North America 40 Years On

Almost freezing to death

In 1976, on Christmas Day, we arrived in San Francisco after an 18 hour flight via Fiji and Hawaii.  It was our first experience of America and my first big overseas trip (you can’t count New Zealand).  There I am in my inadequate orange parka braving the minus 20 Celsius (minus 4 F).  We were staying with my husband’s aunt (a war bride) in Muskegon, Michigan.  Looking outside at the bright blue sky we decided to take a walk, so borrowing scarves and gloves we set off down the road.  After about ten minutes the cold really hit us and we started to shiver.  A car pulled up and a friendly face looked out.

“You must be the Australians” he laughed.  “No-one else would be out walking in this weather.”

One way to keep warm

We gratefully accepted a lift as he turned out to be a cousin and were soon back in the warm house.  Never had we seen so much snow.  John enjoyed shovelling snow from the path each morning so we could get out the door.

We had already visited friends in Seattle and Vancouver and were on our way to New York.  Walking home from Broadway one night after seeing Richard Chamberlain in “The Night of the Iguana”, the snowflakes falling gently on our heads and shoulders we couldn’t believe how different this was to life at home in Wollongong.

This view will look very different on our next visit

Of course the Twin Towers were there then.  They were still relatively new but we didn’t go to the top, choosing to go up the Empire State Building instead.  We had a good view of them from the ferry as we forged our way through ice to the Statue of Liberty.  We were too cold to get off the boat so waited in the warm until it returned to Battery Park.

We had a Fly Around ticket which allowed us to travel in a circle around the USA but it omitted New Orleans and Florida.  So we opted for Las Vegas and Los Angeles next as we were suffering from continual frostbite.

Linda and John forty years ago

That brings us to the present.  Thirty nine years since our  frozen visit to New York and we would like to catch up on some of the places we didn’t see before and visit some that were not even there then.  In this blog I will trace a route from Sydney to Los Angeles and then to New York.  From there we will travel to the Adirondacks to visit friends, catch a train to Niagara Falls and a bus to Toronto.  Another train will take us to Montreal where we will board a ship and travel along the St Lawrence Seaway.  Arriving in Boston we plan to drive to Cape Cod before flying from Boston to New York to Los Angeles.  Here will will rest awhile in Santa Monica before the flight home.