Holiday Essentials

Events

The USA is all about choice, diversity and glut, and its attractions run the gamut from cities divided between glitz and gloom to every kind of awe-swelling landscape imaginable. Its wealth and population of immigrants has brought it an unparellelled art trove, but it also excels in giddy kitsch

Black Hills National Forest   The majority of the Black Hills' attractions lie within a 1875-sq-mile mixture of protected and logged forest, perforated by pockets of private land along most roads. The best way to explore is on any of the 568km (353mi) of hiking trails or along the many scenic byways and gravel 'fire roads'. Good camping abounds in the forest.
Central Park   This enormous gem of a park right in the middle of Manhattan is for many what makes New York liveable and lovable. The park's 843 acres were set aside in 1856 on the marshy northern fringe of the city. The landscaping was innovative in its naturalistic style, with forested groves, meandering paths and informal ponds. Highlights include Strawberry Fields, at 72nd St, dedicated to John Lennon, who lived at (and was murdered in front of) the Dakota apartment building across the street; the sparkling Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, encircled by joggers daily; the zoo; Shakespeare in the Park performances in the Delacorte Theater; major concerts on the Great Lawn; and the formal promenade called the Mall, which culminates at the elegant Bethesda Fountain. A favourite tourist activity is to rent a horse-drawn carriage at 59th St.
Death Valley National Park California highway 190 (Visitor Center) The name itself evokes all that is harsh and hellish - a lifeless place hotter than Satan's hoof. Well, not quite. Closer inspection reveals Death Valley as a timeless medley of canyons, sand dunes, oases and sculpted mountains. Bring plenty of water for yourself and your vehicle. Wildflower groupies will want to visit in March and April. It holds the US records for hottest temperature (56°C or 134°F, measured in 1913), lowest point (Badwater, 86m/282ft below sea level) and largest national park outside Alaska (12,139 sq km/4687 sq mi).
Getty Center 1200 Getty Center Dr This sprawling campus presents triple delights: a respectable art collection (Renaissance to David Hockney), the fabulous architecture of Richard Meier and beautiful gardens. On clear days, you'll be treated to breathtaking views of city and ocean.
Historic Voodoo Museum 724 Dumaine St This fascinating museum explores the history of voodoo, the exotic form of spiritual expression first brought to New Orleans by West African slaves who came on ships via Haiti. Live out all your spell-casting fantasies. It is still operational post-Hurricane Katrina, but call ahead for tours.
Mt Rushmore National Monument   Carved 18m (60ft) tall in the granite of a Black Hills outcrop, the stony faces of past presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, look like they're emerging from the mountain. One of the most famous images in the USA, Mt Rushmore is visited by over 3 million visitors a year. You can't help but be overwhelmed by its sheer scale and the massive physical effort of the team (led by sculptor Gutzon Borglum) that created it. If Washington were depicted from head to toe, he would be 142m (465ft) high!
Niagara Falls Misty sprays and the majestic scale of this roaring cascade make it a marvellous spectacle. Split between New York and Canada, the Canadian side of the Falls has the more stunning views (as well as a strip of Vegas-like attractions including a towering casino), while the New York side has a handful of low-key, natural-park offerings.
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 751 Erieside Ave Cleveland's top attraction, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum is more than a collection of memorabilia, though it does have Janis Joplin's psychedelic Porsche and Ray Charles' sunglasses. Interactive multimedia exhibits trace the history and social context of rock music and the performers who created it. And why is the museum in Cleveland of all places? Because this is the hometown of Alan Freed, the disk jockey who popularized the term 'rock 'n' roll' in the early 50s
Smithsonian Institute 1000 Jefferson Dr SW Huge and often overwhelming, The Smithsonian encompasses 14 museums and galleries in DC alone. The two big drawcards are the Museum of National History and the Air and Space Museum, but leave time to explore the Asian art of the Freer Gallery, and marvel at the earnest patriotism of the Museum of American History.
Statue of Liberty This great statue is an American icon and New York's best-known landmark. Unfortunately, visitor experience has been significantly marred by post-September 11 concerns. You can no longer go up into the body of the statue, just glimpse it from the base, where a specially designed glass ceiling lets you look up into the striking interior Getting There Your main option for getting to the US is either by air or, from the closer countries, by road or train. The main international airports are in Boston, New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, with hundreds of smaller airports dotted all over the country. For those travelling into the US from Canada and Mexico, you have the option of driving, catching a bus or an Amtrak train. plane Most visitors arrive by air, and heavy competition on popular routes means that inexpensive flights are often available. The main international airports are in Boston, New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. There are connecting flights from these airports to hundreds of other US cities. road There are plenty of efficient overland border crossings between the US and Canada and Mexico. Getting Around The choices for traversing this massive country are myriad, be it via subway, bus, rail, bike or your own two feet. bus Greyhound has an extensive, cheap and efficient bus network, and travelling by bus enables you to meet the 35 other people stuck in America without a car. In rural areas, local bus services are often less than adequate. car America created car culture, so don't be surprised by the fact that nearly everyone of legal driving age has a car and uses it at every possible opportunity. Anyone who has seen an American road movie will know that the country's highways are not only nifty ways to cover large distances, they are also rich in mythic resonances. A road trip along Route 66, for example, is no A to B from Chicago to Los Angeles - it's a pilgrimage along America's 'mother road', closely bound up with the history of America's expansionist West, the Dust Bowl refugees and, of course, the sweet voice of Nat King Cole. The ubiquity of the automobile often means that local public transportation options are few and far between, but the good news is that Americans tend to be far from stingy with their vehicles, so if you're sticking around for a while you may well find wheels easier to borrow than you think. Rental cars are plentiful and relatively cheap, though major agencies require you to be at least 25 years old. Drive-aways are a peculiarly American phenomenon. It's basically a car delivery system that unites cars that need to be delivered over long distances with willing drivers. If a car needs delivering to a place you're prepared to go, you're given insurance, a delivery date and a set of keys, and Bob's yer uncle. walking Walking is considered an un-American activity unless it takes place on hiking trails in national parks. bicycle Cycling is an increasingly popular way to travel around small areas, since roads are good, shoulders are wide and cars generally travel at safe speeds. train For a country that owes so much to the penetration of railroads and that has such a potent railroad mythology, the US has a train system that can be surprisingly impractical and not always comfortable. Ticket prices vary in value, but the earlier you make a reservation, the cheaper the ticket. plane The number of domestic airlines, competition on popular routes and frequent discounting makes flying in the US a relatively inexpensive proposition (though fares can be high on less popular routes). underground rail Urban public transportation is generally quite good; catching the subway in New York or the El in Chicago is as integral a part of the American travelling experience as hopping on a double-decker bus in London. Pre-20th-Century History It's believed that the continent's first inhabitants walked into North America across what is now the Bering Strait from Asia. For the next 20,000 years these pioneering settlers were essentially left alone to develop distinct and dynamic cultures. In the modern US, their descendants include the Pueblo people in what is now New Mexico; Apache in Texas; Navajo in Arizona, Colorado and Utah; Hopi in Arizona; Crow in Montana; Cherokee in North Carolina; and Mohawk and Iroquois in New York State. The Norwegian explorer Leif Eriksson was the first European to reach North America, some 500 years before a disoriented Columbus accidentally discovered 'Indians' in Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti) in 1492. By the mid-1550s, much of the Americas had been poked and prodded by a parade of explorers from Spain, Portugal, England and France. The first colonies attracted immigrants looking to get rich quickly and return home, but they were soon followed by migrants whose primary goal was to colonise. The Spanish founded the first permanent European settlement in St Augustine, Florida, in 1565; the French moved in on Maine in 1602, and Jamestown, Virginia, became the first British settlement in 1607. The first Africans arrived as 'indentured labourers' with the Brits a year prior to English Puritan pilgrims' escape of religious persecution. The pilgrims founded a colony at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, in 1620, and signed the famous Mayflower Compact - a declaration of self-government that would later be echoed in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. British attempts to assert authority in its 13 North American colonies led to the French and Indian War (1757-63). The British were victorious but were left with a nasty war debt, which they tried to recoup by imposing new taxes. The rallying cry 'no taxation without representation' united the colonies, who ceremoniously dumped caffeinated cargo overboard during the Boston Tea Party. Besieged British general Cornwallis surrendered to American commander George Washington five years later at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. In the 19th century, America's mantra was 'Manifest Destiny'. A combination of land purchases, diplomacy and outright wars of conquest had by 1850 given the US roughly its present shape. In 1803, Napoleon dumped the entire Great Plains for a pittance, and Spain chipped in with Florida in 1819. The Battle of the Alamo during the 1835 Texan Revolution paved the way for Texan independence from Mexico, and the war with Mexico (1846-48) secured most of the southwest, including California. The systematic annihilation of the buffalo hunted by the Plains Indians, encroachment on their lands, and treaties not worth the paper they were written on led to Native Americans being herded into reservations, deprived of both their livelihoods and their spiritual connection to their land. Nineteenth-century immigration drastically altered the cultural landscape as settlers of predominantly British stock were joined by Central Europeans and Chinese, many attracted by the 1849 gold rush in California. The South remained firmly committed to an agrarian life heavily reliant on African-American slave labour. Tensions were on the rise when abolitionist Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860. The South seceded from the Union, and the Civil War, by far the bloodiest war in America's history, began the following year. The North prevailed in 1865, freed the slaves and introduced universal adult male suffrage. Lincoln's vision for reconstruction, however, died with his assassination. Modern History America's trouncing of the Spaniards in 1898 marked the USA's ascendancy as a superpower and woke the country out of its isolationist slumber. The US still did its best not to get its feet dirty in WWI's trenches, but finally capitulated in 1917, sending over a million troops to help sort out the pesky Germans. Postwar celebrations were cut short by Prohibition in 1920, which banned alcohol in the country. The 1929 stock-market crash signalled the start of the Great Depression and eventually brought about Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which sought to lift the country back to prosperity. After the Japanese dropped in uninvited on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the US played a major role in defeating the Axis powers. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 not only ended the war with Japan, but ushered in the nuclear age. The end of WWII segued into the Cold War - a period of great domestic prosperity and a surface uniformity belied by paranoia and betrayal. Politicians like Senator Joe McCarthy took advantage of the climate to fan anticommunist flames, while the USSR and USA stockpiled nuclear weapons and fought wars by proxy in Korea, Africa and Southeast Asia. Tensions between the USSR and USA reached their peak in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The 1960s was a decade of profound social change, thanks largely to the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War protests and the discovery of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. The Civil Rights movement gained momentum in 1955 with a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. As a nonviolent mass protest movement, it aimed at breaking down segregation and regaining the vote for disfranchised Southern blacks. The movement peaked in 1963 with Martin Luther King Jr's 'I have a dream' speech in Washington DC, and the passage of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act. Meanwhile, America's youth were rejecting the conformity of the previous decade, growing their hair long and smoking lots of dope. 'Tune in, turn on, drop out' was the mantra of a generation who protested heavily (and not disinterestedly) against the war in Vietnam. Assassinations of prominent political leaders - John and Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr - took a little gloss off the party, and the American troops mired in Vietnam took off the rest. NASA's moon landing in 1969 did little to restore national pride. In 1974 Richard Nixon became the first US president to resign from office, because of his involvement in the cover-up of the Watergate burglaries, bringing American patriotism to a new low. The 1970s and '80s were a period of technological advancement and declining industrialism. A conservative backlash, symbolised by the election and popular two-term presidency of actor Ronald Reagan, sought to put some backbone in the country. The US then concentrated on bullying its poor neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean by meddling in the affairs of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and Grenada. The collapse of the Soviet Bloc's 'Evil Empire' in 1991 left the US as the world's sole superpower, and the Gulf War in 1992 gave George Bush the opportunity to lead a coalition supposedly representing a 'new world order' into battle against Iraq. Domestic matters, such as health reform, gun ownership, drugs, racial tension, gay rights, balancing the budget, the tenacious Whitewater scandal and the Monica Lewinsky 'Fornigate' affair tended to overshadow international concerns during the Clinton administration. In a bid to kickstart its then-ailing economy, the USA signed Nafta, a free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico in 1993. In 1994 it invaded Haiti in its role as upholder of democracy, and in 1995 committed thousands of troops to operations in Bosnia. It hosted the Olympics in 1996 and enjoyed, over the next few years, the fruits of a bull market on Wall Street. Recent History The 2000 presidential election made history by being the most tightly contested race in the nation's history, but it was marred by a voting fiasco in Florida, which left the result in doubt for weeks. Demands for recounts and threats of lawsuits were eventually halted by the US Supreme Court, whose decision allowed George W Bush to declare victory on the strength of about 500 Florida votes. The early part of Bush's presidency was dominated by efforts to fix a rapidly weakening economy, but everything changed following the terrorist attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001. Fear and anger among Americans led to widespread support for Bush's ensuing 'War On Terror', which began with the US invasion of Afghanistan in an effort to root out the terrorists and overthrow the repressive Taliban regime that supported them. Then, in April 2003, the US launched a contentious pre-emptive strike against Iraq in order to remove Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and replace it with a popularly elected, 'democratic' Iraqi government. Nationwide arguments over the rationale for and conduct of the Iraq War split the US and led to a bitter 2004 presidential election, which George W Bush won by narrow margin over Democratic challenger John Kerry. Since then, the Bush administration's ambitious plan to rebuild Iraq has yet to be successful. As the war's costs and casualties keep rising, domestic support for the war and of Bush's policies have plummeted. With a record-breaking federal debt (topping three trillion dollars) and culture wars building over illegal immigration, gay marriage, and the environment, the US is poised once again for a divisive presidential election in 2008