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John Cletheroe's
USA and Canada Holiday Hints |
Please bear in mind that the contents of this page are generalisations. The USA and Canada are huge countries - each region and each town is individual and there are many exceptions and variations to what I describe here.
However, Typicalville has a relatively compact traditional town centre, with the shops and businesses sharing buildings. Parking is on the streets, a few of which in the very centre of town have parking meters. In Typicalville this central business district is dying - but the nearby town of Notquitesotypicalboro has a fully viable and healthy town centre. Both look like shots from the 60's television series "The Fugitive". In both towns the streets are straight and wide, and laid out in a block grid pattern. During the day pedestrians can be seen walking on the sidewalks here. There are numerous traffic lights (where you can turn right on a circular red light provided you first stop and make sure the way is clear - but not on a red arrow). There are no traffic roundabouts. You can't perform a U-turn in this area. Here, as elsewhere, you can't park near a junction or a fire hydrant. Typicalville's City Hall, US Post Office and small town park are all in its town centre, together with a number of traditional shops, a somewhat shabby looking hotel and some shady looking bars and restaurants. The Greyhound Bus stop is opposite the hotel.
There are no fast food chains here in the central business district, nor any motel chains. In fact just about the only examples of chains that you recognise are the True Value Hardware Store and the closed down Woolworths.
Up one of the side roads fairly close to the centre of town Typicalville's High School can be found. This is a large modern brick building, with numerous yellow coloured school buses neatly parked in rows outside during school days. The school has a sign outside informing us that it is "The Home of The Tigers", a reference to its (American) football team.
Most of the houses in Typicalville's residential area are constructed from wood. They all have mailboxes on posts by the road and many of them have basketball hoops mounted on their garage walls. As elsewhere, the roads in this residential area are straight and laid out in the block grid style. Many of the intersections in this quiet, low traffic area are four way stops, where every vehicle must stop and then move off in the same order as they arrived. In the last five years there's only been one crash at a four-way stop intersection, and "road-rage" is unheard of.
The main roads leading out of Typicalville each have long avenues of fast food and other family-oriented restaurants, motels, supermarkets, convenience stores, large single story discount department stores, gas stations and similar businesses, together with occasional office blocks and other buildings. All the restaurants, motels, shops and other businesses are separate individual buildings with large gaps between them, and each has its own extensive parking area. Each restaurant, motel and supermarket chain's building looks almost identical to that chain's buildings in other American towns. Almost all of the fast food restaurants have drive-thru's. Visitors from Britain familiar with the design of out-of-town drive-thru McDonald's in that country will instantly recognise the same design in the USA and Canada - the difference being that in the USA and Canada virtually all the McDonald's and other fast food restaurants are out-of-town drive-thru's (with tables and chairs inside as well, of course).
Typicalville's fast food restaurants include a Hardee's, a McDonald's, a Sonic, a Subway, a Taco Bell and a Wendy's. There is also a Pizza Hut and a Golden Corral family steakhouse, the latter doing a particularly good trade on Friday evenings. It's unheard of not to be able to find a table to sit at in any of restaurants, fast food and otherwise.
Typicalville has an Albertsons, an IGA, and five other supermarkets. It also has a Wal-Mart discount department store, which like the others in this chain is a huge single story building with its equally huge parking area in front.
The "fast-food alleys" each stretch for several miles, and even during daylight it is very rare to see any pedestrians walking alongside them - indeed for most of their lengths there are no sidewalks. At night the huge signs on the tops of the incredibly tall poles which advertise the presence of each business are lit up to make a colourful display.
The nearest budget chain motel and fast food restaurant are each over a mile from the town centre.
The main roads here have five lanes - two in each direction plus a middle lane which is for traffic turning left. Just outside the city limits most of the roads reduce to one lane in each direction with shoulders wide enough to form traffic lanes where slow and turning traffic pulls over to allow other vehicles to pass. However, the main US Highway is a divided highway (dual carriageway) with two lanes in each direction plus wide shoulders. The Interstate is a divided highway with controlled access, like a British motorway.
The main road which runs the three miles in each direction between Typicalville's central business district and the town's two Interstate exits (Exit 168 and Exit 174, which are consecutive) is the main "fast-food alley", with a pronounced cluster of restaurants, motels, department stores and gas stations near each of the Interstate exits. The advertising signs here are even larger and even taller, so as to be clearly visible to drivers on the Interstate, who have already been fully advised by numerous billboards alongside the Interstate outside town giving directions to each business. This road between the Interstate exits through Typicalville is clearly signposted as a Business Route from the Interstate, together with an official sign advising travellers that the town can offer "gas, food and lodging". The Typicalville Mall is located on this road, and includes over a hundred shops in its single building, with a huge parking area in front. The Mall is two miles from the town centre.
There are no service areas on the Interstate itself between towns. The services at the Interstate exit serve both the town and the Interstate traffic. (Some toll highways in the USA do have their own service areas, however.)
As you approach the Interstate from Typicalville heading north on US57, you see signposts reading "I-34 West" (pointing left, but with a vertical stub to the arrow to indicate that the turn is at the next intersection), "I-34 East" (pointing right, with no stub, indicating the turn is at this intersection) and "US57 North" (pointing straight on). There are no town names on any of these signs. (The road numbers are fictional and any connection with any actual road number whether alive or dead is coincidental.) Many thanks to Steve Collins [slcollins@geocities.com] for reminding me that even numbered roads run east-west and odd numbered roads run north-south.
Since there's a traffic light at each block intersection nobody bothers to race away when the lights turn green. Everyone obeys the speed limits in town because they know the police will stop them if they don't.
Outside town, even on the main roads, traffic levels are extremely light compared with Europe and it is not uncommon to travel miles with no vehicle travelling in the same direction in sight in front or behind you, although there is the occasional vehicle passing in the opposite direction. Most people drive about ten to twenty miles an hour above the speed limit outside town, although foreign visitors with less local knowledge might tend to be more cautious. (Traffic levels are higher in the east than in the west, but outside the major cities they are always well below European levels.)
Except for a couple of tiny settlements, Typicalville is the closest town to the park.
Pinkstone Canyon National Park covers an area of approximately twenty miles by thirty miles, and the entire area is public land, owned by the federal government. Within the National Park there are no privately owned buildings of any sort, and only the absolute minimum of National Park Service buildings. The park has a Visitor Centre near its entrance, a small general store and giftshop near the campsite and a small Ranger Station near Pinkstone Lake.
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Most recently modified 20-Jul-02