From the country music capital of the world to the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park, the United States has much to offer in scenic attractions and cultural and agricultural diversity. Much of our agricultural technology has its roots in the US and we will visit some of the centres of that development, as well as the biggest outdoor farm show in the country.Along the way, we’ll take in the Blue Ridge mountains, the relaxed southern lifestyle of Savannah, barge down the Mississippi for a few hours and explore the iconic Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. The tour culminates with our exploration of the spectacular Palouse region of the Pacific North-West on our way to Seattle.
And Seattle is a great jumping-off point for further optional adventures to places such as Vancouver Island, the Canadian Rockies or an Inside Passage cruise.
From our arrival in the US, we'll fly directly to Nashville to start our tour. Everyone knows that Nashville is the home of country music and much more besides. Talented musicians flock to the city from all over the world and you will be amazed at the standard of performers at even the most humble music joint on Broadway. And not just country music.
We'll have a welcome "get-to-know" dinner and a well deserved rest.
We'll do a short tour around the home of country music and the second-largest music production centre (after New York) in the US. The total economic impact of the industry is estimated at more than (AUD)$10 billion per year and contributes 20,000 jobs to the area.
Famous attractions include the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Belcourt Theatre and Ryman Auditorium and of course, the Grand Ole Opry House.
You will have a free evening to sample some of the great restaurants in Nashville – the barbecue places are excellent. And of course, there is your choice of many music options including the Grand Ole Opry which has a show on at 7pm most nights (August 2025 schedule not yet released).
This morning we leave Nashville and travel southeast towards North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is also part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are in turn a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain.
For thousands of years, Native Americans cultivated the fertile valleys of the Blue Ridge mountains raising corn, beans and squash - which were the staples of their diet. The Cherokee used "slash and burn" techniques to clear small areas of forested land and to fertilise the soil. European immigrants brought many of their agricultural practices with them. But as they settled in the mountains, they soon adopted many Cherokee crops and techniques which had been refined over centuries. This blending of immigrant agricultural practices with Native American traditions resulted in a distinctive regional agricultural heritage.
We visit a farm in the region before continuing on to Asheville, North Carolina. With a unique mix of hipster coffee shops, award-winning restaurants, outdoor activities, and more breweries per capita than anywhere else in the US, many seasoned travellers rate Asheville as the "coolest" small town in the whole country.
After exploring the sights of the Blue Ridge Mountains a little more, we travel south to visit with researchers at Clemson University (one of the outstanding agricultural schools in the US) and meet with some of the local farmers. We're now in South Carolina – three states in three days!
South Carolina is renowned as a top poultry producer (broilers and turkeys), almost 2 million fertile hectares are producing a diverse range of high value greenhouse and nursery products, cotton, corn, cattle, soybeans, peanuts, eggs and wheat. Agribusiness is South Carolina's largest economic sector, contributing around US$40 billion and over 200,000 jobs each year to the state's economy
In the afternoon we continue on to Augusta, home to the US Masters golf tournament. And we'll be in Georgia, so four states in three days!
Savannah's recorded history begins in 1733. That's the year the British General James Oglethorpe and the 120 passengers of the good ship "Anne" landed on a bluff high along the Savannah River. Oglethorpe named the 13th and final American colony "Georgia" after England's King George II. Savannah became its first city.
During the American Revolution, the British took Savannah in 1778 and held it into 1782. After independence was secured, Savannah flourished. Soon, farmers discovered that the soil was rich and the climate favourable for cultivation of cotton and rice. Plantations and slavery became highly profitable enterprises. The trans-Atlantic slave trade brought many African-Americans through the port of Savannah. Many who stayed in the area formed the unique Gullah culture of the coastal communities in Georgia and South Carolina.
With the wealth brought by cotton, residents built lavish homes and churches throughout the city. After the invention of the cotton gin on a plantation outside of Savannah, the city became a major commercial port. And many of the world's cotton prices were set on the steps of the Savannah Cotton Exchange. The building is still in existence.
Consistently named one of the world's friendliest cities, the coastal town of Savannah has a world-class reputation for hospitality and grace. The city was built with squares in mind and the original 'town plan' incorporated 24 of them. 22 remain today and each beautiful square contains its own piece of Savannah's history. The squares are surrounded by Savannah's historic homes.
To give you an idea of how beautiful this city is, during the Civil War the ruthless and all-conquering Union General Sherman was so taken by the city that he could not destroy it. On December 22, 1864 he sent a famous telegram to President Abraham Lincoln, offering Savannah as a Christmas present.
We check out just some of the many highlights on a guided city tour this morning before free time this evening.
This morning, we'll transfer to the airport for our direct flight to Chicago, one of the premier cities of the US. This city has it all and enjoys spoiling its visitors and locals alike with a wealth of culture, shopping, dining and entertainment possibilities. As Frank Sinatra sang so many times about this world-class city, "it's one town that won't let you down." On arrival, we have a guided city tour to help get our bearings before dinner.
More touring around Chicago including The Magnificent Mile, The Loop and other places Al Capone and his ilk liked to frequent. The city is renowned for its magnificent architecture and one of the great city tours is an architecture boat tour on the Chicago River with commentary on some of the groundbreaking building designs by trained architecture experts.
If sport is more your thing, either the Cubs or the White Sox are almost sure to have a home game (baseball) on the weekend we are there. A great cultural (and gastronomic) experience.
From Chicago, we travel into Iowa with its endless vistas of corn and soybean crops and we'll visit the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR) in Peoria. It is among the largest agricultural research centres in the United States. Discovering how to mass-produce penicillin occurred in the US at the Peoria lab.
The Centre specialises in new crops and processing research. Researching oilseeds from around the world has led to new products from specialty crops, such as paper from kenaf, cosmetics from jojoba and meadowfoam and alternative rubber from guayule.
Pennycress as a cash cover crop to “fuel the bioeconomy” was recently selected as a top USDA-ARS innovation. They discovered that the byproducts of processing mustard seeds into spices and oil can be exploited for controlling mosquitoes in their habitat.
In the afternoon, continue on to Springfield, Illinois.
Today will be one of the real farming highlights of the tour. In Decatur, we'll visit Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, commonly known as ADM, one of the largest human and animal nutrition companies in the world. This massive operation is backed by a huge state of the art grain trading room.
And just down the road is the Farm Progress Show, the biggest outdoor ag show in the US with over 500 exhibitors displaying new farm equipment, tractors, combines other farm implements and inputs.There should be something for everyone in our visit this afternoon.
Today we continue onto St Louis, following the Mississippi, with a farm visit along the way. We call into Hannibal, the very well preserved historic Mississippi river town and the boyhood home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens – better known as Mark Twain.
St Louis is on the Mississippi and is one of the major shipping centres for midwest grain to be taken by barge down the mighty river all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. We'll get a look at the loading facilities and maybe even a ride on one of the tugboats which pushes these barge convoys down the river.
St Louis is the home of Bayer CropScience research. We'll take a guided tour of this facility which has produced some of the most significant advances in crop varieties and seed traits in the past three decades.
From here, we'll transfer to the nearby airport for our direct flight to Denver, Colorado.
Denver is nestled on the eastern side of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains and there is a stark contrast between the rugged mountain peaks and the rolling hills around Denver which eventually flatten out further east into the endless plains of the midwest.
We'll keep the Front Range in sight as we travel north and cross into Wyoming. The state has incredible natural beauty and the lowest population density in the US. Many of the town names will be familiar to anyone who has watched a Western movie – think Cheyenne, Deadwood and Laramie. There are plenty of cowboys left in Wyoming and plenty of cattle ranches. We'll visit one as well as a cropping operation as we travel through the south east of the state, the biggest agricultural production area.
Wyoming has been the centre of major coal seam gas developments, particularly in the Powder River basin in the north, and there have been recent discoveries of rare earths further south. This has led to conflict between agriculture and mining – sound familiar?
We head further west through the Wind River reservation and the country becomes more and more spectacular until we enter the Grand Teton National Park and some of the most beautiful scenery in the US. Jagged mountain peaks, mountain lakes and the Snake River valley.
We spend some more time in the Grand Teton National Park before heading north for an hour or two to the equally beautiful and even more famous Yellowstone National Park. Wyoming may not have many people but they hit the jackpot when it comes to scenery.
In Yellowstone, we'll have an experienced guide give us an understanding of the park’s geology, ecology, and history. We'll explore the various geothermal features, wildlife habitats, and famous landmarks within Yellowstone.
Yellowstone is world-famous for its geothermal features, including the incomparable Old Faithful geyser. We'll take a loop of the park’s most remarkable geothermal areas, where you’ll witness the eruption of geysers, marvel at the colourful hot springs, and learn about the significance of these geological wonders.
Yellowstone is a huge park and there are often bison or bear traffic jams as you drive around.
This afternoon we exit Yellowstone to the north and cross into south-west Montana. The city of Bozeman, with its 55,000 population, is our destination.
In 1863, John Bozeman, a pioneer and frontiersman opened the very hostile Bozeman Trail, a new northern route off the Oregon Trail. Ongoing conflicts with Indian tribes – including Shoshone, Nez Perce, Blackfeet, Flathead, Crow Nation and Sioux – closed the Bozeman Trail in 1868. But the area's fertile land still attracted permanent settlers.
Today, with both irrigated and dryland cropping plus fertile rangelands, agriculture still drives the local economy. The principal crops are winter wheat, spring wheat, lucerne, grass hay, barley, oats, peas, canola, chickpeas, potatoes and some silage corn.
We will visit a farm in the region before continuing on to the northwest and the town of Missoula. For much of this spectacular drive we will follow the Clark Fork River. It is named after William Clark of the 1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The Clark Fork is the largest river by volume in Montana, and drains an extensive region of the Rocky Mountains in western Montana and northern Idaho in the watershed of the Columbia River.
Today we will cross the Continental Divide – which is literally the hydrological divide of the Americas. The Continental Divide extends from Alaska to the southern tip of South America, and separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from those river systems that drain into the Atlantic Ocean.
The Continental Divide tends to follow a line of high peaks along the main ranges of the Rocky Mountains and Andes.
On the western side of the Divide we enter Idaho, but not for long. We're soon into Washington State where rich farmlands open up as we enter the region called the Palouse prairie – or simply the Palouse – noteworthy for its fertile rolling hills where winter and spring wheat, barley, lentils, and peas are grown. Overnight in the agricultural/university town of Pullman.
We enjoy dinner tonight at the South Fork Public House – a locally owned and operated business with enduring connections to the Palouse region.
The rolling hills of the Palouse grow some of the nation’s richest crops of wheat, barley, lentils and chickpeas and make for a spectacular patchwork quilt effect, but the steep slopes bring their own problems.
Along with our local farm specialist/advisor, we board our charter coach early this morning and travel west into the spectacular scenery and farmlands of the Pacific North West (PNW – Oregon, Washington and a part of western Idaho). Nearly a quarter of the land area in this region is grain, hay, fruit and dairy farming.
The PNW is flourishing due to access to water, strong demand for agricultural land and a favourable farming environment. The Columbia Basin Irrigated region in central Washington is widely considered one of the best places to farm in the entire US. The Columbia River is the largest US river emptying into the Pacific.
We visit farms in the Columbia River valley as we travel west. Late afternoon arrival into the beautiful seaport city of Seattle, one of the most liveable cities in the US.
After a heart starting cup of coffee or tea at the hotel, first thing this morning we will visit the nearby and world-famous Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit/museum. We then board the Seattle monorail which opened in 1962 as part of the Seattle World Fair and travel downtown to Pike Place Market for brunch. Our cafe overlooks the historic Elliott Bay waterfront. The Pike Place Market opened in 1907 and is one of the oldest continuously operated public farmers' markets in the US.
We then board our bus for a guided city tour before continuing north to Everett and the famous Boeing factory tour and Future of Flight Aviation Center. Here we will enter the world's largest (by volume) building to see where the 747, 777 and 787 Dreamliner aircraft are built.
We return to Seattle for a farewell diner this evening.
Depart for Australia or continue your adventures. Options include Inside Passage cruises or cross into Canada for Vancouver Island/Rocky Mountain tours. Please contact us for some add-on suggestions.