I’d planned too late to get Essence tickets, so we went instead to the Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro, on Frenchmen Street, to see the pianist Ellis Marsalis lead his crack sax-and-trumpet quintet through his own compositions and songs by Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. At the end, the wry Mr. Marsalis, 82, invited tourists to return to New Orleans and “make sure you bring your pocketbook because Louisiana is broke.” I contributed to the cause, a little, falling for a beggar’s old “I can tell you where you got them shoes” routine (“You got them on your feet!”) on Frenchmen Street outside the club.

By the time we left New Orleans the next day, Rose and I were afflicted with blisters and exhausted, but we were delighted to find the morning Amtrak to Houston to be our most luxurious transportation yet. This train had not just a snack counter but a bona fide, reservations-required dining car (O.K., we ate our own Subway sandwiches) and a viewing car to watch the scenery from overhead windows.

For us, downtown Houston on a Saturday night in July was uneventful, and while we took a long walk past the Hobby Center for Performing Arts and watched kids play on the playground at Tranquility Park, we were exhausted and thankful for the Lancaster Hotel, which had a three-window view of the downtown skyline and perfect air-conditioning. Tragically, Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Lancaster along with the rest of the city in late August, flooding the basement and leaving the first floor with a foot of water; the hotel will not accept reservations until “our situation gets better and the waters recede,” according to its website. In Mr. Berry’s song, Houston is where people “care a little ’bout me/and they won’t let the poor boy down” — in this case, I hope the world decides not to let a beleaguered city down, through donating to one of the many Harvey-related charities.

Finally it was time for our jet to the Promised Land. Several who’d followed our trip on social media were adamant that I eat “a T-bone steak a la cartee” on the flight, like the poor boy does, but I haven’t had red meat since 1994 and the closest thing Spirit Airlines provided to a steak was a $4 snack box of popcorn and a cup of noodles. I asked a flight attendant if the pilot could announce when we were “high over Albuquerque,” as Mr. Berry sings, but she said he was too busy. It didn’t matter — soon we were on the ground, trying to figure out which part of Mr. Berry’s “headin’ to the terminal gate, swing low chariot, taxi to the terminal zone, cut your engines, cool your wings” applied as we approached LAX. Whether Los Angeles was the Promised Land, it was certainly milder.

We could walk a few blocks downtown without sweating, and the vegan restaurants were far easier to locate, particularly the Kaya Street Kitchen, in West Hollywood, near our centrally located Airbnb on 6th Street. We ate breakfast on the Sunset Strip and dinner at the Farmers Market. In between, we collapsed in a serene, 50-acre Hollywood Park with bright green lawns and tall trees called Wattles Garden.

Unlike the smaller cities in the South, Los Angeles was impossible to fully explore in just a day and a half, so we followed the tourists to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I did a Google search the location of Chuck Berry’s star and we dutifully took selfies. Few rockers have risen up as meteorically as Mr. Berry — his father worked in a Baden, Mo., flour mill with barely enough money to raise his family, and the singer painstakingly built his music career by crisscrossing the United States, overcoming prejudice and segregation.

“Promised Land” may be loosely based on Mr. Berry’s own history, although in 1987, when he received his Hollywood star, mugged for cameras and did the duckwalk, he did not mention any trip through the South on trains and buses to get there.