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The Nation's Pulse
What’s in a Vacation
There’s a big difference between the sedentary Eastern and adventurous Western styles.
Summer is soon upon us, and with it the vacation-travel season. Despite the obvious unpleasantness of high gas prices and Janet Napolitano contemplating our unmentionables, I’ve lately been thinking that Americans — depending on where they reside — have different ideas as to what a vacation is. I’m thinking East-West here.
A few years ago some eastern friends of mine came to Wyoming for a vacation. After my advising them not to, before arrival they booked a room in the same Cody motel for eight consecutive nights. Consequently, we had to be back in Cody every night and couldn’t wander very far afield as I guided them through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and nearby Montana. It would have been better to travel with the night’s sleeping accommodations a mystery, as the region is peppered with small towns replete with Mom and Pop motels, not to mention ubiquitous Holiday Inns and Best Westerns. Every night we closed a small loop of a couple hundred miles as we returned to Cody. My friends — though visiting the Rockies — are definitely what I call “beach people.”
Having grown up in the Northeast, I’m familiar with the standard destination-beach-resort-summer sojourn. They were an annual staple of my youth. I remember days at the Jersey Shore where vacationing consisted of lying on the beach, frolicking in the waves, and watching small airplanes fly by towing banner advertisements for local restaurants and amusements. Evenings were spent on the boardwalk in an orgy of rides, food, silly games of chance, and salt water taffy, as we nursed that day’s sunburn, then considered a healthy sign of a fun vacation.
The resorts are more upscale nowadays and found in Florida, Mexico, and Caribbean. You can cruise to them. There can be a theme park or public policy slant present. Journals of opinion now sponsor cruises in Europe, chilly Alaska, and the balmy tropics. For instance, on a cruise ship you can meet Mickey Mouse, P.J. O’Rourke or John Bolton. Chances are you won’t see Mickey Mouse, P.J. O’Rourke, or John Bolton in a slot canyon in backcountry Utah. If you do you can probably blame it on bad water obtained when you filled your canteen from a spring farther back on the trail.
When it comes to their vacationing, Westerners (and by “Westerners,” I also mean Californians, though it’s true that the Golden State is home to millions of beach people) have always had a sense of adventure, an inherent trait rooted in the settlement of the West itself. In all aspects of their lives they have more of a transient streak than Easterners. The West is vast and the object of a vacation is to move around on it. Westerners aren’t as concerned with hotel reservations as Easterners are. I never hear my Western friends going on about their timeshares. And they don’t plan vacations as much as Easterners do. It’s that devil-may-care spirit of adventure again. Let’s just go.
Westerners fly, of course, but not as much as Easterners. I have friends who think nothing of driving (though not lately due to high gas prices) from wintry Idaho to the warmer Southwest. This is the equivalent of driving from New York to Florida, something Easterners don’t do as much as they used to.
Camping is more popular out West. Westerners view roughing it as a great way to escape the stresses of everyday life. After a hard week at work, they look forward to a weekend of being cold, unshowered, and sleeping in a tent. Eastern beach folks are more concerned with creature comforts and daily personal hygiene. Easterners eat seafood in a restaurant; Westerners fry freshly caught fish on a smoky campfire that they’ll smell on their clothes the next day. Though lately something called “glamping” (as in “glamorous camping”) has started at a few upscale mountain resorts, notably in Montana. Glamping is camping with valet service, rustic-but-luxurious hot baths and showers, gourmet meals and a wine list. It seems to be popular with beach people on western vacations.
While Easterners are supine on the beach, Westerners are out exploring things wild, cultural and historical. Westerners are suckers for caves, entrances to old mine shafts, or the gray rotting ruins of a cabin high in the mountains. They like to soak in natural and sulphurous-smelly hot springs. And Westerners like to collect things: rocks, old bottles, deer and elk antlers, and stone-like pieces of petrified wood. Other than picking up shells on the beach, Easterners gather their souvenirs in retail tourist shops because they are enamored of shopping more than Westerners. Western tourist towns certainly understand this, as their Main Streets are increasingly seen to cater to the whims of visiting beach folks. The locals shop at Walmart.
For me, the epitome of the Western traveler is my friend and fellow TAS contributor Happy Jack Feder (HJF). To say that HJF has a travel modus operandi is a stretch. For example, he doesn’t own a watch. His car — a venerable Toyota Corolla — is always a mess, as HJF is fond of impromptu side-of-the-road camping. He avoids standard Forest Service campgrounds with potable water and vault toilets, and the nominal fee, of course. HJF spends hours hiking, napping, reading, or otherwise wasting travel time with odd diversions in the middle of nowhere. If he’s due in town for a visit and tells me that he’ll arrive in the late afternoon or evening, he’ll probably show up at two or three the following morning.
I have a hard time envisioning HJF having his picture taken with Mickey Mouse on the deck of a cruise ship. Fred Barnes? Jonah Goldberg? Possibly.
About the Author
Bill Croke, formerly of Cody, Wyoming, is a writer in Salmon, Idaho.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (34) | Leave a comment
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Moe Blotz| 6.3.11 @ 8:27AM
Stereotyping based on effete snobbery. Didjiz Westerners appear from God's hand in the mountains and plains all of a sudden? No,my ancestors opened the prairie and beyond so you could set up shop in comfort. Some of us had to stay back east and manufacture things to make life easier in the wilderness. I have lived in the East all my life and have been to the beach maybe a dozen times in five decades. When I ride,I head west.
PCC| 6.3.11 @ 11:07PM
I agree, Moe. The article consists mainly of ignorant stereotyping with hardly any basis in fact. And even it were true, it's pretty much a waste of time reading it, as it doesn't mean anything. It's some kind of weird Western outdoorsman's bigotry, and it's not attractive at all.
Doctor_X| 6.3.11 @ 8:49AM
My question is What's a Vacation?
Where I work we have an un-offical no vacation policy for all non-managers. If you take more than a three day weekend or god forbid you use ALL your vacation time you'll end up with a very long "unpaid vacation"
More and more companies are adopting No vacation policies oh, you can take one but only when all your work is done. Well the truth is your work is never done.
Oldmanriver| 6.3.11 @ 5:37PM
This is as the Lord decreed it. Your work shall set you free.
donserge| 6.3.11 @ 8:58AM
Having vacationed in ME, VT, NY, VA, MD, NC, SC, GA and more, I am now retired living on the shore of a FL lake. As an easterner, who "beach vacationed" once in my life, I must be living in the wrong circles. Vacations to me (or my friends and acquaintances) does not consist of burning in the sun with sand in my bathing suit.
Kitty| 6.3.11 @ 9:19AM
The last vacation I had was in March, 1990. However, it was business trip for my husband.
MATT M.| 6.3.11 @ 9:40AM
Elk hunting is the best way to vacation and to see the Rockies.
Vstarrider| 6.3.11 @ 6:32PM
You're right Matt. Probably in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness in Central Idaho. If you can find any more elk after the wolves get through with them.
Clint| 6.4.11 @ 7:25AM
Fox hunting is the best way to vacation and to see the Beach.
Ampleforth| 6.3.11 @ 11:23AM
I'm from the South but have adopted the western spirit. My wife and I take our kids on driving vacations through the west nearly every summer and are gone for two weeks at a time. Our east coast friends will ask us about our itinerary. Itinerary? I tell them, "Yeah, we leave home on this day and will be back on this one. Everything in between is freestyle." They cringe and fear for our safety. Some believe my wife and I are neglecting our children because we've never taken them to Disney World. However, they've been to the Black Hills, the Badlands, Monument Valley, the Painted Desert, the Grand Canyon, Arches NP, the San Juan Mountains, and Great Dunes in Colorado. All of it has been done on a whim.
This year people ask us where we're going on vacation. We just smile and say, "Don't know, yet. Won't know 'til we get there."
It's our celebration of liberty and the privilege of living in a free nation.
Oldmanriver| 6.3.11 @ 5:36PM
I wouldnt be proud that you are shiftless...what kind of example are you setting for your children? Get a job and work lest God judge your sloth.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.3.11 @ 11:30AM
Ahhh...fly fishing in the rockies, and camping in a pup-tent. (Some of my most wonderful memory tapes).
Cook a trout or eight on the stream-bank? brrrrrrr!
Thanks for the goose in the ribs.
Oldmanriver| 6.3.11 @ 5:24PM
I dont even want to know what sick act a goose in the ribs is. Cant you just keep your perversions to yourself?
Interested Conservative| 6.3.11 @ 11:34AM
I learned how not to light a coleman cook stove camping in Ash Hollow Nebraska - turn on gas then light match. No injuries, but the flash could be seen from a satellite. Western Nebraska into Wyoming is too much beautiful country to bother staying in one place.
Stan Redmond| 6.3.11 @ 12:46PM
When you love your work every day is a vacation. If you have the will and the passion start a business of your own.
Oldmanriver| 6.3.11 @ 5:26PM
Amen, thanks brother.
Ed| 6.3.11 @ 12:52PM
People from the Midwest often take Plan C. Arrive at a destination like the Big Island or Oahu, hit the beach in the morning, and then drive all over the place in the afternoon. Repeat for 7 days. Return refreshed.
idalily| 6.3.11 @ 3:27PM
What's a vacation? Being self-employed, I had my last vacation three years ago (ten years after my previous one). Fortunately, I live in Idaho, with three ski resorts, three prime fly-fishing rivers and a gazillion mountain bike trails within two hours of my house. Weekends are my vacation. One quibble with the article: any true Western angler knows you don't "fry" the fresh catch. Shove butter, lemon and S&P under the skin and in the cavity, wrap in foil, bake on the coals. Frying fish is for Southerners and Easterners.
Oldmanriver| 6.3.11 @ 5:25PM
You are truely a friend of the Godly. No man should take a vacation. It is immoral to not work. Idle hands are the devils work.
shipley130| 6.4.11 @ 5:42PM
Didn't God take a day of rest? Eat a little more crazy pie.
OhioGuy| 6.5.11 @ 7:37PM
The quote's wrong, oldman. Correctly, it's "Idle hands are the devil's tools." The devil's work is what the idle hands get done.
Oldmanriver| 6.3.11 @ 5:09PM
I always loved western vacations...going up to broke back mountain with my "friend". The sheep never even got jelous.
Oldmanriver| 6.3.11 @ 5:21PM
We all know now what the camping trips and hunting trips are all about. What a depraved society the west is. The only thing you are hunting for or fishing for is your depraved ways. You sick depraved westerners. God will judge your ways even though you think you can hide from him and society in the wilderness.
shipley130| 6.4.11 @ 5:40PM
I'm assuming you include Obama in this judging.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.3.11 @ 6:18PM
Oldmanriver,
you are a strange person, or a giggle maker.
Oldmanriver| 6.3.11 @ 6:36PM
Im not the one goosing or being goosed.
More like Youngdouchebagsewer| 6.4.11 @ 1:14PM
You must have passed your exams since you have time to troll, unless you're just killing time until summer classes start. These are the best times of your life, you should enjoy your summer vacation while you can, you will have to enter the real world eventually. With eight posts on this site, with nothing remotely wise, or humorous, to say, I'm guessing you've got a solid B average going into your junior year in the fall at your local junior, I mean community, college. Good luck, you are going to need a gooseload of it based on what we've seen here.
Oldmanriver| 6.5.11 @ 12:26AM
Actually Im over 40 years old. I didnt graduate college. Im in upper management in agribusiness because I worked my way up the ladder. I know what goes on in these outdoor trips. Its an excuse for men to get together; get drunk; chase the local women of ill repute around and to lay with each other as they would a woman. Ive seen my share of out of town hunters and "sportsmen" to know there is nothing good going on. These men just use outdoors sports to get free of their wife so they can sin. They do not love the Lord! You know nothing about me. I havent taken a vacation in years. That is part of the reason for my success. My work ethic is unquestionable. Its obvious you dont have any idea of what success is. For your information I just found this site Friday. You know nothing about me. Taking vacations is not what made America great. WORK did. All this article does is encourage sloth. The Lord took the seventh day off and encouraged us to do so as well to worship HIM not to go get drunk and degrade our marriages with homosexual activities
jones| 6.5.11 @ 3:09PM
PLEASE shut up.
happy feder| 6.3.11 @ 7:28PM
someday I'm writing a piece on Bill Croke's outdoor behaviors. Just wait.
shipley130| 6.4.11 @ 5:39PM
What's in a vacation? Well, there's Obama, and Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, and a great big tax payer owned 747 on the ramp.
shipley130| 6.4.11 @ 5:52PM
I know this will make people mad and I am just joking around when I say this, but Easterners are people that were too lazy to become Westerners. But, by all means, build a high speed rail to you can shuttle from DC to Chicago because nothing exists anywhere west of the Ol Mississipi, right? Does Bill Croke realize how much stuff there is to see on the east coast? Did the east coast build all these touristy things just for westerners? This guy needs a western boot kick in the a**.
The Truth| 6.17.11 @ 2:03PM
Ampleforth:
Your vacation ideas are to die for. We went to Disneyland and the whole thing seemed fake, phony and terribly expensive. I'd much rather taken a vacation as your family does...without feeling forced to take pictures with actors in full makeup/costumes of make believe tv characters and buying ridiculously overpriced food. I admire your creativity to spend real quality time with your family...you're kids will remember these vacations with you most of all . Kudos to you!!!
Adult toys | 7.4.11 @ 12:56AM
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