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Classic diner in Austin, Texas. Now serving Tex-Asian food.

Doorway in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Glamorous Clarksdale, Mississippi. The birthplace of the blues.

In Natchez, Mississippi some of the beautiful ante-bellum homes remain incomplete, interrupted when the war swept through the South. This is the interior of one whose owners never lived to see it completed.

In St Louis Cemetery No 2, New Orleans, Louisiana where voodoo queen Marie Leveaux is buried. Well, one of them anyway.

The dome of the state capital building in Austin, Texas. A replica of the Capitol Building in Washington DC, but bigger of course.

Tableau in the wax museum, San Antonio, Texas right opposite the Alamo.

Another roadside attraction. Abandoned restaurant near San Antonio, Texas

Refresh yourself in the birthplace of Buddy Holly. Lubbock, Texas

Not far from here John Wayne crossed the river -- now barely a stream -- to rescue Natalie Wood from the savage Indian Scar in the movie The Searchers. Monument Valley, Nevada.

Elvis has left the building but his ghostly presence remains. Some of the King's stage clothes at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee.

Trailer-homes in the Navaho Nation at Monument Valley, Arizona

Shadow on the stones in the Navaho Nation, Arizona.

The longer you stay the bigger it gets as clouds make their way across the landscape and reveal yet another mile-wide wrinkle in the Earth's crust. The Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Everything else looks measly after this, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, seen here from the south face near Red Butte.

The narrows of the Colorado River as seen from the Hoover Dam, Nevada.

Not Toytown but the actual Excalibur Hotel in Las Vegas. Gambling tables, serving wenches and a massive plaster dragon in the lobby. Infantile.

Near Danby at the base of the Old Woman Mountains in central California, a diner that ran out of customers and money.

Ground Zero blues club in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Se TRavelling Riverside Blues in Travels in Elsewhere

The birthplace of rock'n'roll. The place where Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and dozens of others recorded. Sun Studios, Memphis, Tennessee

Not a member of U2 in sight. Joshua Tree, California.

Another abandoned roadside attraction on the old road down the west coast of Washington state, near Kurt Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen.

The Sea Ranch Chapel, a beautiful and quiet interdenominational meditation space built on the roadside south of Mendocino in Northern California.

Which is why they are called giant redwoods. In the forest near god-awful Crescent City in Northern California where we spend a year one night. There's a story about my night in a bar there in the Snapshots pages.

Murder is news, and the Ship Ashore is about two kilometres from the Pacific Northwest coastline in Oregon.

Chainsaw art in Oregon knows no shame: Indians, girls in bikinis, woodsmen, a brown bear holding a white Fender Stratocaster, and this -- which was so obvious you just had to take the photo.

Viking Motel is that way. Chainsaw art in Oregon, the most visible and ugly art in the state. I asked a girl selling it just who bought this stuff and she said,

Inside Howard Hughes' famous Spruce Goose, so large you could park tanks inside it. Although no one ever did. See Travel Stories pages.

The bottom roast seemed cheap enough. A picturesque corner just outside of Aberdeen which charmingly combines art, advertising and abandoned garbage. No wonder Kurt Cobain left town as soon as he could.

A weather-beaten beach of the North Pacific on the coast of Washington state.

"Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased"

Ruby Beach in northwest Washington about an hour south of two oddly named towns: Sappho and Beaver. We didn't stop to ask.

Crater Lake invisible in the snow behind a hut at the top of the mountain in southern Oregon.

So now you know what Jack felt in Steven King's The Shining. Snow up to the roof at Crater Lake near Klamath Falls -- where there are no falls -- in southern Oregon.

Ernies -- for fine crawdads and steamed clams -- in all-but-abandoned Isleton (formerly known as

More muted tones at Ron Jon surf shop, Cocoa Beach, Florida.

Yes it's true. It is Fawlty Towers, a motel in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Terrific Tiki Bar out the back however.

The pinnacle of tasteful colour and aesthetic discretion. The Bamboo Panda Chinese restaurant at Cocoa Beach, Florida.

The smallest church in America so they say. This one is in Georgia. There is another smallest church on north central California, and doubtless a few others elsewhere. This holds maybe six people. Tops.

On the way to Las Vegas the long way round past the town of Chloride you'll find this town in the desert, for sale. Amboy, California.

The land where John Wayne walked and director John Ford codified as "The West"

Price list at Miss Hattie's Bordello in San Angelo which was open for business until 1948. With wine that cheap no wonder they limited beds to only three occupants. See Travel Stories.

The gentleman's bathroom in Trophy's Bar and Grill in Austin. See Travel Stories.

Somewhat more dramatic than Buddy's grave in Lubbock.

There's gold on them thar walls. Inside Elvis' Graceland.

Graceland Too in Holly Springs, north Mississippi. A whole house as a homage to Elvis. There is the story of our visit to this bizarre shrine in Postcards From Elsewhere.

Rat outside his famous -- and famously run-down -- hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi. This is where Bessie Smith died and John F Kennedy Jr slept and most famous blues musicians spent some time. See Postcards From Elswhere.

The elaborate frontage of the Nancy Lee and Perry R Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth.

Dallas. Just like the television show.

Installation at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas. Well worth the visit surprisingly. Get your photo taken in the replica of the Oval Office. See Travel Stories.

Another abandoned diner. This one somewhere in Tennessee.

I remember this place. It's the Alamo in San Antonio. See Travel Stories.

Here he lies, name spelled correctly, in the cemetery outside his hometown of Lubbock in the Texas Panhandle.

Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo. An art installation by the Ant Farm collective. See Travel Stories.

Still life with skulls in Santa Fe.

Petroglyphs in Monument Valley, probably made by the mysterious Anasazi people who walked this land long before the Navaho. See Snapshots

The road from LA to Las Vegas the long way, through Chloride and Barlow.

At Loretta Lynn's sprawling property in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee she built this replica of the home she grew up in at remote Butcher Holler, Kentucky. It's smaller than it looks.

In Nashville, Tennessee. Where else?

In Oroville in central California there is a museum of Chinese culture where they thoughtfully made the mannequins slightly . . . Asian?

Diner in coastal Oregon.

We missed the grand opening on Main Street in smalltown Dorris on the border of California and Oregon. Note the "Closed"

Engines on a Saturn rocket, Kennedy Space Center.

Famous hole in the rock at Monument Valley, not the same one Indiana Jones climbed through. That

Still life with crabs. Market in Seattle.

Sculpture inside the Experience Music Project centre in Seattle.

Seattle Tower in . . . umm

Inside the Boeing factory near Seattle. So big it has roads inside it and people get around on bikes or golf carts.

The famous 21 Club in San Francisco's Tenderloin District. See Encounters in Elsewhere.

A man in absolute Elsewhere, at the Grand Canyon.

Las Vegas -- where else?

Iran, Western music . . . nothing much changes in half a century, huh? This clipping at Graceland in Memphis.

Looks innocent enough, but step inside Foster's saloon in Rio Vista, California and you realise Bill Foster never met an animal he didn't like. And didn't like to kill, have stuffed and mounted.

Just another building in Nowhere America? Well yes, until one day in late 1963. See Snapshots story: The shots heard round the world. A building scary in its ordinariness.

Still life with blankets and skulls, New Mexico.

The famous/notorious Mercer-Williams house in Savannah, Georgia made internationally renown by John Berendt in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. There is a chapter in Postcards From Elsewhere about Savannah and this place.

In Monument Valley USA, the land where Moses -- or at least Charlton Heston playing Moses -- walked.

Once Jimi Hendrix had a simple plaque in the ground. Now he has this monstrosity. See My Back Pages: A grave situation

Samoa. No, really. This is Samoa in California. See Snapshots from Elsewhere: What's in a name

The Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee. An exceptional museum with an astonishingly thorough archive for researchers.

The former home of Loretta Lynn at Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. You can walk around inside and see her collection of perfume bottles and awful Native American art.

The room that killed the King. The kitchen at Elvis' Graceland where those deep-fried peanut butter sandwiches were prepared. See Recipes From Elsewhere.

In the office at Graceland, home of Elvis whose motto was "Taking Care of Business"

Another roadside attraction. Yet another abandoned house in Georgia, this near Athens.

The white people call it Owl Rock I believe because ...

Street sign at the market in Hanalei, a lovely smallish town on Kaua'i, one the Hawaiian islands. Great shop here of vintage Hawaiiana called the Yellowfish Trading Company. Robert Redford and I buy our thin ties from it.

Cabin 56 at the Coco Palms Resort on Kaua'i in the Hawaiian Islands. This is where Elvis filmed many indoor sequences for Blue Hawaii (it was used for four interiors) and the beautiful resort is now in tatters after a devastating tropical cyclone.

Hawaii is not always as picturesque as the brochures make out. Scenes like this on the often breathtakingly beautiful island of Kaua'i tend to be edited out.

If this looks a bit Jurassic Park that's because it is. It was filmed here on Kaua'i, one the Hawaiian islands.

Just as in Tropical North Queensland, Australia (see elsewhere in these Images), temptingly beautiful beaches in Hawaii often come with alarming warnings.

The towering razor-edge cliffs of the spectacular and largely impenetrable Na Pali coast on Kaua'i, one of the Hawaiian islands. This from a helicopter flight over the island, one of the must-do things on Kaua'i.

The airline may be long gone, but its name lives on in neon at the top of a building in Honolulu.

Looking for that hard-to-find candle with Minnie Mouse on it? This stall at the International market in Waikiki on Oahu seemed to have everything you might want. Hundreds of options, spoiled for choice, and headache inducing.

The famous pier at Hanalei on Kaua'i, one of the Hawaiian Islands. Tropical wind and rain on this day. Usually gorgeous. (Hmmm)

Memorial viewing platform over the sunken USS Arizona at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. Surprisingly moving actually.

Somewhere in the Navajo Nation

Band posters in Seattle's rock'n'roll museum celebrating the music of the Pacific northwest which gave the world Louie Louie, Jimi Hendrix, grunge and beyond. And Dead Moon.

New York in former days

New York in a much more innocent era

This is where your long flight into Elsewhere begins, amidst this morass of steel and science: Cape Canaveral.

And that mighty Mississippi, she just keeps a-rollin' along -- in this case past Natchez.

Wigs, hair and Chris Knox's face staring out of a t-shirt. In Spanish Harlem, New York City

We should assume it's been done up and the suburbs which surround it weren't there when Elvis was born in this small "shack" in Tupelo. I guess the nearby statue of Elvis as a boy and the huge gift shop weren't there then either.

The indoor pool at William Randolph Hearst's Castle near San Simeon in California

San Francisco Bay as seen from Alcatraz

John's Grill in San Francisco where Sam Spade ate chops with baked potato and sliced tomatoes in The Maltese Falcon. Patrons have included Lauren Bacall, Jimmy Carter, George Lucas and others. No one famous when I had a decent if pricey steak.

Marie Laveaux, the voodoo queen of New Orleans (1794-1881). Or one of them. There were two they say. But people still leave gifts at the tomb of this one and ask for her favours.

The rooftop of the Monte Vista Hotel in Arizona, which has a ghost or two, and where some interior scenes of Casablanca were shot. See Travels in Elsewhere

Rural Louisiana, near Clarksdale, the home of the blues. (There is a chapter in Postcards From Elsewhere about Clarksdale and Rat's famous Riverside Hotel where all the blues legends stayed.)

Somewhere in the Texas Panhandle. 'Nuff said.

The historic Monte Vista Hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona. Interior sequences of Casablanca were filmed here, it has a resident ghost, and on the door of the "Linda Ronstadt room" the sign reads "Stop and Smell the Horses". See Travels in Elsewhere

From a Quality Inn (or something similar) in Lubbock, Texas.

The whole town -- the firestation, motel, service station and all rest -- was for sale. Put in an offer. Near Chloride in California. This became the cover of Postcards From Elsewhere. And why not? You can't get more Elsewhere, with an option.

A river near Wailua on Kaua'i, the garden island of the Hawaiian group, which is often used as a stand-in for Vietnam or somewhere south east Asian in movies. And you can see why.

Famous hole through which Indiana Jones descended. In Monument Valley.

Glass guitar in a gallery in Honolulu

In Las Vegas, of course. Looks like the one in Paris too.

The coastline of northern Oregon

The famous Crossroads where bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. See Travels in Elsewhere

At Hawaii's version of the Grand Canyon on the garden island of Kauai'i

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