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John Harris has absconded from Australia for five weeks with his wife Sandy and eight-year-old daughter Eden. While the true purpose of their trip to North America is to spend Christmas with Canadian friends in the snowy suburban streets of Ottawa, they have extended the front end of the trip and the back end of the trip with so many add-ons that the Norwood City Council is considering sending in the building inspectors. This itinerary is enough to make grown travel agents shudder: Disneyland, Hollywood, the Big Easy, the Bad DC, the Big Apple, the Big Hole in the Ground, Lost Wage and that Pacific island where you get leied on arrival. Will it stand the strain? Will it collapse? Dear reader, I know not, so read on to discover how it all turns out.

Towns play the soundtrack of my life

“Who do you think will win next year’s presidential election?”

I’m not sure what surprised me most: The question or the questioner.

Why, I wondered, would an American citizen ask that question of a visiting Australian about US politics? And how did this question arise from an Amtrak train attendant as I was staggering along the sleeping door corridor on my way to the lounge car?

Well, I guess the winter nights are long in Georgia and our mighty iron horse was plunging through the darkness somewhere between Atlanta and the border with South Carolina, so I treated the question as an opening gambit in a conversation.

Edem and Sandy at LA Union Station for our train to New OrleansRiding an iron horse cross-country

Highlights of our five-state train journey across the US

  • Watching the amazing landscape of the US hinterland unfold

  • Being rocked to sleep by the rhythm of a massive locomotive

  • Getting off the train after the scarily hostile service standards 

Eden in HollywoodTinseltown temptations

If a picture is worth 1000 words, here'smy 10 per cent deposit ona novelabout our day at Universal studios.

Meeting squirrels by the White House

Highlights of our 24 hours in the seat of western power

  • Eden feeding squirrels in front of the White House

  • A "city lights" tour of Washington monuments at night 

  • Attending a spirit-filled service at the Methodist Baptist Church

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