While lounging in my Atlanta hotel I decided that I wanted to go to California. San Francisco to be precise. It felt so liberating to be able to decide to travel 3000 miles at 2 days notice. I got my introduction to the American institution of the Greyhound buses. I will be telling the story of this journey in several parts. Here’s a breakdown of the connections:

Atlanta, GA – Nashville, TN – St Louis, MO – Kansas City, MO – Denver, CO – Salt Lake City, UT – San Francisco, CA.

The one constant on my USA adventure.

I didn’t know it but the first time I went Greyhound would affect me more than some of the cities I visited. When you see “2-3 days” written down on a screen or in a book it doesn’t seem like it will be too hard. When you’re actually living it, it’s a different matter. Due to events that I will give details of later, I actually spent 4 days/3 nights on buses.

When I arrived at the terminal in Atlanta, I had no idea what to expect or how it was going to work. The terminal was in a rough part of town and inside it felt a bit dodgy. I had my first experience of the wire seats they provide for customers. I learned that seats on the buses are given on a “first come, first served” basis and this breeds a lot of aggression on the busier, less frequent routes. While waiting in the line, everyones bags were searched. A child was with his mother in front of me and he asked, “Mommy, why is the man doing that?” and the mother replied, “He’s just looking for weapons, baby”. It shocked me how matter-of-fact she was about this detail, and at that moment I felt very British!

A word of advice for prospective Greyhound customers: Greyhound is great, as long as you’re not on a deadline. Don’t be surprised when buses are late for no reason. Also, unless you’re on the east coast, the buses are mostly scabby and I spent many hours fearing the bus would fall apart around me after a small bump in the road.  All this said, I loved my time on the Greyhound. It’s the best way to see the variety of the USA if you can’t afford to drive. It is a unique experience!

We were finally escorted out to our bus to Nashville, TN and I sat in the window seat at the back. I was there wide eyed for the first leg of the journey. This was my first proper experience of the open roads of the USA and I saw so much green in Georgia and Tennessee. In Tennessee I saw the sheer rock cliffs next to the interstates and then noticed the little trickling waterfalls coming out of them. There were mountains covered in trees and wide-open lakes and rivers. I got my first look at the majestic Mississippi River.

The beautiful scenery of Tennessee.

Going to Nashville was a pretty smooth ride and transferring in the Nashville terminal was simple. At this stage, I was mostly ignorant of how stressful and violent it can get at the back of a Greyhound line. Between Nashville and St Louis things started to go a little wrong. The bus had an issue making some slight hill starts. I think we were stuck just off the Tennessee/Kentucky border for about 15 minutes. One man sitting at the back kept shouting, “Oh Hell no!” and the bus driver gave him a row for “cussing”.

It was on this section of the trip that I saw how random some of the Greyhound terminals are. Most of the ones in small towns aren’t even bus stops; they are garages, backs of little shopping malls and even motels. I was thirsty a lot on the journey to St Louis but the only place to buy drinks were vending machines that only accepted dollar bills, which I didn’t have. I saw many amusing things while staring out the window; including a sign outside a lap dance club offering “2-4-1” dances to any war veterans recently returned from fighting. I found western Kentucky very boring, but I only got to see it in the dark. We were let off the bus somewhere in southern Illinois. I wasn’t aware of the geography of this part of the country at this stage and so I spent the entire journey waking up, going to sleep and buying food with no idea where I was. It keeps it exciting and mysterious!

Next – into the tornado warning zone; AKA Missouri and Kansas.