An island idyll

The reason we headed through Bangor and toward the coast was because there's one of very few national parks on the east coast here.
Acadia National Park is an oddity as far as American national parks go as people actually live here. On the whole the parks are vast expanses of ageless wilderness in which you could clearly get lost backpacking in and no doubt be eaten by a peckish growling animal. Here it's more like the Lake District. There's a couple of established towns and a road linking them to and around the island, on which the park is based. It's an island linked to the main land via a small bridge so it's not exactly a triumphant paddle steamer of a river crossing.
National parks here are great, there's no denying it. As soon as you enter one you get a good feeling. A feeling that you really are miles away from some of the most boring towns of existence known to man.
Acadia is picturesque, resplendent in deep greens and all the while you can see the blue Atlantic and the odd smaller island just off shore. For some reason I'd completely omitted this place in my travel diary and I just can't think why.
We drive the ring road around the island and take walks on rough beaches and cliff edges. The sun is out but the Atlantic is still whipping an icy breeze around us. A short circular walk takes us to the top of the highest point, Cadillac Mountain, and we're rewarded with great views and windburned faces.
We stop overnight in one of the main towns, Bar Harbour, in a flash old looking whiteboard hotel. Reasonably priced too. The town itself is fairly sleepy but has a couple of streets worth a stroll to look in the specialist shops leading down to the harbour itself. Food is mainly way out of our price range here so we again settle for a Subway sandwich. But at 8 o'clock the town was shutting down so unless we wanted to pay gourmet prices it was the best on offer. I keep forgetting the annoyingly early nights in the U.S. Nightlife of any sort is massively limited. There would be an uproar if even a Leyland pizzeria decided to shut at 8pm, besides it would be commercial suicide.
In the morning we take a stroll along the water's edge by another grand hotel and then up past some large houses of the millionaire type. Apparently, Bar Harbour was a popular getaway destination for the rich in Boston, Philadelphia and New York and hotels used to be scarce. In the 50's the hotel we stopped in was build and many more followed shortly after to accommodate the influx of wealthy city dwellers. After a fire wiped out a lot of the town only a handful of hotels were rebuilt and instead the rich folk from the city built grand mansions on the cliff edge. To a point you can walk along the edge through some of these extensive gardens until a wire fence prevents any further public infringement on rich mans property. You can see why the decided to do it though. The sea is still a constant vivid blue and the ever pounding water against the rocks provides a soothing relief from city life.
We've entered into a land where American towns look like they do in the movies. It wasn't all a lie. These towns were settled many years before their western counterparts and all posses a white church and pointed steeple and sprinklings of well maintained residential homes with hanging baskets and pristine gardens. Far from the half derelict shacks over the other side of the country.
We leave Bar Harbour and Acadia National Park to pass through more picture perfect towns along the coast with more and more British names, Belfast, Camden, Newcastle, Bath and so on. This got me thinking that maybe this is the trade off. The west has fabulous landscapes of unparalleled beauty and plain awful towns whereas the east is far more populated, thus being a bit short on natural beauty, but well kept and pleasing towns. Hmmm, we'll see.

'So, what brings you to Dallas?'

'Umm, I've no idea really'. Oh, yes well the real reason was that there's no direct to Vancouver from Mexico so it means a few days stop over in Dallas is my first introduction to North America.
Before getting to our hotel a lot of messing around has to be done, and that doesn't include customs.
Stories of hours in U.S. customs have been heard throughout the trip but we flew through without a hitch.
As a backpacker in America there's many a problem, more so than just the cost. Getting around without a car isn't easy. Just getting the information desk to understand what we were saying was hard enough, it would've been easier in Spanish. After many a struggle with 6 tourist info staff we finally get the instructions to use the public transport system to get into Dallas. 'They want to get the bus!', one of the members of staff exclaimed, 'You can tell they're European.'
As soon as we hit the outdoors to wait for the bus we suddenly realise how cold it is. We'd almost forgotten about Winter, walking around in t-shirts and jumpers with the sun blazing. It turns out that there's snow even in Texas, the weather people seem surprised. Oh good.
To get into Dallas we first take 3 buses and 2 trains. Then we get another local train and then a bus and a 10 minute walk in the rain. After the worst flight yet, not for turbulence or a dodgy landing but for a sheer back in the past style plane and the co-pilot having to be recruited to hand out drinks. All through the trip we've had pretty good service and a decent standard of food, LAN who we used throughout South America are one of the best Airlines in the world by my reckoning. But this is America and you have to pay for food, a first for us, and it looked too dire to eat. As the American marketing tool is strong it really made out that they live the high life in all they do. If American Airlines is anything to go by we're in for a shock. Abysmal and, as we find out, expensive.
What of Dallas? Well, I know almost nothing about the place, other than it's in America's largest state, Texas, and there was a very successful TV show in the 80's that used it's name.
The shock of landing in Perth from a month and a half in Asia was much larger than landing here from Mexico. Mexico City is fairly Americanised so we were almost prepared. The prices may take some getting used to though, a lot of stuff is more expensive than England, not good on my budget. Our first taste of American life was in a pub within walking distance of our hotel. A very nice place too, although having waitress service in a pub where everyone sits down is somewhat odd. It's the American way apparently.
To get into the centre of the city the next day confused 4 members of our hotel staff. 'You have no car?', 'No' we reply 3 times. At least the sun is shining and the streets are leafy and good looking. A bus and a train into Downtown to have a day of looking around and we suddenly remember another thing Dallas is famous for, apart from the Cowboys. It's the place where President John F Kennedy was assassinated. The streets look clean but deserted, except for the tramps who wander like zombies in better clothing, so we decide to have a look round the Sixth Floor Museum set in the Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the bullets killing the president. This is the most I've ever paid to get into a museum, another thing I'll have to get used to in the U.S. It's a good one though and gives you more information about the President and his assassination than you really need. The most important footage of the shooting is something nearly everyone misses. In a partly closed off booth the full uncensored home movie shows the full force of the bullets on the doomed President. Unsettling stuff. Outside the museum on the busy road is an 'x marks the spot' sticker placed in the spot where each bullet struck the president. Unsurprisingly there are Americans stood on the spots dodging traffic and having their photo taken. One guy is even stood on the spot whilst on his mobile phone, 'You'll never guess where I am', he was probably saying.
Coming from Mexico City I can't believe that hardly anybody is about on this weekday. I also have to get used to saying no to the many homeless people asking for change, they're fairly confrontational at times too. Some of them even look better dressed than us!
Strolling around taking in the large glass buildings and new looking brick churches and government structures I like the look of the place. It's just a bit sanitised and uneventful. The public transport is a problem however. Once off the train we wait in the freezing cold for the bus whilst watching bad skinned teenagers getting into their cars with mounds of fast food. After half an hour the bus arrives and we make sure it's the same number as the one we caught this morning, the 24. As we soon learn, there are two 24's. Obviously! Are they going out of their way to confuse everybody or what? How is it I can navigate my way around the Tokyo metro and not speak a word of Japanese yet not be able to use this piece of crap system!? This bus goes back into downtown before coming back to somewhere almost near to our hotel. After yet another 45 minutes we get back to base. Downtown, we find out, is only a 15 minute bus ride away! Seeing as the morning bus ride to the train station lasted about 2 minutes we decide to walk to the station the next morning. As if the public transport wasn't bad enough, walking to the station takes us an hour. At least the sky is blue and the housing estate gives us a glimpse into American life. It does look like the films from Hollywood, except no-one is about and absolutely nobody walks the streets. The pavement often just stops and is either covered in overgrown weeds or heavily cracked. People in large trucks and cars drive by us giving us suspicious looks. We have 6 months of this in front of us, we need a car.