20 reasons why we'll all return to America when this is finally over
When will we all travel again? It’s the million-dollar question. Actually, a million dollars doesn’t sound that much these days (although, obviously, it’s isn’t a small amount either), but the dollar is the correct currency for this feature, as it’s all about the USA - that big, brash, belligerent, bemusing, bravado-soaked, brilliant cousin of ours across the Atlantic.
Will we want to go back when the pandemic has eased? Yes. For many, many reasons. So many that limiting this list to 20 feels like cutting short a fascinating conversation. Still, for the sake of brevity, let’s stick to that number. And let’s be optimistic. As with previous articles in this series (on France, Portugal, Spain and Italy), this piece takes a positive tone - which is why it includes events happening later this year. Hope springs eternal, etc.
1. It bounces back
It does. It’s an American specialism. No country is better at picking itself up, dusting itself off, running through another two or three Western movie clichés, and carrying on. Pick any US tragedy of relatively recent history - let’s say 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, to choose just two - and the response is the same. Honour the dead, ensure they are remembered, build a museum, and get back to life. New York is one of the epicentres of the current crisis - as it was in September 2001. It hasn’t forgotten what happened on that early autumn day, but it hasn’t let the scars stop it continuing as the great, grumpy, glorious metropolis it has always been. The same will certainly apply post-Covid-19 too.
2. New York City!
Let’s stay in the Big Apple for a moment. It will at the top of many people’s to-visit lists when restrictions are lifted. As well it should be. In an era when it has become trickier to see the world, you can see the world by going to New York. Just about every culture and community is alive and well there. Fancy an evening of Korean-Vietnamese fusion food, Mexican cocktails, and dancing to banging Chilean music in a late-night bar with an unmarked door? NY says “yes you can. And I know where we can get sushi afterwards.”
3. World-class museums
Lingering in New York for a moment longer, this year marks the 150th birthday of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org) - which opened its doors in 1870. Recent events have rather done for the anniversary celebrations, but the Met will still be there in healthier times. As will the Smithsonian museums (si.edu) in Washington DC, and fabulous galleries from the Perez Art Museum (pamm.org) in Miami to the Seattle Art Museum (seattleartmuseum.org) away on the opposite side of the country. In short, if it’s an American city, it has splendid stuff to look at when it’s raining. And even when it isn’t.
4. Multiple personalities
Fifty of them, to be precise - each an entity with its own identity. The name on the gate may say the “United States of America”; the reality is anything but. Not “disunited”, per se - but certainly different. What do California and Iowa have in common? Nebraska and Indiana? Oklahoma and Vermont? Not a great deal, all told. But that’s the joy of it. One country, numerous quirks and idiosyncrasies - and a lifetime of journeys, if you so wish.
5. It’s election year
Either a good or a bad reason to visit, depending on your perspective - and whether you like the current guy (whatshisface), or prefer the chap who wants to replace him (whatshisname). The point is that the USA really comes alive in the months when there are votes to be bagged and jobs in Washington to be won. The Race For The White House is a topic that zings in coffee shops, in supermarket queues and on news channels. Of course, you may hate all things political. In which case 2021 - when the whole he-said-he-said-you’re-fake-news bonanza will be done for a while - will also be a fair year to go.
6. Good bad food
You can dine fabulously in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and any other US city which considers itself a beacon of civilisation. You can eat really badly as well. But not in a bad way. You want grub that will harden your arteries and swell your waistline? Great. Then let’s head to Pennsylvania for a Philly Cheesesteak (slivers of fried beef, onions and lots of fromage in a bread roll), Tennessee for funnel cakes (great piles of batter for those who think a doughnut is health food) and New Orleans for shrimp and grits (an entirely stodgy cornmeal mash). Look, we’ve just had a pandemic - we’ll count the calories later.
7. Diner culture
OK, it’s not that no other country has ever noticed the joys of sitting around in a cafe, “wasting” an hour or two over caffeine and conversation. The French have definitely figured it for a good thing, the Italians seem to have cottoned on, the Spanish can take whole afternoons over it. But there is something splendid and of-its-kind about the classic American diner experience. The long reinforced-plastic seats and booth tables, the myriad options for ordering eggs, the way the server comes and tops up your coffee without you asking them to. It makes Mr Pink’s notorious rant at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs - about not tipping the staff - all the more wrong (though great performance, Mr Buscemi).
8. Glorious denial
Has there been a pandemic? Really? Once things have slipped back towards normality (and assuming the relevant medical terms and conditions can be met), nowhere will carry on quite like Covid-19 was a fever dream - the consequence of too many rough tequilas and a cold 4am pizza - quite like Las Vegas. Business will be back, back, baby. Roulette wheels will whirr. Mortgages will be wagered and lost. A pop star who was popular in the Noughties will lip-synch through a few half-remembered ballads in a large room. The next century could bring World Wars Three through to Seven, and Vegas would still be alive in the radioactive dust, the clowns at Circus Circus flapping about in their big shoes.
9. Endearing self-reverence
Every country thinks far more of itself and its various “achievements” than the rest of the world does (hi there Britain) - but the US takes it to an art-form. Everything is bigger, better, sharper and more sophisticated than everything anywhere else. Witness The Alamo in San Antonio. Pay semi-attention to the pomp and circumstance with which its story is reheated, and you’d think it was an enormous fortress where a great victory was achieved. Only when you see it do you realise it’s a small mission church and, erm, the Mexicans won (the battle, if not the war). Still, self-confidence is both infectious and seductive. It’s one of the reasons Americans and Britons love each other. More tea and chit-chat about George Washington kicking George III’s butt? Don’t mind if we do, vicar.
10. Enormous national parks…
It’s not just that the likes of the Wrangell-St Elias and Denali National Parks safeguard pristine expanses of glaciers and mountains in Alaska - it is that they are practically countries in their own right as they do so. Wrangell-St Elias, in particular, is colossal - the largest national park in the system, at just over 13,000 square miles in area. Were it actually a country, it would be the 135th largest on the planet, bigger than each of Belgium, Belize, Albania, Rwanda, Fiji and Israel. Of course, you don’t need to go to the far north to find special spaces of this size. Though not quite as extensive as their Alaskan colleagues, the likes of Yellowstone (predominantly in Wyoming), Yosemite (California) and Grand Canyon (Arizona) National Parks are also vast - and decidedly easier to reach.
11. …and fascinating smaller ones
Size isn’t everything. The more diminutive US national parks are also amazing. In fact, peer at the list of the 10 smallest parks in the system, and you will spot two absolute jewels. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado is every bit as dramatic as its Arizona colleague - but far less thronged with visitors. Pinnacles National Park, which frames eroded portions of an extinct volcano, is just as worthy of your time as the other protected spaces of California. It’s close to the Salinas Valley, near San Jose. Easy.
12. Volcanoes
Did somebody say volcanoes? As befits a country which likes stuff that goes “boom” and “bang”, America has some of the largest and most photogenic. Sure, Japan and Indonesia can boast a few of them, and Italy has a famous one which did something destructive to a Roman city once upon a time - but American fire-mountains seem to have an extra profile and pep. Mount Katmai gets its own national park in Alaska. So does Crater Lake in Oregon - even though the lake and the caldera that contains it are all that really remains of Mount Mazama, which blew its top so conclusively 7,700 years ago that it effectively obliterated itself. And Hawaii is festooned with the things. The archipelago’s Big Island is practically one large ball of spewing lava, where Mauna Loa and Kilauea hold court. Kilauea last belched in 2018. You need to stand well back to watch it - but what a show.
13. Skiing
Not all American mountains burst with flame and molten rock. Plenty of them are really accomplished at snow, ice and slippery slopes. You can ski in Colorado - at the likes of Aspen, Winter Park, Telluride and Crested Butte. So too in Wyoming, at Jackson Hole and Grand Targhee. Less known is that you can ski in New Hampshire, Vermont, New Mexico and Arizona. And Alaska. But you’d probably guessed that you can ski in Alaska.
14. Wine
Sure, California makes most of it, and sends plenty of bottles to your local supermarket. But several states are very good at fettling grapes. Washington, up in the north-west, is - perhaps surprisingly - the second biggest producer (admittedly only four per cent of the total, compared to California’s 89), followed by New York. But you can source fine drops of red and white across the country - in Oregon, Virginia, North Carolina and even Texas.
15. Big sports
Few places will be feeling the shutdown of sporting activity quite like America, where the slam-dunk, the home-run and the touchdown are fundamental parts of daily existence. The 2021 Super Bowl (“Super Bowl LV”, if you want to refer to it as the Americans do, or as Roman centurions surely would have done had the sport been played in the time of Caligula; plain old “Super Bowl 55” if you don’t) will take place in Tampa on February 7. Florida sunshine AND beefy gentlemen slamming into each other. What is not to like?
16. Delayed gratification
If only the Plymouth Pilgrims had had the foresight not to schedule their world-changing voyage for a precise four centuries before a global pandemic was due to strike. If only they had been more diligent in packing the Mayflower. Provisions - check. Bibles - check. Pocket 2020 diary - sorry, must have left it on the dock. Doubt it’ll be an issue. Still, the 400th anniversary celebrations - centred on the day of the landing, November 9 1620 - may still go ahead (see plymouth400inc.org). If not, New England will be just as lovely an area of the US in 2021. And everyone knows 401st birthday parties are the best.
17. Blissful isolation
Talking of New England, its largest segment also had a few festivities planned this year. Virus-riddled it may be, but 2020 marks the 200th anniversary of Maine’s accession to statehood. Many of the planned events are on hold (see maine200.org) - although, in truth, this quiet giant of a region is at its greatest when fewer people are around. If silence is what you seek, you will find it here - along the wave-lashed rocks of the Atlantic shore, in the coves of Deer Isle, or in the forested corners of Baxter State Park. This year, next year, some time in 2027 - it doesn’t matter. Maine is an America removed from America.
18. Road trips
Route 66 is a cliché. The Overseas Highway that connects the islets of the Florida Keys is a cliché. Highway 1 along the Pacific coast of central California is a cliché. But so what? Clichés become clichés by dint of popularity, because a lot of people appreciate them. The three journeys above won’t win you any points for originality, but they will fill your cameras and social-media feeds with photographs. And if they sound a little too obvious, then there are hundreds of other road-trip options in the USA - following the Gulf coast up through Florida and along the edges of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana as far as New Orleans; State Highway 21 into the Ozark National Forest in Oklahoma; a grand circumnavigation of Lake Michigan which takes you through Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. All you need is a car. In this GPS era, you don’t even need a map.
19. Music music music
From Cobain and Hendrix in Seattle to King and Presley in Memphis via Osterberg Jr, Mathers III and Ciccone in Detroit - and the hundred-million-ish acts to have emerged on the streets of New York - almost every American city has a musical tale to tell. Enough to soundtrack, and suggest destinations for, any number of the road trips discussed in no.18.
20. Unknown cities
You think you know America’s cities. But have you been to Cincinnati, Milwaukee or Minneapolis? How about Portland, Denver or St Louis? What of San Jose, Pittsburgh or Louisville? Each is - very seriously - worth a day or two of your time When This Is Over.