"...no freedom without slavery"

Well, here we are into our last days in the States, indeed the last days of our world tour. We’ve driven the US coast to coast, covering over 7000 miles (and counting), travelled through 20 states. Lately, sat in the car day after day has lost some of its magic. Quite frankly, in places it’s dull, and if we’re going to suffer this then so are you. So, some history…

In 1649 Charles I of England carelessly ended up on the losing side in the English civil war, thus losing both the throne and his head. After eleven years of messing around with the somewhat outdated (yet strangely prescient) concept of republicanism they decided that monarchy wasn’t actually all that bad an institution, so they dumped stuffy old Cromwell and got a new King. After all that fighting, and with not so much as a single Christmas under the killjoy parliamentarians, they were obviously a bit pooped and couldn’t think of a decent name for the new monarch, so they simply used the old name and added a ‘II’ on the end. As a reward to some of his supporters during this difficult period, King Charles II granted them land in the new world which, being loyal servants who also couldn’t think of anything more imaginative, they named after the new King. Thus were the origins of Charleston, the coastal settlement in what was to become the state of South Carolina.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years (conveniently skipping that revolution spat they had in 1776), and Charleston’s affinity for internecine strife surfaces again. With a strong agrarian economy only made possible by slavery, South Carolina objected fiercely to the election of the anti-slavery president Lincoln in 1860. A pro-slavery advocate even went so far as to claim, curiously enough (and I would have loved to understand his thinking on this one) that “There can be no freedom without slavery”, so dearly held was the institution of slavery to the south. Out of the pram went the toys, along with the state’s membership of the United States. It was in Charleston that the state legislature declared their secession from the Union, the first state to declare its independence from the still young USA. Four months or so later, with South Carolina now joined by the rest of the deep south states and constituting themselves as the Confederate States of America, it was in South Carolina that the gloves came off. The local militia opened fire on, besieged, and soon captured Fort Sumter which stands at the entrance of the inlet where Charleston is located. From there on it turned ugly and descended into fisticuffs.

Today Charleston is a charming city that displays its colonial roots beautifully, and a welcome relief it is too from the characterless strip malls and roadside motels that have marked our progress eastwards to the coast. It is also home to the retired aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, veteran warrior of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. This ship is of course named after the Virginian town where the British surrendered to the revolutionary army under Washington, aided by those pesky French. We had the opportunity to visit the town of Yorktown on our way through Virginia, but being the loyal subjects we are we gave it a miss. Far better was the nearby Jamestown, named after yet another English monarch, and the location of the first permanent English settlement in what eventually became (thanks to the incompetent Cornwallis, the lucky Washington and his pesky French allies) the USA. Whilst today people might know more about Pocahontas who was an original native of this area it’s actually quite fascinating to stand on the shore and imagine that 399 years ago 104 Englishmen landed here from three ships little larger than weekend yachts and built a settlement, and subsequently a super power, out of nothing. Now that is travelling.

We had travelled up through the Carolinas and Virginia from Orlando Florida, perhaps the only remaining British colony in the Americas, or so one might think to listen to the myriad British accents in the hotel we stayed at. We were there to experience the delights of Disney World, but being too old and childless we went for the more respectable alternative of Universal Studios. At $25 each it would have been a reasonable day out, but for that price we would have to have stuck out a 90 minute time share hard sell. Our time here is limited and not for sale. The attractions rest on dated films, the oldest being Jaws, which was closed anyway due to the afternoon thunderstorms. Some thrills were had with the Terminator 2 3-D show and the ever dependable Back to the Future ride, whilst the Shrek 4-D experience, complete with seat back water sprays for extra effect was charming enough, but at $67 the cost/reward ratio was seriously out of whack.

Our trans-American journey revealed to us the full extent of our incompetence when it comes to planning things. We could have watched the shuttle lift off, but instead we just missed a big firework display. We left Memphis at the beginning of the long July 4th weekend. Fearing that the occasion would deprive us of free and easy access to hotel accommodation we booked ahead for a room in Atlanta Georgia for the 3rd and 4th, leaving us two days to travel the few hundred miles there. There were a couple of reasons for wanting to linger in Alabama. We hadn’t seen much of it so far, it was the location of the (mythical as it turns out) town where Forrest Gump lived, and there was a lake that looked, on paper at least, like a decent place to hang out. So, entertaining ourselves with a recital of the many ways in which to prepare a shrimp meal we journeyed to the town of Gadsden in north eastern Alabama. We were actually aiming for one of the towns that lay on the shore of Lake Weiss, but wouldn’t you know it, all of the somewhat limited accommodation in these was fully booked. Now Gadsden, nice as it is, does not appear in many tourist guides that we’ve read. We pretty much hung out there killing time until we could move onto Atlanta.

Atlanta is a peach of a city, almost literally. Look at a street map of the place and you’ll find over 100 street names with “Peachtree” featured somewhere. On arrival we headed straight for the Coke museum where C could indulge her quite frankly compulsive obsession with all things Coca Cola. We chose Atlanta to spend the 4th July because I had heard somewhere that after being on the wrong side of the civil war, and having been put to the torch as a result, it refused to celebrate this event until the allied victory in WWII. It seemed as fitting a place as any for a couple of Brits to lie low whilst the locals celebrated their victory over us. We in fact lay so low that we spent the day in bed, not getting up until it was time to venture down to the Centennial Olympic Park to watch the firework display there. We milled around with half the population of the city it seemed, trying to look American and regretting that we were a couple of only a handful not wearing T-shirts that featured the stars and stripes in some manner. The beer tent made our day by demanding proof of age before they would serve us, though they served us anyway when C couldn’t produce any. Eventually a band came on to entertain the crowds as a preliminary to the display, and about twenty minutes later the rain started falling. Almost immediately and almost as one the crowds got up and started pegging it for shelter whilst the band promptly packed up. “Bunch of wusses” we thought, letting a few drops of rain interfere with such a patriotic display. We were Brits after all, our blood runs thick with rainwater, we’ll stand here and show them. Two minutes later we were stood under a tree (good spot to choose, I think you’ll agree, when there’s lightning in the area), wrapped in bin liners we’d scrounged off the event staff, watching half of the Atlantic ocean dumping itself on downtown Atlanta. The skies were lit up regularly by lightning and thunder cracked (“cracked”? - that word does not do it justice, it exploded!) overhead. It was the tornado warning that made us fully realise the intensity of the situation and we joined the rest of the crowds heading for home through a rapidly flooding city. They let off the fireworks the following night, but we’d already left for Florida by then, ending up in Cocoa Beach, just down the road from Cape Canaveral where, if we hadn’t been seduced by the thought of a few fireworks and implicit anti-British sentiments, we could have witnessed the July 4th lift-off of the shuttle. And that is why it’s good to plan things.

Wandering around the visitor facilities at Cape Canaveral is a fascinating experience, though the use of the term ‘spaceport’ (as in ‘the world’s first spaceport’) would be more effective for us if we could actually book a ride into orbit. It is amazing to see the first American rockets and awe inspiring to fully appreciate that in order to get a man into space they strapped what is effectively a tin can to the top of a nuclear missile and lit the fuse. What a ride that must have been. Later advances saw the development of the purpose built Saturn rockets, and the last of these, the Saturn V which propelled the Apollo program is impressively huge. Of course, the exhibits included details of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, and there are many souvenirs in the gift shop adorned with the phrase “Failure is not an option”. We studied them at leisure from the lengthy checkout queues whilst the staff ran around trying to fix the tills which had just failed.

Our last stop before this nation’s capitol was Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where we were able to stand on the site of the world’s first airport. As a lapsed pilot (and believe me the skies are a lot safer now that my only place in them is in seat 34K, worryingly distant from the nearest emergency exit), it was a cool place, though somewhat minimalist for such an immense feat.

And now we’re in Washington DC. We’re staying at the Watergate hotel. Well, we had to really. Where else would a Nixon stay? I think that enough time has passed since British troops set fire to the city and gutted the White House, forcing the president's wife at the time to flee with the nation's silver, so we should be OK here.

Oh well, this is the last blog we’ll write. I can hear the cheers. In a few days we’ll be back home. I was going to end with some stats, but pretty much we’ve…
Circumnavigated the globe;
Crossed the international dateline;
Crossed the equator twice;
Crossed international borders at least 29 times;
Set foot on 6 of the world's 7 continents.

For C this trip means that she has visited every continent on the planet, 2 of them for the first time. For me, I went to 3 new continents and need only a trip to Africa to get the set.

Not too shoddy at all.

For friends and family we hope these journals have kept you in touch. For everyone else, thanks for stopping by, we hope you’ve been entertained, perhaps even inspired. Thanks finally to Travelblog for providing a great service.

Now we have to start thinking about getting jobs. Oh well, there’s no freedom without slavery.

P.S. (24/07/06)
We snapped 5271 pictures, a statistic which should have friends and family running for the hills.

We travelled through all these States...

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