Insiders' guide to America

Over the past six months, we've been criss-crossing the USA on a series of road trips to bring you an insiders' guide to the country.

The road trips were blogged over five days in real time and were directed by Guardian readers and users of Twitter – the idea being to find local voices and bring local insight to a destination that is prodigious in scale.

Starting in Florida, we moved over to the northwest Pacific Coast, swung down to Texas and New Mexico, over to Nevada, Utah and Colorado, up to Illinois and down again to Tennessee before ending up on the eastern seaboard. We received thousands of tips and met hundreds of brilliant people all willing and proud to show us their corner of the vast landscape that is the USA.

To smooth out the often long stretches behind the wheel, local musicians and radio stations sent us essential road-trip playlists.

In addition, we made films with Cerys Matthews in Nashville, Richard Grant in the Mississippi Delta; we shot Hemingway country in Idaho, the art of Americana in Texas; we went surfing in California and crab-hunting in Chesapeake.

We also enlisted the best bloggers to give us the locals' lowdown on what to see and do in each region, which we've now put on a map to help you plan your own perfect road trip in America.

We haven't scratched the surface of the vast and varied country, but we hope we've uncovered some local gems and shown you a side to America that often gets overlooked by the guidebooks.