Backpacking USA Coast to Coast

 

Upon retiring I have been toying with the idea of backpacking the USA from coast to coast. My backpacking trip would start from San Francisco on the west coast, heading south to New Orleans and San Antonio, and then heading north towards Washington DC and New York and ending up in Boston. The plan became a reality last year in a month long road trip by self-drive, train and buses.

The starting point of my backpacking trip was idyllic city of San Francisco that gave me a good introduction to the US. The very next day upon arrival I savoured this beautiful city with renowned landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the sprawling Chinatown and the Fishermen’s Wharf with its never ending street shows. I got the impression that nobody seemed to be working, but living to the American ideal of pursuing happiness and liberty. Yet this city is the most important financial and technological centre of the US.

Moving on within the US has been a breeze with the help of long distance express buses and trains. That’s how I travelled to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, St Bernardino, Phoenix and Santa Fe before crossing the continent  down south to San Antonio and New Orleans . I didn’t miss the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam, driving there all the way from Las Vegas
.

Each of these cities is special in their own character especially San Antonio and New Orleans. San Antonio is a city uniquely built on river sides where the city life revolves and tourists flock to enjoy the boat cruise, the restaurants’ cuisine and the riverbank street walk. New Orleans started as a French city with a peculiar colonial architecture and buskers performing streets shows. The street artists performed their art for the love of it and this is the trade they live for their whole life. This is the place where jazz music was born and indeed its airport is named Louis Armstrong International Airport.

The gems of the US cities are Washington DC, New York and Boston. These cities had too much to offer that I found the two weeks I spent in the three cities were just fleeting by. Among other things, Washington DC has so many museums and they are all free. Despite the extensive underground network serving the city, I had to do lots of legwork in the gardenlike historical monuments like The Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, the White House  and many more. I spent a lot of time in front of the White House seeing the antics of the demonstrators expressing their causes, after all this is America, the epitome of democracy .Then there is New York with its Ground Zero, Times Square  the underground rail network and its cosmopolitan people on the streets. My last city was Boston,  where i  roamed about the ivy league campuses of MIT and Harvard, the institutions that make America great.

Travelling this way made me learn quite a bit about America through meeting its people and observing the way they live their lives. The US is a big country with diversity in its people, culture and even dialect between the west coast, the east coast and the south. On the surface of it, the West Coast people are more relaxed with strangers and the East Coast people more reserved. Overall I can say that the Americans are helpful lots offering unsolicited assistance to strangers who appeared to be lost. The service level given by service providers is high and they seem guanine to assist customers.

 As a senior person i got many privileges in public facilities and assistance even from some 
intimidating looking punk. Travelling around the US has been made very easy because many things like ticket and hotel bookings are on line and most purchases are cashless. I had visited some of the US cities some 30 ago, when the downtowns were neglected, dirty, high crime areas and were lived by the poor. Not now anymore, for the downtowns within the cities have transformed to be very modern and hype. In New York I stayed in Harlem, once a notorious crime hotspot, but I didn’t encounter any bad experience in its subways or streets even at night. What surprised me most was that there were a few madrassa and halal food joints in Harlem.

Even though I travelled from coast to coast stopping in most of its major cities, I didn’t feel I had seen enough of the US. I am planning another similar trip to the US to its Midwest states and other places I missed during my last trip.