No place like home

She'd never driven anything bigger than a Peugeot 106 - or on a motorway.

No wonder Nicci Martel was nervous when she picked up a 17ft camper van and headed straight out onto the US highway WITH New York nothing but a distant, expensive memory, we're just on the verge of crossing into The South.

A motel called The Family Inn, just off Route 64 in Virginia, is our exact location.

Don't let the name fool you. It's really not somewhere I'd ever take my family - it's grotty, there are addicts asking for money and the swimming pool backs onto a railway track. But understandably it's cheap and it means that at least for tonight, Hutch and I won't have to be cooped up in the van.

That's right. We have the van.

Since leaving New York more than a month ago, this road trip has well and truly got under way. We had a brief flirtation with the Great American Railroad, which took us up to Niagara Falls and Boston, but I'll get into that a bit later.

We picked up Jerry, our beloved but admittedly pungent van, at the beginning of May.

Firstly we decided it needed a name, because every great vessel integral to an adventure has one: the Jolly Roger, Millennium Falcon, Herbie.

Then we decided it had to be a he, because three females travelling together would just be trouble.

Thirdly, his beige-felt interior, with varnished wood panelling and mirrors, reminded us of something that The Good Life's Margot and Jerry might own - hence the name.

We always knew collecting the van would be a momentous occasion. It would signal the end of traipsing around train stations crippled by our two-ton rucksacks. From then on it would be hello to the open road and all the independence and flexibility that would bring.

The idea, in theory, was fantastic. But in true Hutch and Martel style, we never once paid too much attention to how exactly it would work in practice. It was always a case of, 'We'll work it out'.

We'd seen pictures of Jerry on the Internet - that sounds creepy so I'll drop the nickname for now - but it was only when we saw him in all his green and brown splendour that the realisation hit us.

He was monstrously big.

I know 17ft doesn't sound too bad, but the largest thing I'd ever driven was a Peugeot 106, (Hutch had a small advantage, having owned a Vauxhall Astra).

Then all the reasons why this adventure could be the worst idea we'd ever had suddenly streamed through my mind:

I didn't know how to drive an automatic, I had never driven on the opposite side of the road or, in fact, on a motorway, there were road signs we didn't understand and junctions we didn't know how to negoitiate. The list was pretty much endless.

But Hutch, never one to let a few practicalities stand in the way of having a good time, grabbed the bull by the horns and edged out onto a 65mph freeway.

I navigated us to the nearest campsite, fearing for my life the whole way, shouting, 'Brake Hutch, brake' and 'Watch that car'.

I'd like to say that things got easier when we got to that first campsite somewhere in the darkest depths of New Jersey, but that wasn't exactly the case.

It was dark when we arrived, there was no one around, my nerves were fraught and there were some unsettling sounds of the wild coming from outside.

To top it off, we kept banging our heads on Jerry's hideous wood panelling.

This was our home for the next five months - it was one of those laugh or cry moments. We chose the laugh option and spent the next 10 minutes in complete hysterics at just how ridiculous this all was.After a freezing night's sleep on a rock-hard mattress and realising that those strange insect noises from the night before had actually been a dribbling tap a few metres away, we started the day determined to make this situation work.

A quick shopping trip to Walmart later and Jerry had been given a makeover, decked out with cheap fuzzy cushions and duvets and equipped with collapsible camping chairs, a table and a wipe-clean gingham tablecloth.

It sounds stupid spending money on all this stuff that we won't be able to take home, but there was no way this adventure could continue unless we made the van more comfortable.

Five months is a long time.

Well, that mission has certainly been accomplished and I'd even go so far as to call the van cosy now. And what seemed so improbable that first night - actual day-to-day existence in such an enclosed space - has proved to be possible after all.

We've managed to develop some sort of routine, which involves getting woken up at eight in the morning, when the van gets unbearably hot, opening the windows, then snoozing for another hour or so before sleepily stumbling off to the campsite showers in our pyjamas.

Whoever is first back will set out the breakfast stuff on the nearest picnic table and boil up some water for a cup of tea. Then we pack up and get back on the road.

I always used to get slightly irritated by camping because it makes simple, everyday actions into drawn-out tasks.

Tea-making is the perfect example. You can't just switch on the kettle. But as I've discovered, when I have very little else to do all day except drive and do some sightseeing, it's impossible to begrudge the time needed to do this stuff.

Americans, though, have a very different view of camping. We've been in this game for about three weeks now and in that time we've not seen a single tent.

And I'd always thought it implied a temporary period of stay but, as I suspect you might have seen on television, there are a surprisingly large proportion of 'campers' who never leave their trailers.

The 'trailer trash' contingent is how they're affectionately known in popular culture. Although we haven't truly befriended any yet, they always seem perfectly friendly, they're not all overweight and they don't all love guns.

And they really put some effort into making their trailers homely by adorning their gardens with gnomes and brightly coloured plastic flowers as well as hanging up signs saying, 'Welcome to Bob and Linda's place'.

The other thing is that campers, whether permanent or non-permanent, always wave. I always wave back, because it's clearly good campsite etiquette.

However settled in the van we are, though, nothing beats the occasional breakout to a cheap, soulless motel - and there are many from which to choose.

For a start, we each get our own bed. Secondly, we don't have to share our bathroom with the rest of the campsite and the local insect population. And finally, we get to slob down, spread out and watch television for hours on end.

Don't get me wrong, it's not as if I'm especially missing TV (except for maybe Neighbours and 24), but I forget how pleasurable it is just to have one there, even if it does show one cringingly bad advert after another.

We've also developed a strange love-hate relationship with terrible wallpaper. The more grotesque a motel's wall covering, the more likely we are to want to stay there.

So far, the Economy Lodge outside Philadelphia wins hands down.

Enough of camping. I'm in America, so I should probably write a little about that.

As I mentioned earlier, we took a train up to Niagara Falls and Boston.Both journeys were at least seven hours long, about which I remember complaining at the time. I soon shut up after talking to one elderly lady who had travelled from San Francisco and had been on the train for almost four days.

I asked her how she'd remained sane. She recommended a good book and lots of sleep. After discovering the seats were all recliners with leg rests, I chose sleep.

We also took a bus journey down to Cape Cod and stayed in the island of Martha's Vineyard for a few days.

If you ever go to the east coast, this is one place I would urge you to visit. Slightly bigger than Guernsey and with a population of only 11,000, the place totally blew me away.

It wasn't just that it was packed full of charming gingerbread houses and picket fences and was surrounded by miles of impeccable sandy coastline - the people we met there were legendary.

There was Bobby, the old 'nam veteran, with a sparkle in his eyes and something of the Keith Richards about him.

Then there was Mikey, his young protege, an Iraq veteran who lived illegally on his boat and disguised himself from the police by growing a conspicuous beard.

There were also sisters Lori and Lisa, our guesthouse owners, who were a couple of laid back, modern-day hippies with a slightly obsessive love of an unknown Hawaiian singer called John Cruz. They even pushed a copy of his CD onto us.

As I said, if you are ever in the area, make sure you check it out.

And here's a trivial piece of info: it's where they filmed Jaws.

Since we got the van, got our heads around driving it and got over the fear of instant death, we've made pretty good headway.

We first moseyed down the New Jersey coastline, caught some rays on the beach, then went across to Pennsylvania and in particular, Amish Country and Philadelphia. Now, Philadelphia is a city that's not given enough attention - smaller then New York and less snobby than Boston, it's really quite beautiful and actually quite old - well, by American standards.

One thing to mention about the east coast is that it's obsessed with baseball and Americans have a tendency to draw breath when they realise that you've never heard of their home team and know nothing about the game whatsoever.

Also, did you know that professional players are encouraged to chew tobacco on the pitch? Only in America.

After Philly, we headed down to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and the Skyline Drive, which is a highway that takes you on a scenic route through the mountains. Little more than five minutes before we got there, Hutch decided to reveal to me that this area has the highest population of black bears than anywhere else in the country. This was a little fact she'd pulled from Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, which she had just finished.

She reeled off stories about bear-related deaths, including one involving a small boy who was attacked in his tent by a bear which could smell hamburger on him.

The boy had eaten the burger almost three hours earlier.

Feeling slightly shaken by these scraps of information, not to mention totally unprepared, I scanned the introduction of the book myself.

And there it was: stuff about people finding snakes in their bed and a discussion on whether it would be better to run from a bear or stare one out.

We made the decision right then that we would camp only on a designated site, surrounded by other campers, in the hope that any bears would go for them first.

We'd also avoid venturing too far into the wild if we could help it. Oh, and the van doors would be kept shut at all times - I wasn't going to risk anything crawling in unnoticed. Apart from being attacked by a giant cricket, which landed in my hair, nature stayed out of our way and we returned the favour.