Just because there is a simple pig farmer standing in a rice patty somewhere in their vast country doesn’t make Beijing any less Chinese.

The East Coast of the US has several cities that are unmistakeably as American as New York is (just on a much smaller scale, naturally). Most of your journey was not spent on the East Coast, so a visit to New York probably probably did seem very different than, say, staring at the endless cornfields of Nebraska, or gazing across the Grand Canyon. But take a walk through Miami, Atlanta, or Charlotte, and you’re not likely to confuse yourself and think you were in Europe, Japan or Mexico.

Perhaps on a future journey, you (or someone you know) can spend more time in the Southeast…

In Florida, experience a Miami Vice neon bikini party, and then check out the 2-1/2 mile long high-banked race oval built on the sandy beaches of Daytona. Disney World (and SeaWorld and Universal Studios and Discovery Cove) are all located in Orlando, and it’s easy to find airboat rides through the alligator-infested Everglade swamps. Maybe even check out a Space Shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center.

In Georgia, see “America’s Stonehenge” and “The Little White House”, and the New World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. Also, check out a couple of the Old South cotton plantations that are scattered throughout the South, and the very old (for us, anyway) deep south charm of Savannah.

In South Carolina, see Fort Sumter (highlighted in the movie “Glory”), where the opening – and later some of the closing – shots of the American Civil War were fired.

In North Carolina, visit some lighthouses and search for Blackbeard’s long lost pirate treasure in the Outer Banks (and visit Kitty Hawk for the Wright Brothers Memorial and see where man’s first airplane flight took place), and visit RJ Reynold’s 2 million square foot cigarette factory in Winston-Salem (politically incorrect, I suppose, but nonetheless fascinating in it’s sheer scale). To wrap things up, do some hiking in Chimney Rock Park (where the last 20 minutes of the movie “Last Of The Mohicans” was filmed…and yes, the trails along the tops of the cliffs are open to the public).

In Virginia, visit the various shipyards located in the Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth, and Hampton Roads areas…by far the largest concentration of naval shipyards in human history.

Terrific blog so far! Now back to my reading…