{"id":13715,"date":"2021-04-27T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T11:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityadventurers.co.uk\/blog\/?p=13715"},"modified":"2022-04-20T10:28:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T10:28:04","slug":"the-lost-continent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityadventurers.co.uk\/blog\/?p=13715","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Continent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"block-1efb24bc-3b16-4223-b901-ad0e33ed07a2\">The other day we were clearing out a book case and I came across my copy of The Lost Continent, Travels in Small-Town America. This was Bill Bryson&#8217;s first travel book, in which he chronicled a trip in his mother&#8217;s Chevy around small town America in the late 1980&#8217;s.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"block-50d70020-b8ed-4b00-b483-66c19676588d\">Ian and I first went on a tour of the USA in 1988. His description of driving into Philadelphia was reminiscent of our experience. Although the scene had changed a lot when we ventured back to Philadelphia in 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"block-05927fb9-0587-43c3-8806-176ec77c9a27\">We toured a lot of North America during the 2000&#8217;s and 2010&#8217;s. Reading the book, it was good to compare our experiences with Bill Bryson&#8217;s. We really enjoyed our tour of Arizona (2005) and our trip to Los Angeles (2009) and had hoped to explore more of the west. Bryson&#8217;s book did not inspire me with confidence for such a road trip. But, hey, maybe things have changed there too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"block-0374c40e-0827-49cb-ad7a-0d45fda4dc6d\">It wasn&#8217;t until I&#8217;d re-read it, and started to write this blog, that I discovered this book is considered a classic of travel literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/1784161802\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1634&amp;creative=6738&amp;creativeASIN=1784161802&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=invittoevent-21&amp;linkId=a6ac08d63bc8d2d435829f42e132dd2a\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-eu.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?_encoding=UTF8&amp;MarketPlace=GB&amp;ASIN=1784161802&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;ID=AsinImage&amp;WS=1&amp;Format=_SL250_&amp;tag=invittoevent-21\"><\/a>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"block-dd7361a4-607f-466d-978d-5c03ef10c226\">Plot<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>&#8220;I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to&#8221; says Bill Bryson. And, as soon as he was old enough, he left.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Des Moines couldn&#8217;t hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. Travelling around thirty-eight of the lower states &#8211; united only in their mind-numbingly dreary uniformity &#8211; he discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Join City Adventurers and start exploring\u2026..<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Join our club for people who want to live life to the full. Just&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/cityadventurers?fan_landing=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click the link&nbsp;<\/a>and join the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/cityadventurers?fan_landing=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">club<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The other day we were clearing out a book case and I came across my copy of The Lost Continent, Travels in Small-Town America. This was Bill Bryson&#8217;s first travel book, in which he chronicled a trip in his mother&#8217;s Chevy around small town America in the late 1980&#8217;s. Ian and I first went on &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cityadventurers.co.uk\/blog\/?p=13715\">More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Lost Continent<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[1488,1487,1489],"class_list":["post-13715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-travel","tag-bill-bryson","tag-the-lost-continent","tag-travels-in-small-town-america"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Lost Continent - City Adventurers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityadventurers.co.uk\/blog\/?p=13715\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Lost Continent - City Adventurers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The other day we were clearing out a book case and I came across my copy of The Lost Continent, Travels in Small-Town America. This was Bill Bryson&#8217;s first travel book, in which he chronicled a trip in his mother&#8217;s Chevy around small town America in the late 1980&#8217;s. 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