We haven’t travelled extensively in the US, but we’ve been to New England and California, driving up into the Sierra Nevadas from San Francisco. I like planning our itineraries and staying a little off the beaten track. We definitely encountered some quite deprived areas on our travels in more rural or mountain areas, sometimes not far from popular tourist areas. One of our B&B owners was horrified that we’d been to the local launderette to do our laundry half way through our break. It was a small town adjacent to a ski resort in the mountains but out of season. I liked it. Most of the customers were chatting in Spanish, but I was learning Spanish at the time and enjoyed the listening practice. Same with chatting with locals in the bar near our B&B. We used buses to get around SF and Boston or walked significant distances and probably saw more local colour than if we’d stayed downtown. I’m not sure what I’m really trying to say here, but if you get out of Oxford, London, Bath, Cotswolds, Edinburgh or any of the other big tourist hotspots in the UK you’d see a different side to the UK too. We found the vast majority of the Americans we encountered on our travels open, friendly and helpful. The most obvious difference for us (as polite atheists) was how much more openly religious people are than here.