Destination: USA
LONELY PLANET'S OFFICIAL ITINERARY INFORMATION
Itinerary: Bayous & Back Roads
TWO TO THREE WEEKS/NEW ORLEANS TO TUCSON
So you want to get away from it all? Escaping the law? Head into the swampy bayous and sunburned hills of the South - if you're lucky, the sheriff will race you only to the county line.
In the South, they know life is best enjoyed outside, next to a barbecue, with a beer and a band picking up steam. Get lost for 2000 miles in Cajun Country, the Texas Hills and the New Mexican desert. Slow down. Take a load off. Ain't nothin' more important than the crawfish in the pot and learning how to two-step.
Start in New Orleans, a big city that nevertheless knows how to relax. After a few days, and once you've sobered up, drop into French-speaking Cajun Country. Get lost in the Cajun Wetlands , dodge gators on swamp tours, then hit the northern Cajun Prairie for zydeco music and crawfish boils.
Slip into Texas, skip Houston, and go straight for Austin, where the dimly lit, loud honky-tonks make great hideouts. Hill Country back roads lead to world-class barbecue, Texas wines, wildflowers and Luckenbach, a state of mind if ever there was one. Visit San Antonio, remember the Alamo, then skedaddle on Hwy 90 - a long bit of nothing that leads to an even bigger nowhere: Big Bend National Park, maybe America's best-kept secret.
Take lonely Hwy 54 north of I-10 to Guadalupe Mountains National Park and then into New Mexico, where Carlsbad Caverns National Park and, further west, White Sands National Monument provide many ways to escape. For a lesson in how to hide among the cliffs, keep wandering west on I-70 and Hwy 180 to the Gila Cliff Dwellings.
It's time to pack it in. End at Tucson and make like the many-limbed cacti in surrounding Saguaro National Park. Put your arms up and surrender. As the song goes, you fought the law, and the law won.
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