The great American road trip

After a year of working in the United States and a month left on our visas, my partner Tim and I decide it's time to leave our jobs in New Orleans and go hunting for the weird and wacky through the US.

Our funds are tight and we have three weeks to cover 5000 kilometres, from California through Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico to Texas and back.

The road trip begins in San Francisco. We pick up the rental car and drive straight to Las Vegas to stay at the cheapest hotel on The Strip: Circus Circus. As soon as I walk through the flashing doors, I am assaulted by the dinging of slot machines, the smell of cigarettes mixed with greasy food and the sight of shabby families.

Las Vegas is the definition of excess and extremes. It's a beacon for people who live the American dream, partying poolside at exclusive resorts, and the down-trodden gambling addicted, who will bet everything to get closer to it. Everywhere there are 50-year-old cocktail waitresses wearing skirts that skim their butt-cheeks, and Hispanic men and women trying to force prostitute cards on to people wandering the streets.

While there are redeeming factors, such as old neon signs in downtown Las Vegas, gimmicky themed casinos like Paris, with an Eiffel Tower replica, dancing water fountains at the Belagio, and a smutty pirate show at Treasure Island, it is depressing and tacky.

I am relieved to move on to New Mexico, in particular the Taos Pueblo Village, a 1000-year-old Native American Village north of Santa Fe, which has tribal sovereignty. Along with lived-in homes, the village also has shops where residents sell their art.

One artist gives me an insight into life there. She says they are all living in poverty and there is corruption and nepotism within the tribe, with members of the same family holding police, court and tribal council positions.

Also in New Mexico is weird mecca Roswell, home to the UFO Roswell Incident of 1947. Mostly, Roswell is just another faceless highway town, but in 1947 it got a point of difference.

There is the International UFO Museum, a few street lights with alien eyes, and shop windows full of alien junk. The museum, probably Roswell's biggest pull, gives a chronological account of what happened in 1947, when locals claimed to have found a UFO and aliens, and the authorities' attempts to dispel and cover up the findings.

Looking at some of the residents, I wonder whether the aliens perhaps bred in the area.

From New Mexico, we drive to Texas, where we stay in Austin.

We visit the Broken Spoke, a charmingly rustic, legendary dance hall built in the 1960s. We walk through the wooden doors and witness old and young couples, dressed in cowboy boots, Stetson hats, blue jeans, checkered shirts and crinoline petticoats dancing with an unexpected slickness, making it seem so effortless.

Tim and I soon find out it's not, and embarrassingly retreat to the outskirts of the floor. The band is made up of Austin's local country heroes, playing a mix of styles, from bluegrass to that earnest, three-women-in-harmony style.