Well, Howdy Uncle Sam! It’s been a while. After our twenty corona virus months in Canada, the USA has finally opened the border and we’re back overlanding USA. It’s early November, winter’s a-coming, and winters are pretty harsh in these parts. So once we’re in, we’re heading westwards pronto to see a few Bucket List places before the cold pushes us south to the sunshine.

Back in the US

The whole border-crossing palaver was a bit of a strange prospect. Border crossings used to be two-a-penny for us. In places like Africa and in Central America we were doing them sometimes every few weeks zig-zagging between countries. Now we hadn’t done one for 20 months. And with it being only Day Two of the border being open again, we weren’t sure what to expect. The media were predicting queues of excited Canadian snowbirds lining up in their mega-RVs heading down to the sun for winter, and thorough covid checks/procedures to get into USA. So how did it go?

Well first, there were no queues. All US and Canadian vehicles received a cursory passport check and were waved through. As foreigners we had a few reasonable checks: fingerprints, visas, vehicle inspection etc, but as we were the only foreign vehicle there, this didn’t take long.  

In terms of covid checks, it turned out that getting into the USA was quicker and easier than getting into a restaurant in Canada (no exaggeration there folks!) US Government policy is to only allow fully vaxxed people into the country, but they never asked to see our proof of vaccination or even asked whether we were vaccinated. No testing, no checks on covid symptoms… they didn’t care. By contrast, in many provinces of Canada, cafes/restaurants and many other businesses are required by law to check vaccination certificates against a state-issued identification document before allowing entry. In Quebec they ask questions about covid symptoms. The lack of covid procedure to get into the country was a bit of a wake-up call… the USA is a different world to Canada when it comes to the ‘rona virus.

Detroit Motown

Anyway… here we are overlanding USA again, arriving in the Motown city of Detroit, Michigan. The local hero here is still, over a century after he got started, Henry Ford. Henry started his motor car construction business here in the 1920s, pioneered the assembly-line method of production and generated a whole new industry for the world. His name is everywhere and there are world-class museums dedicated to his name and legacy. It’s also possible to visit the current day assembly line of Ford F150s, but we got our timing bad on this one. We just happened to visit on Veterans’ Day when assembly workers have a day off ☹. But it was still interesting to see the plant, even if we didn’t see it in operation.

In the 1960s the city’s booming motor industry led to the equally booming music industry labelling itself ‘Motown’. There is an (allegedly) marvellous museum dedicated to the industry and iconic legends such as Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder etc, but once again we failed miserably on our timing; it’s closed for construction works ☹. Oh well… Detroit is nevertheless an interesting city to mooch around for a while, and the whacky Heidelberg Project neighbourhood is worth a wander.

What’s new USA?

Settled back into the ‘overlanding USA’ way of life in Detroit, we realised a few admin issues. First, our Huawei phones no longer work here. We have been very happy with them over the last few years. They worked fine in Canada and the last time we were in USA a couple of years ago. Not anymore. Uncle Sam has fallen out with Huawei. So an unexpected expense when we arrive here is buying new phones for USA.

Next, we realise that our credit cards are about to expire so we need to get our new cards sent by courier from UK. Seems straightforward enough, eh? But indulge us a little here whilst we digress slightly to have a moan about the shockingly bad service from DHL…

DHL promised four days to get our package from UK to USA, so we planned ahead and arranged for delivery to Elkhart, Indiana where we expect to be in four days’ time. A week later, we were still sitting in Elkhart waiting for DHL. No offence to the good people of Elkhart… it’s a nice enough place. But when you’re sat in an RV, on endless calls to DHL whilst at the same time being eager to progress with adventures across America, then the attractions are less appealing.  We’ll spare you the boring details of the catalogue of mistakes and incompetence from the DHL team, but aaarrgghh!!!

What else is new for us in USA? Well… we learned that the lack of covid procedure at the border was absolutely indicative of the general lack of awareness in the country (at least that part of the country). Life here is ‘pre-pandemic normal’. People are crammed into indoor spaces, no masks, no distancing, often no hand sanitisers… they’re just living the vida loca, coughing and spluttering all over each other. In a few places the staff are masked and public places such as museums have signs asking people to mask-up. But very few people comply voluntarily, and there is no enforcement. This is a bit of a shock to us after the extensive and enforced procedures we had become used to in Canada, but at least Walmart offers us a free booster-jab, so we’ll survive 😉.  

Motorhome Central

Whilst waiting around Elkhart, we learned that the area is ‘RV Central USA’. Over 80% of all RVs in North America (and that’s a lotta, lotta RVs, they’re very popular here) are built here in Elkhart. So they have a dedicated RV Museum. Of course they do!! It celebrates the history of this iconic symbol of mobile America. Way back in the earliest days of the motorcar, they were converting them for road-trips with fold-out beds, kitchenettes etc. The star of the show is Mae West’s 1931 motorhome in which she was driven between film sets.

RV construction methods caught our attention. Unlike our Cuthbert, which Bocklet built by constructing the box then fitting it out internally, the US RV builder first does the interior build on the chassis, then adds the external walls. The logic, they say, is that some large internal items like the refrigerator wouldn’t fit through the door if they put the walls up first. Clever, eh? But what happens if the fridge needs replacing at any point? 🤔        

Anyway… after a week waiting in Elkhart, we still have no DHL parcel and we’re impatient to move on. Fear not, says DHL customer service, we can forward it on to meet you at your next destination in three days. So we plan ahead… again.

Pushing West

Chicago, Illinois is the next big city on our west-wards route, but we can’t see much there to attract us at the moment. We’re not great city-fans and we’ve done a bit of city time recently in Detroit. So after a bit of deliberation, we decide to give Chicago a miss and skirt around the bypass. On the way we happen to pass a bit of ‘80s pop-music history: Michael Jackson’s childhood home. Back in California a couple of years ago, we came across his Neverland Estate whilst we were looking for a wild camp in the hills. So now we thought we’d do the 0.5km detour to see his original family home. Take it from us folks…. even if you’re the biggest Jacko fan, it’s not worth the 3 minutes of your life to detour off the highway.

Pushing west, we transit Illinois, cross the Mighty Mississippi into Iowa, then into Minnesota. These are loooong hours of driving with a spectacular amount of nothing to see on the horizon, but there are some characterful small towns dotting the plains with some wild-west pioneer history. Galena, Illinois and Dubuque, Iowa caused us to pause and wander the pretty streets.  

In Austin, Minnesota we found something to catch our attention: the National Spam Museum. Who knew there was such a thing? A whole museum dedicated to the iconic food-product. We can’t say we’ve ever been fans of the product and a visit to the museum didn’t change that. But it’s a very well thought out, educational and entertaining place (yes, including a section on Monty Python’s famous ‘Spam, spam, spam, spam’ sketch!) worth a stop for an hour or so to break a road-trip. And it’s free, so can’t complain 😉

DHL: Failed Again

From Spam-land we push on west again, further across the Great Plains and hit South Dakota at Sioux Falls. We arrived just on time to meet the promised package from DHL. Remember that? Well DHL didn’t remember. They failed yet again. Now the third time they failed to meet their own deadline, with a catalogue of excuses. Seriously, if a novelist concocted a tale of incompetence like this, it’d be filed under ‘comedy-fiction’. To be fair, we’ve had great service from DHL in several other countries around the world, only in North America has it been off-the-scale atrocious. Anyway, after us hanging around in Sioux Falls for a further two days, DHL did finally deliver. Rant over.

So with our newly received DHL package, we’re free to head further west across the prairies, across the vastness of South Dakota to our Bucket List monument destinations. Watch this space for further tales of overlanding USA, with missiles, presidents’ heads and a crazy-horse-in-progress…