‘Two cultures divided by a common language’ is often used to describe the UK/US relationship. So far we’ve spent most of our six years overlanding in countries with cultures and languages obviously very different to our own. But Americans speak our language, so overlanding USA would be familiar, right? Well, yes… and no. During our ‘rona virus stay-cation in the Yukon, Canada, we’ve been taking a look back over our time in the good ol’ US of A.

This isn’t an attempt at deep and meaningful analysis (yawn) but a few things caught our attention over our six months and 23,000km across south and west USA. So here goes: five observations from a British couple overlanding USA.

1. Big Food Culture

First, to state the glaringly obvious… the USA is BIG. But ‘big’ isn’t merely an issue of geographical size, it’s one of diversity too: we saw significant changes in culture, people and food along the way. The chick’n-fried-beef of Texas (in fact, anything fried in Texas) gave way to the crawfish pie of Louisiana, to the vegan falafel salad wraps of Oregon (all equally delicious btw😋).

BIG is also an issue of food portions. Jeeeze! Pizzas, burgers, sodas, whatever and wherever… all ‘supersized’. The delicious ‘all American’ breakfasts in diners are awesome, but they are so enormous we normally order one to share. If we could just add a small (British biased) footnote to the great American breakfast: maple syrup does not belong on eggs, hash-browns and bacon. Ever. Just sayin’ 😉  

BIG also applies to some of the people. The USA is by no means alone in undergoing an obesity crisis, but it is perhaps easier to see here how it has come about. Take the Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo for instance: where else in the world would you be able to order a 72oz steak in a restaurant and get it for free if you can eat it all (plus a baked potato, a salad, bread roll and 6 fried prawns) in one… yes one single hour? This is a rare case of extraordinary gluttony at which even local Texans marvel, but it goes to show how Americans like to supersize and ‘go big’ with their food.

2. People Culture

In almost all 48 countries we have travelled on this trip, the people have been the best asset. We weren’t sure what to expect in USA, but hot diggity you ‘mercans are awesome!! What a fabulous welcome we had there. By comparison with UK, without a shadow of a doubt, the USA wins hands-down… with bells on. In fact, with an orchestral virtuoso of jingle bells on.

We challenge anyone to bring us an example of an American overlanding in UK, receiving the consistently warm welcome that we received across the USA. We can confidently bet, without fear of losing a dime, that no American (or overlander of any other nationality for that matter) ever received in UK the numerous invitations that we have received in the US. People invited us into their homes for drinks, meals, assistance, showers, laundry, beds for the night. Total strangers either following us on social media, or just seeing us in the street, went out of their way to make us welcome. Our first state, Texas started off exceptionally well in this regard, but that is not to dismiss other states. Oregon and Washington were awesome and gave Texas a run for its money in the friendly hospitality stakes. Thank you, people of the USA. You peeps are the best!

3. Language Culture

Ah, the language thing: “You say potato…” and all that. The British journalist Jon Sopel hit the nail on the head in the title of his book: ‘If only they didn’t speak English’ – the premise being that if we didn’t speak the same language, we wouldn’t have the expectation of matching cultures.

We speak the same language, but we do get the occasional look of utter bewilderment when we open our mouths… “Y’all from Australia???”. Or our absolute favourite: “Ya’ll driving that doomsday vee-hikle out there?”. Reminding ourselves of a few basic alternate nouns helps everyday life: an American ‘tap’ won’t help us to fill our water tank. Luckily, our key essentials like wine, beer, chocolate and cake are all the same (even if Marcus’ language to describe many of the US micro-brewery beers could only be translated into American in adult company). 

4. RV Culture

The USA has a huge culture of huuuge RVs (for Brits, think the kind of mobile palace in which you might find Tom Cruise on a film set). The number of enormous RVs on the road (40ft long is not unusual) has really blown us away. And they’re not just long. We have gawped in astonishment at the width: they extend the sides horizontally on slide-out systems, giving them double the original width.  These people really know how to do a home away from home! RVs here are sometimes so huge, they’re limited on where they can drive or park, so they tow a smaller vehicle behind the RV to use when they park-up. Some of them tow boats too.

Some of these domestic RVs are far larger than many commercial trucks or buses, but it seems they can legally be driven with only a normal car driving licence. Many drivers freely admit they’re incapable of manoeuvring in a space smaller than a football field, so RV parks offer ‘drive-through’ spaces. This allows RVs to drive forwards into and out of the spaces, avoiding the need to reverse at any time. At sometimes as much as $20 per night extra on top of the regular campsite price, it would be highly advantageous for them to learn to reverse, but no.

Whilst we’re on the subject of RVs, it might be a good time to digress slightly for a quick rant: if there one teeny little complaint we have about overlanding USA, it’s those dreadful, featureless, soulless RV parks with their full-hook-up concrete park spots set rigidly row after row, each site little more than inches from the next. For this dubious pleasure one can expect to pay upwards of US$40 per night and often much more. Are UK sites any better? Probably not much. But this type of US RV park is still our least favourite part of overlanding USA and we refused to use them. Rant over.

5. Drive-thru Culture

Back to the subject of RV drive-through camp spots, we noticed a significant economy has emerged in the USA around the whole ‘drive-thru’ concept. Yeah, we know, drive-thru fast-food has been around for many years. Even in sleepy little England you can get a McDonalds thrown through your car window by a spotty youth with a 5-star badge. But you can get almost anything on a drive-thru basis in USA. Pharmacies are popular, off-licences (sorry… liquor stores), banks/ATMs, and particularly in the north west, drive-through coffee huts are everywhere. There’s rarely a reason to get off your backside and actually walk to get something. Unless, like us, you drive a 3.3m high camper-truck in which case you don’t fit under the drive-thru canopies 😊.

So those are the five cultural observations of overlanding USA that stuck in our minds. We could probably come up with a few more, but one thing we know for sure… we would faaar rather overland USA in our Cuthbert than overland UK, any day of the week, any week of the month, any month of the year. What’s wrong with overlanding UK? Well that’s another story…

Click here for our Overlanding USA blog and our detailed route-map USA