dangerously about with trays and serving tables, a teatowel over his shoulder.

It has been such a pleasant sojourn that I am quite taken-aback in rediscovering the musty smell of our room.

Bruce is not worried by it. It’s not dangerous, Sa. It is just damp. It is not mould. You’ll get used to it. It is way too hard to change rooms now.

He just wants to hit the pit. He is out like a light in minutes.

I do more air spraying and stay up watching TV and writing. Ugh, that smell.

I get into the bed and try to snuggle up. Something is wrong. I can’t warm the feet. They feel clammy. Damp? Oh, this bed is somehow just cold and strangely moist. The musty smell seems to be coming from under it. I get my travel quilt and sarong and make myself a bed on top of the bed. Ugh, that smell. The New York cough stirs up to meet it.

It is the night from hell. At about 3am, in desperation I take an emergency sleeping pill.

Thank heavens the morning is sunny and the hotel has a wonderful old swimming pool.

Sun and swim cures all things, raises the spirits. We enjoy the faded grandeur of the hotel once again and loll about for as long as we can before succumbing to the compulsory services of the hotel’s pushy old valet. It is a full service hotel, he explains. We do everything for you.

I tell the reception desk that the room they allocated to us is uninhabitable and they need to strip it and renovate. They seem indifferent.

Well, says Bruce, you can’t say it wasn’t an adventure.