'Backblocks America' is a roadtrip of discovery. From the Rio Grande to the Yukon, Bimini Island to Death Valley, we're on the continent of personal liberty, rugged individualism and frontiersman courage. Legend has it these are the values that made America. In these times of George W Bush, the Religious Right and the terrorist threat - how much of it remains?

They say you can cross the North American continent on metal roads still, you might have to open a few gates but it sure beats being locked up on the Inter-State. Our route meanders along as many of the secondary roads as possible cutting a north west diagonal from the outer reaches of the Bahamas where Columbus first saw land in 1492 and where one of Chinese Admiral Zeng He's fleets arguably sailed 70 years earlier than the Europeans.

St Augustine, Florida where the first European settlement was made in 1565 by the Spanish, is our commencing point on the mainland and we wander to the Alaskan coast on the Arctic Ocean, where much earlier the Indians arrived. Along the route we?ll take in the history and music of the South, from the War of Independence, to the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, country music, rock and roll and the Blues. Into Mexico then up the Rockies from Santa Fe to Alaska. Finally turning south we ferry through the Inner Passage to the top of Vancouver Island and begin the riding down the West Coast to journey's end at Los Angeles. A trip of some 22,000 kms promises an education.