State Mottos

Road trips are a long-established American tradition immortalised in films from 'Easy Rider' and 'Thelma & Louise' to 'National Lampoon's Vacation'. And even though most workers get very little paid leave (rarely more than two weeks a year), families will routinely travel long distances by car to their holiday destinations. By this I don't mean three to four hours, as we Europeans might drive. I'm talking ten hours, two days, even three - in each direction, of course.

Whenever we visit a tourist hotspot like a national park, my kids therefore like to play a game that might be called "Where Am I From?" This involves combing through parking lots checking car number-plates, which are issued individually by each state, to see which vehicle came from the furthest away.

The results of this game can be amazing: on a recent visit to Yellowstone in Wyoming, we discovered a car registered in New York, a state some 2200 miles away.

Another interesting aspect of US licence plates is that they almost always feature a slogan designed, presumably, to entice tourists to that particular state. Because these are so interesting and sometimes intriguing, we have begun collecting these catchphrases too.

Some slogans tout the relevant state's geographic features. This is the case with number plates from Arizona ("The Grand Canyon State"), Michigan ("Great Lakes Splendor"), West Virginia ("Wild, Wonderful"), Vermont ("The Green Mountain State") and Minnesota ("10,000 Lakes"). Others are less subtle in their bid to woo visitors: Louisiana, for instance, claims to be "The Sportsman's Paradise", Utah purports to have "The Greatest Snow on Earth", and Maine manages to top even that, declaring itself simply "Vacationland".

Certain states, like Illinois ("Land of Lincoln"), Delaware ("The First State"), Tennessee ("The Volunteer State"), Oklahoma ("Native America") and Connecticut ("The Constitution State"), trumpet their historical significance, although for some reason both North Carolina ("First in Flight") and Ohio ("Birthplace of Aviation") appear to lay claim to the same achievement. While the likes of Alaska ("The Last Frontier"), New Hampshire ("Live Free or Die") and Texas ("The Lone Star State") bluster about their rugged independence.

California and Colorado apparently need no introduction whatsoever because their number plates feature only their name. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, New Mexico ("Land of Enchantment"), Missouri ("The Show-Me State"), Massachusetts ("The Spirit of America"), Indiana ("The Crossroads of America")  and Arkansas ("The Natural State") seem to have no real claim to fame, which is presumably why they've opted for a vaguer, esoteric slogan.

With all these grandiloquent slogans gracing the cars across this great nation, you can't but feel sorry for the poor motorists of Idaho, a state roughly the size of Britain. What battle cry did their legislators pick to encapsulate this state's wide-ranging attractions and bring the world's tourists flocking to Idaho's glorious vistas?

"Famous Potatoes".

Freedoms

People in the UK may complain about the "nanny state", yet this mumbled dissension is typically British in its muted amateurism. Not so in the US, where the fight for much-vaunted "freedoms" and "liberty" can be and often is taken into every corner of life.

Americans - or rather, a proportion of said people - are obsessed with their freedoms and the supposed, alleged or feared restriction thereof by "Big Government".

Americans have resisted taxation ever since the Boston Tea Party, when disgruntled New Worlders were so incensed by the fact that they were "taxed without representation" (i.e. supported the British crown financially, but couldn't vote - a situation in which, by a quirk of fate, I too find myself, albeit in my case I pay the IRS) that they threw some leaves off a ship. Scary, eh? The current "Tea Party" is simply an extension of this, a movement who claim they have been Taxed Enough Already - hence TEA - and assert the "freedom" to pay less, thus scuppering any attempts to balance the US budget and rein in the national debt.

Another "freedom" vehemently and vociferously defended is the so-called "right to bear arms" based on the rather ambiguous Second Amendment of the Constitution, which reads:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed"

Gun-lobbyists like the National Rifle Association believe this permits people to own even assault rifles. As a result, 40-50% of Americans have one or more guns, although only 11% use them for hunting. In all, there are about 190 million guns in circulation spread between a total population of about 310 million.

One of the dafter "liberties" currently under dispute is the argument against the recently implemented healthcare reforms, which demand that everyone must have healthcare coverage. At last count, as many as 15% of Americans - 46 million people - were without health insurance. But now (wealthy) people are demanding the "right" to opt out, claiming mandatory coverage constitutes an infringement of their liberties. Although the case is still going through the courts, it's possible the nay-sayers could yet scupper what was a bold attempt to give more people access to medical treatment.

Finally, I want to mention a "freedom" that is being argued over here in Michigan: the right not to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle. At present, all bikers have to wear a helmet. But "freedom-loving people" now want to repeal the 40-year-old legislation on the spurious grounds that, because there is no such law in neighbouring states, Michigan could lose valuable tourism revenues if bikers chose to vacation elsewhere.

"Helmets don't prevent accidents," says the president of the American Bikers Aiming Toward Education Michigan, echoing the NRA's "Guns don't kill, people do" mantra. Seatbelts don't prevent accidents either, but nobody's suggesting we scrap them too - or are they?

Michigan

We travelled from the base of the thumb to the tip of the little finger this weekend.

If this means nothing to you, you clearly haven't been introduced to Michigandan geography. You see, the state of Michigan (or at least the lower peninsula, the only part anyone ever talks about) is conveniently shaped like a glove. So whenever Michiganders want to explain where somewhere is, they simply hold up their right hand, palm forward, and point to the relative position.

Having traversed the state from east to west and back again (a distance of about 700 miles) in the space of 48 hours, I could now claim to know Michigan like the back of my hand. But that would be incorrect, of course: I only know the front.