USA
We love:
The size of the parking spaces – Picar fits perfectly!
Walmart: free overnight camping, free wifi and 30c coke cans (for our nightly brandy and coke) – you can’t beat it!
Park rangers. The volunteers and the career ones; with such a cool hat and working in such beautiful places, they’ve taught us heaps, have always been so friendly and patient and have inspired the kids!
National parks - no need to justify, they’ve been spectacular and the campfires have been the stuff of storybooks. Our top 5: Yellowstone, Arches, Glacier, Bryce & Grand Canyon (North Rim).
State or National Forests: You can mostly camp there for free as long as you are not near a main road.
Jackson Hole: Lovely town south of Grand Teton (the rodeo show was awesome – see video)
Nice scenic roads (outside National Parks): they are too many to be named but to list just a few: South of Glacier NP, West of Idaho, Most of Utah, Big Sur coastline, North of San Francisco
Pumpkin spice latté (coffee, pumpkin and spices in cup – delish!)
Pie crusts – instant pies. The crust already moulded into the tin – ready-to-bake, and when it’s finished, you don’t even need to wash any dishes!
We love less:
Walmart – we’re not actually sure if those waxy apples really came from a tree, or if there was any cow in those steaks we bought…
Pumpkin spice latté – seriously? We knew Americans loved pumpkin and spice a lot, and it might be Halloween, but ruining a good expresso with that?
Their inability to understand Pippa’s accent – and their frequent inquiring – “Are you German?”
That American A4 paper size is not the same as European. We have to cut 0.8cm of each page for it to fit the kids folders… guess we should have figured everything was bigger here!
Awful roads of California. Honestly the wealthiest of the American states can do better with its motorways: I haven’t seen bigger pot holes anywhere else but in Cuba !
