Yvonne Judge and a pal rent a convertible for a sideways tour of California and Arizona - and find themselves having one or two far-side experiences along the way
You forget how big the US is. How hugely, ridiculously long, wide and enormous. Take Los Angeles. It's one giant freeway, with eight lanes in each direction that fork off, for no apparent reason, just when you think you're on a nice straight road. Then there are the headlights you see in your wing mirror, the ones that look as if they're from Steven Spielberg's demonic truck in Duel. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear, as the sticker says.
Which brings us, in a way, to Tom Cruise. If he is so small, how do we end up sitting at the table next to his in a city as humongous as Los Angeles? It's all Jenna's fault. Book a joint, we said. You know, a star-spotting one. So she did, our friend who lives in LA and hopes to be a scriptwriter to the stars. That's why we're at the Beverly Hills Hotel, nibbling and sipping in a vast clam-shaped booth. Beside Tom. And Katie. With not a hint of placenta pâté.
"It can't be him."
"It bloody is."
"Jaysus. Don't look, whatever you do."
That's the thing. You want to see the star. Then you do, and you struggle with facial tics for the rest of the evening, because you don't want them to think you're staring. Tom sucks on his soda. Katie looks glum. We tuck into pistachio souffle. "This is so LA," says Jenna.
It it a bit too LA, in fact, so we leave the city for our real trip: driving into the desert in an open-topped car, like Thelma and Louise. Only, being Irish, we might better be called Fidelma and Louise.
After three scary hours heading east for Palm Springs, on Route 10, the traffic thins and thousands of yucca plants come into view, standing in fields of giant white windmills.
The city feels strangely artificial, right down to the Movie Colony Hotel, a piece of ocean-liner modernism that looks as if it was built last week but turns out to have been designed in 1935, back around the time when Palm Springs was a hang-out for film stars. They say Jim Morrison leaped from a balcony into the pool when he stayed here. Is there anywhere that he didn't?
We turn off Route 10 and head for Twentynine Palms, home of the Harmony Motel, where U2 stayed while they recorded The Joshua Tree. A little farther up the road, in the community of Joshua Tree, is the Joshua Tree Inn; in September 1973 the country-music legend Gram Parsons died here "after one last day of too much tequila and morphine", as the motel's literature puts it. If you would like to stay in Room 8, as Parsons did, it will cost you $95 a night. "Bring your guitar and write songs."
Then, if you wish, you can drive into the 800,000 acres of Joshua Tree National Park and look for the spot where Parsons's road manager drunkenly doused the singer's coffin with petrol and set it alight, in an inept attempt to cremate him.
It is less appealing than pretending we're U2, so we drive off just after dawn with the top down and The Joshua Tree playing good and loud. Critters scuttle across the road, the blue sky shimmers around the joshuas' gnarled branches and the sun shines red on distant outcrops that we can see rock-climbers clinging to like ants.
As we drive farther east, towards Arizona, the landscape grows more desolate and the distances between towns - Quartzite, Eagle Mountain, Desert Centre - increase. The long, straight road disappears into nothingness as the Chocolate Mountains loom in the distance. As Ciara drives, I navigate. "Let's see. I'd say it's straight ahead for about . . . 400 kilometres, then a left and then straight again for another, oh, 300 or so." Tricky stuff. The real job is to provide plenty of water, nachos and strong coffee, regularly switch radio stations and, most of all, show no fear. Not even when Ciara observes on Route 17, north of Phoenix, that it's a bit chilly. Or that the road looks a bit shiny. Ice? Don't be daft. A flash of white out of the right-hand window and the John Wayne cacti we're passing are dusted in white. Snow? In Arizona? In the spring?
By the time we get to Flagstaff we are surrounded by snow. Luckily, the welcoming arms of the Little America Hotel are waiting to embrace us at the end of a very slippery slip road. It is a big wooden lodge with a roaring log fire and a great souvenir shop, full of Native American and Grand Canyon tack.
We found it through the The Rough Guide to Southwest USA, which was fortunate, because it seems that everywhere else in Flagstaff is full. Of skiers.
We stay for a few days, so we can visit the Grand Canyon. With the snow, that means hiring the services of a 4x4 bus and a guide. We get up early. As we sit in the bus, waiting to leave, a Canadian family climb on. "We're from Canada!" they announce. "Hey!" shouts John, our good- natured guide, motioning to us, "they're from Ireland!" Silence.
A large couple in horn-rimmed glasses get on. They are from Yosemite, in northern California. You know, where everything is bigger and wilder and there's more bears and stuff? The Canadian teenagers happily thump each other in the back seat, white iPod wires in their ears.
We drive through the snow, past old mines and one of Howard Hughes's aircraft, to a visitor centre. We walk up to the south rim of the canyon and peer over. It's so enormous you can't really get a handle on it. How big again? How old again? Are there other canyons down there? That trickle is the Colorado? Really? Looking down at the layers of deep-red, pink and brown rock, I imagine how it must have looked to pioneers heading west.
Buckey O'Neill lived here in the 1880s. The son of Irish immigrants, he persuaded the railroad to build a link between Flagstaff and the canyon. The train still runs. We look into his cabin and pay our respects. In the car park the Canadian teenagers throw snowballs at each other.
It's time to head back to the desert. There's so much snow now that we can't even photograph a Route 66 sign. We drive hesitantly through the white blindness, counting the kilometres until we see welcome signs marked Steep Decline - nice distractions from the cars that have skidded and come to a halt in the centre of the road. Within 40 minutes we descend a kilometre and change seasons. We stop for petrol under a blinding sun as the wind whips across the empty desert.
I always buy souvenirs from petrol stations. Support Our Troops bumper stickers. Grow-your-own-yucca-tree kits. Moccasins. My favourite is a baseball cap that declares me retired from the marines. Such tack is but a Fás course for what awaits us in Las Vegas. The capital of bad taste lies ahead, on the other side of a jaw-dropping crossing of the Colorado River at the Hoover Dam.
We have booked into the Luxor. First we have to get in. Not easy when you're talking about finding the door in a pyramid. Then we have to work out that we're looking for the inclinator, not the elevator. Off we go for a flurry on the slots. Let's try the ones in another hotel. Ah. Trickier than we think. We still don't know where the door is. That seems to be the point: spin them around, pump the vast room full of oxygen, give them free drinks if you want, but don't let them get a sense of direction.
At one point we follow everyone else up a moving walkway, like lemmings, blinking as we pass under giant polystyrene sphinxes. But rather than finding fresh air at the other end we find ourselves surrounded by more slot machines - and by damsels and armoured knights who offer us drinks in syrupy accents. This is the Excalibur. It seems you can move from hotel to hotel without ever seeing daylight.
The next morning we adopt the white-trash approach: don't fight it. After an all-you-can-eat buffet - who knew that mashed potato and Chinese food are so good together? - we head for the floor and choose our lucky slot machine. Egyptian slave girls bring a regular supply of beer and water. My, how the hours pass. We make one mistake, though. We leave the lucky machine. Five minutes later, sirens, hooters and bells ring as a man jams a bucket under the slot to collect his avalanche of winnings. From our machine. Pharaohs appear from nowhere to congratulate him. We gape. It is a sign.
We leave Las Vegas, waving goodbye in the rear-view mirror. They say it is the fastest- growing city in the US. I wouldn't live there if you paid me.
We head to Death Valley, for a perfect contrast: borax dunes, dried-out lakes, sacred Native American sights. And a golf course. That's good to know, isn't it? There you are, in the lowest point in the western world, marvelling at the moonlike horizon, when somebody shouts "Fore!" Was it for this that Running Claw fought?
Death Valley is pretty big, so I explain our choice of destinations to reach by nightfall. "Just ahead is Panamint Springs - so a big drive tomorrow - or, to the left, there is Ridgecrest, about an hour away." About an hour at full throttle, that is, so off we tear, a open-topped bullet shooting across the flat, sandy valley, a cloud of dust behind us and tumbleweed billowing by. We pass a sign: Ghost Town. This is not a place to break down. Nerves jittering, we make Ridgecrest by dark. We book into a motel, pile our bags against the door and go over the road to a cantina with plastic curtains and army recruitment leaflets. Tequila lime chicken and beer. It is the best Mexican food I have tasted.
On the way back to the coast we stop in Bodfish, which we are pleased to find has very clean conveniences. And very secure ones. Parked outside is a large and very real Sherman tank. God bless Homeland Security.
When we get to Santa Barbara we park to appreciate the sea, the whales and, of course, the wine. It used to be scoffed at as yellow-pack stuff, but now the area is basking in the glory of Alexander Payne's film. In a restaurant, we hear another diner say: "Listen, I was doing Sideways before Sideways became Sideways, if you know what I mean." You too can stay at the Days Inn in Buellton and watch the surfers in Oxnard.
After all the driving and deserts, the ocean is the only cure - and it is then that we realise we really are from an island nation. Mind you, nobody told Buckey O'Neill that. What a pioneer. I bet he didn't need ... satellite navigation.
HOW TO GET THERE
FLIGHTS You can fly to Los Angeles from Dublin with Aer Lingus (www.aerlingus.com) from about €430, including taxes and charges. If you want to travel over the summer, expect to pay closer to €1,300. The flight takes about 10 hours.
You can reserve a hire car on the internet without having to give your credit-card details. We chose Thrifty (www.thrifty.ie), which we thought had good-value basic rates. Don't skimp on their insurance, however, even though it adds a lot to the bill. You can also opt for extras such as cover for driving into Mexico or for having a car with a satellite-navigation system. We paid $1,180 for our Chrysler convertible, with satnav and full insurance, for 17 days. We picked it up from Los Angeles International Airport.
ON THE ROAD Our meal at the Beverly Hills Hotel (www.thebeverlyhillshotel.com) cost about $150 for three, excluding our pre-dinner cocktails. We spent our first night at the Jamaica Bay Inn in Marina del Ray (www.bestwestern-jamaicabay.com), which we booked on the internet - it's nice to choose a place to stay on the spur of the moment when you're on the road, but booking a few hotels beforehand gives shape to your journey. We visited the Grand Canyon with Angel's Gate Tours (www.angelsgatetours.com), which charges $89 a person.
ACCOMMODATION Movie Colony Hotel, Palm Springs, California, 00-1-760-3206340, www.moviecolonyhotel.com; Harmony Motel, Twentynine Palms, California, 00-1-760-3673351, www.harmonymotel.com; Joshua Tree Inn, Joshua Tree, California, 00-1-760-3661188, www.joshuatreeinn.com; Little America Hotel, Flagstaff, Arizona, 00-1-928-7792741, www.littleamerica.com/flagstaff