[Vansquish]

OK...first off, I'm glad you're planning a trip across the pond, it's going to be a lot of fun. You might want to really plan out your route in advance though and figure out how many miles you're going to have to travel. The US isn't exactly a small place and to drive from Memphis to New Orleans isn't too bad of a haul, but all the way across Texas, NM, etc... to LA or SF, I hope you're planning for quite a long time on the road. You're talking about a couple of thousand miles driving all-told and some of it's pretty, but some of it is going to be quite tedious...depending on how fast you're driving/where you end up going.

That having been said, there's a shitload of stuff to see in New Orleans, everything from Jazz clubs, the French Quarter, Bourbon St. and the Mardi Gras celebrations to a fantastic Aquarium...

in Texas, depending on where you decide you want to go, Houston is a huge city with a lot to see as well. I'd recommend stopping by the space center and taking a tour of some sort if you're into that sort of thing. If you'd really like, I might be able to get you in with my aunt or uncle who both work at Johnson Space Center at NASA. San Antonio is another beautiful city to visit. A lot of it is modeled in a sort of pseudo-European style and there's quite a bit of historical stuff to see (The Alamo etc... if you're into that sort of thing).

Heading west yet again, into New Mexico and the "Four Corners" area (New Mex., Colorado, Utah, Arizona) there are a variety of National parks that you might be interested in visiting. The Grand Canyon is of course a huge attraction, but if you go, in order to avoid some of the more "touristy" stuff, I'd go and spend the night on the North Rim at one of the lodges there rather than the South, for as I recall, the South is far more highly populated. Zion national park and Bryce Canyon National Park aren't too far away from there either, and both are absolutely stunningly beautiful. If you're interested in some of the more fundamental "origins of man" sort of history, go to Mesa Verde National Park in New Mexico. There you can see the ruins of ancient native American civilizations that flourished up to about 1500-2000 years ago. Mesa Verde has a lot of these pueblos, but the spectacular thing about this particular park is that most of them are in recessed areas in cliffs and the inhabitants carved hand and footholds into the rock face in order to get to/from their homes.

Into Nevada, of course you end up with Las Vegas and all the wild partying and debauchery you could ever want, but there's more to the area than just that. There are a variety of national parks in the area that would be interesting to visit to see more ancient dwellings and search out pictographs.

In Arizona, if you make it to Scottsdale, there's a huge collection of exotics at a dealership there, pictures of which have been posted here at JW in the past. If I was in the area, I'd sure as hell go.

At any rate, my knowledge doesn't go a whole lot farther West (in the US at any rate) than that, so someone else is going to have to give you that info hehe. Anyway, I hope this has been at least mildly helpful.