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.
