Off to see America

The vastness of Monument Valley sums up the grand scale of an American road trip. Picture / Jim Eagles

A road trip is a great way to discover the strangeness and beauty of the various and very separate Americas - and you can still get kicks on Route 66.

Fans are troubling me in America. You expect it in the Monte Vista hotel in Flagstaff, however.

This character-filled landmark within whistle-blow of the Santa Fe rail line and just off Route 66 has hosted any number of famous characters, living and dead. From Zane Grey and Humphrey Bogart to John Wayne and REM's Michael Stipe, the charming Monte Vista has offered comfort and cocktails since it opened in 1927.

Some have liked the place so much they haven't left, such as the phantom bellboy who knocks on doors, the ghostly woman in the rocking chair in 305 (who was featured on Unsolved Mysteries) and the transparent couple who occasionally dance in the cocktail lounge.

Which may explain my trouble with a fan. We'd been in our room for about 10 minutes and the fan started unexpectedly. It was kinda spooky. And it wasn't the first troubling fan we'd encountered.

My wife Megan and I are on a two-month road trip across America from LA to NYC, with digressions through New Mexico, the most deserted parts of Texas and the steamy parts of the South. Already, just 10 days in, we have run headlong into the strangeness and beauty of the various and separate Americas. And worrying fans.

Back in Los Angeles, we amble along Sunset Strip after a drink at the beautiful art deco Argyle hotel with its view across this sprawling city.

At the once-notorious Whiskey-A-Go-Go (no smoking now of course, this is California) we catch the tail end of Wild Child, a Doors covers band. Seeing this alarmingly exact replication of the band, which made its name in places such as this, is also kinda spooky. But the disorienting fear factor sets in back at the hotel.

With images from Fallujah on television and the Doors' The End still ringing in my head I finally figure out the fan, turn it on and fall back on the bed: The End, war images and helicopters, a spinning fan ... I am in someone else's movie.

It's an interesting time to be in America in the Apocalypse Now age of Iraq and with Bob Dylan appearing in Victoria's Secrets commercials your gyroscope gets a little bent out of alignment.

Conversations turn to Iraq and the President (Brent in the Monte Vista bar tells me with a wink a lot of people actually voted for President Cheney) but mostly life just goes on.

Television ads in LA favour cars and how much food you can get on a platter for $5.99, and in Las Vegas, Gilley's bar still promises "Bikini Bull Riding" and "Cold Beer and Dirty Girls".

We stay first at Excalibur, which seems to have been modelled on Shrek, then at Luxor, that pyramid of excess where Ancient Egypt meets Modern Gomorrah.

From our window at the peak of the pyramid we can see just how far Las Vegas extends at this end of the Strip. About three blocks before the desert takes over.

And that is where we are headed.

Courtesy of BMW, we are driving a silver, bullet-shaped supercar. It takes us three days to figure out the radio and every time we put the car into reverse the in-vehicle radar emits warning sounds and shows on a screen scans we cannot comprehend.

But it goes forward beautifully and at great speed, two features essential when you take on the vast landscape beyond the windscreen.

We have negotiated Sunset Boulevard with ease, been slightly panicked by the hail of vehicles coming from all directions on the San Bernadino Freeway and by the arid beauty of Joshua Tree, with its strange cacti and dust-blown landscapes we have control of the steering and, just as important, the stereo. We bang in Grant Lee Phillips' Mobilize album; the chorus of the first track is "we're off to see America".

We are often taking the old roads using a National Geographic map from 1959. Before Vegas we wend through 29 Palms (we count four and twice as many dozing dogs) and then make one of those perfect mistakes on a dusty back road.

The junction sign said "Amboy straight ahead". But Amboy we know about. It's on the map.

The road less travelled to the right seems more interesting. And so for two hours we drive through a lunar landscape peppered with low scrub and shack housing.

God knows where we are - and there is no one to ask. Whoever peopled this place are either long gone (some shacks are boarded up or burned out) or hiding from the searing heat.

They were literal folk - we pass Sunmore Rd, Jackrabbit Drive and other such mundanely named dirt tracks.

After a circuit of a handsome mountain range we drop down to a dry lake bed which seems to stretch to Hollywood in one direction and Houston in the other. America is full of wow-landscapes - this is certainly one of them. And in the two hours we see only three other cars, and no one other than two kids pushing a bike up a hill.

This digression has brought us eventually to Amboy on Route 66. This famous cross-country highway may be a poor version of its former self but that doesn't put anyone off. Hundreds hire Harleys, wrap themselves in black leather and bandannas and "head out on the highway". These grey-beards and their partners (there are few under 45) swarm down Route 66 like squadrons of flies high on petrol fumes.

At Amboy we stop for gas where three beer-bellies are lounging in the shade, sipping brews and swapping stories about women who had abandoned them. One guy admires the Beemer and offers to swap his flatbed for an hour. We laugh, he repeats the offer with a slightly alarming insistence.

Time to move on, and there ain't nothin' to see at Amboy these days anyway, unless you are interested in real estate. The whole town - houses, fire station, the abandoned cafe - is for sale.

This is Route 66 today, although after Vegas on the way to Flagstaff the excellent road takes you to Peach Springs, the pretty centre of the Hualapai Reservation which runs up the edge of the Grand Canyon.

And then you travel on. We arrive in Kayenta, another wide spot on the highway, and are within minutes of Monument Valley.

We go out there the next day with sassy Barbara, whose mother is Navajo and father was Anglo. She grew up in New York, talks faster than we drive and is full of stories of Navajo history, legend and good humour.

I have my photo taken at the tree where John Wayne did his ad for Asprin just months before his death. We see where The Eiger Sanction was filmed, touch ancient petroglyphs and talk about Indian politics. It is quite a day.

But the ribbon of black highway shimmering silver in the heat stretches out before us. For a week we haven't been below 1500m and down these roads are El Paso, the biggest barbed-wire museum in the world, the flat plains of West Texas and, beyond that, Cajun country, Elvis, the sea shore near Savannah, and much more.

So we turn on the radio and pick up the country music station. Over an early-70s Stones riff the singer spins his philosophy: "God blessed Texas with his own hand, brought angels down from the promised land, showed them a place where they could dance, if you wanna see Heaven brother here's your chance ... I've been sent to spread the message. God bless Texas."

Well, we'll see.

We put the car into cruise control and watch the signs along the highway outside the window: Friendly Indians, Big Wind Sale, Adopt-A-Highway, Elevation 7000 ... And this, the most troubling of all: Room with fan.

Graham Reid is a Herald feature writer and holder of the Cathay-Pacific and Qantas newspaper travel writing awards. He is on holiday in the United States, travelling courtesy of BMW.