CAMPFIRES, WENCHES AND INTERSTATE TOURISTS

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© 2006 - Please do not remove the copyright from this essay

s you have probably gathered by now, I harbor quite a large reservoir of contempt for people in RV’s.  But more what it is, is an unbridled hatred of the people I refer to in my road trip travelogue as “interstate tourists”:

These are the types of people who get annoyed that there isn’t an interstate going straight through the middle of Yellowstone Park.  Everywhere they go, they zoom in at 65m.p.h. and hop out of the car with the look of people who expect to see the Second Coming of Christ at every rest stop…  They never stay long enough to take something in.  They never actually look at anything except through the viewfinder of their camcorder.   And they never spend the time seeking out those special nuances of an area that can’t be described in a guidebook.  They stick to the interstates where they never have to go more than thirty minutes between rest stops with bathrooms and Burger Kings. 

RV people epitomize this travel ethic.  Rather than looking at a road trip as an adventure, as the exploration of something new and exciting, with all the minor hassles that go along with it, they prefer instead to insulate themselves inside a tin can from anything that they didn’t potentially plan for.  Using an RV insures that these people will never have to go out and interact with whatever surroundings they drive through – whether it be small town life, kitschy roadside amusement, or the great outdoors.  Instead they come to accommodating “campgrounds” by the droves where they park, hook up power and sewage lines and then spend the rest of the time sitting inside their antiseptic, air conditioned environment, watching cable TV, observing nature through a pane of glass, and talking about mindless idiotic jabber – primarily about the features and benefits of their RV’s.  When they do venture out of their Winnebago-approved ecosystem and into the out of doors, they make certain to pull out their state of the art comfy lawn chairs and extend the RV’s built-in awning so that neither the heat of the sun nor the cool of the ground will disrupt the hermetically-sealed utopia they’ve worked so hard, and paid so much, to create. 

I know what you’re probably thinking: Why do you care?  You don’t have to travel like that if you don’t want to.  The thing is, lately I see the traveling culture leaning more and more the way of the RV interstate tourist.  Struggling campgrounds clamoring for income are doing whatever they can to attract caravans of RV’ers of whom they can charge more than they would a mere family with a tent.  And as more and more businesses cater to the RV crowd, more and more people begin to think that this is an acceptable form of vacationing, so they eagerly go out and buy or rent the latest model.  Then, without even needing to acquire a special license, they drive these lumbering, gas-guzzling behemoths down roads far too narrow (if only they would stick to the interstate), slow down traffic behind them, force oncoming traffic to ride the shoulder, make hundred-point K-turns into every parking lot they come to, then stink up perfectly good camping real estate with their gas fumes and sewage releases. 

But those are just pet peeves.  My real hatred comes from the fact that as I see it, RV’s in general, and RV people in particular are slowly but surely killing the allure and legacy of the Great American Road Trip – and to a broader extent, destroying the very definition of “America” itself.  The whole concept behind an RV is to be able to get to a destination as fast as possible so you can set up your temporary home away from home, then never leave its comforts unless absolutely necessary.  You have no reason to go out and eat at Big Ed’s Barbeque Pit because you can just boil up the spaghetti you bought at the Wal Mart back home.  There’s no need to buy a Coke from Mom & Pop’s Roadside Convenience Store because you came with a fully stocked refrigerator-on-wheels.  In an RV, the only people you ever need to interact with are a) the ones you brought with you; b) other RV people who come over to compare RV bells, RV whistles and RV penis sizes; and c) the occasional minimum wage amusement park employee who you’ll berate without mercy for making the line to the roller coaster move too slow. 

And as more and more people adopt this mentality, the very notion of Roadside, America will begin to die.  As people stop passing through these little towns with their local fairs, attractions and colorful people, opting instead for the super-fast, super-convenient interstate, eventually there won’t be any local fairs, attractions or colorful people left to see.  America will cease to be a vast and detailed canvas with wonderful things to see and experience everywhere where you look.  Instead it will become an uninspiring connect-the-dots of destinations, with busy divided highways zipping people from one dot to the next.  And as the spaces in between those dots slowly languish and die, the land will be bought up by investors who in turn will build malls, condos and corporate parks, so that in time everywhere you go in this country will look exactly like everywhere else. 

Already this is happening.  The interstates alone – and the airlines for that matter – have helped perpetrate this slow death.  Just ask anybody who traveled west during the heydays of Route 66.  Every little town along a major cross-country route had a name and an identity.  Every hardworking person and every struggling family business had a real and genuine opportunity to carve out their own little niche in the American economy and way of life.  Some accomplished this goal by providing a decent hamburger and soft-serve ice cream.  Others did it by offering a cheap and cozy place to sleep.  One particularly industrious drug store in South Dakota did it simply by offering free ice water.  Still others did it by constructing items of a somewhat dubious nature (The World’s Largest Buffalo, a giant cannon designed to shoot its creator into space, or even just a very tall pile of cans) and heralding their existence to anyone who might be interested – which they often were.  Roadside, America used to define this country.  It used to be one of the many definitions collectively affirming America as the land of opportunity where truly anything was possible. 

These days giant corporations are ever trying to narrow down that list of definitions – preferably to ones that also contain their logo.  These people deal in destinations and their very existence depends on people, hordes of people, arriving at those destinations day in and day out.  They don’t have time for the traveling public to poke around in Tractor Falls, Nebraska or Twineville, Minnesota.  They need these people to get to their destinations, their destinations, as fast as possible and stay there for as long as possible before racing back where they came from.  And somehow they’ve succeeded in convincing most Americans that they also don’t have time to waste between one destination and the next.  Too many people have bought into the corporation-created notion of the destination reigning supreme – and nobody more so than RV people.  And as more and more people adopt the mindset of the interstate tourist, the Great American Road Trip will die.  And when that happens, the very definition of America, the very thing that once made us great, will die along with it.

So yes, I say fuck RV people and the cumbersome pieces of shit they rode in on.

But let’s move on with our day, shall we?  While Lauren got Allison and herself ready, I brought the skillet and the rest of our dishes over to the bathroom to clean, then came back and started breaking down camp for the day.  I’d asked the man who ran the camp store if we would be okay leaving the tent pitched while we were away.  As easy as it had been to set up, I find tents to be far more aggravating to break down and pack.  Setting up merely involves pulling the tent, poles and stakes out of the bag then finding a level spot to lay it all out.  Breaking down means cleaning the dirt out of the interior as well as off the bottom of the tent, shaking off any collected moisture, then trying to cram everything back into a stuff sack that you’d swear shrunk overnight.  The less number of times I had to go through that charade, the better.  Camp Store Guy told me I should be fine leaving the tent up, as long as I made sure not to leave any valuables inside.

Fair enough.  My plan was to pack up only the things that were both expensive and easy to walk off with.  That basically meant our sleeping bags, my camp stove and of course wallets, phones and other small everyday items.  I left the seventy-dollar sleeping pad in the tent covered up with pillows, blankets, the blue exercise mat and other stray objects, figuring a thief would take one look at the cheapie-cheap exercise mat and not think to look underneath it for anything better.  The tent itself was expensive, but anybody wanting to steal it would first have to empty it of our boxes of food and plastic utensils, the cooler and all our pillows and clothes – which mostly consisted of non-theft-worthy shorts and jumpers in 2T and 3T sizes, Lauren’s maternity wear, and my ratty old t-shirts.  Normally it’s not considered a good idea to leave food inside your tent, but the only wildlife we’d seen in this place had been three stray kittens who’d come begging for our leftover hotdog buns the night before.  I got a small kick out of leaving the skillet on the side of the fire pit.  If you ignored the cavalcade of RV’s across the way, it gave our site a kind of frontier look about it.  With camp broken, we piled into the car and headed a few miles down the road to do a bit of hiking.

The Conewago Recreation Trail is one of the many byproducts of the Rails-to-Trails conservancy effort in Pennsylvania.  Officially established in 1985, Rails-to-Trails is a national non-profit organization that has dedicated itself to land conservation and wildlife protection, as well as to the preservation of America’s history and heritage, by converting old abandoned railroad lines into well-maintained public walking paths.  The resulting trails are level-graded – obviously since they used to provide the land base for railroad tracks – often passing through open countryside, along rivers, through stone tunnels, across vintage trestles, and past the preserved ruins of countless mills and mining operations.  Pennsylvania was ripe for this effort, being one of the biggest (if not the biggest) players in the American railroad industry back in the day.  For a state rich in steel and coal during the height of the Industrial Revolution, a wide rail network became a necessity and The Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest in the world during its height.  And while completion of the transcontinental railroad was certainly the most significant railroading event in America’s history, the completion of Horseshoe Curve in Altoona, Pennsylvania ranks as its immediate runner up.  This landmark feat of engineering provided a way through the previously unbreachable Allegheny Mountains, opening up the frontier for westward expansion.  So when railroad companies started going belly up in the twentieth century, Pennsylvania had a lot of empty miles of track just sitting there.  Of the over thirteen thousand miles of footpaths the Rails-to-Trails effort has converted nationwide, seven thousand run through Pennsylvania alone.  

The Conewago Recreation Trail represents a humble five of those miles, passing mostly through picturesque woods and farmland.  We parked along the side of the road a couple hundred feet down from the trail entrance.  The trail crosses several roads during its five-mile stretch and we were putting in somewhere around the 2.5 mile marker.  Each of us carried a daypack; Lauren’s loaded up with about five pounds worth of food, water and extra diapers, and mine loaded up with about thirty pounds worth of Allison Hodges.  The day was warm, but there was a strong wind blowing that made it difficult to decide between wearing a second layer or not.  Opting for the latter, I tied my fleece around my waist and the three of us headed into the woods – then stopped about five minutes later when I changed my mind.

I usually hate any trail with such easy access from a main road.  I tend to ascribe to the adage: All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.  It’s hard for anybody to respect something they didn’t have to work at least a little bit to achieve.  As far as I’m concerned, any prominence, scenic view, or otherwise tranquil spot of beauty located less than a quarter mile from a main road or parking lot is inherently doomed to ruination by the hordes of car-happy interstate tourists and all that they bring with them – namely litter, graffiti, loud complaining voices and big fat asses marring the landscape.  But the great thing about the Conewago Trail is that it doesn’t actually go anywhere.  You enjoy the trail for its continuous muted scenery and for the simple joy of walking it, or you don’t enjoy it at all.  That’s a concept a destination-happy interstater can neither understand nor appreciate.  The trail was agreeably empty save for a few bike-riding families and the odd jogger here and there.  I enjoyed it very much.  

The absence of others was agreeable as well for Lauren, whose bladder capacity was diminishing by the day due to the little boy growing inside of her.  She had to stop every fifteen minutes or so alongside the trail and pee behind a tree or a bush.  Thinking ahead, we’d brought along a roll of toilet paper as well as a specially designated Ziplock bag for the resulting biohazard.  Lauren had become an old hat at this during our road trip, and proudly declares that she has peed on roadsides in over fifteen states. 

Between pee breaks we ambled slowly, snacking on granola bars and pepperoni slices, talking about nothing in particular, singing requested songs to Allison and looking out at postcard views of pastures, silos and cornfields.  After about half a mile we crossed a road that disappeared over a hill into more farmland.  After another half mile we came to another road, this one at a river crossing, and decided to stop for lunch.  We broke out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sat in the grass, watching the creek rush over the rocks forty feet below a series of stone houses that conjured up images of the old mill town this place must have once been.  We hung around for about twenty minutes, giving Allison a chance to stretch her legs and throw rocks in the water.  After lunch we walked another mile or so past more pastures, more silos and more cornfields before deciding we’d gone far enough and turned around.  Lauren’s legs were beginning to get sore and Allison was getting cranky and claustrophobic inside her backpack.  We talked less on the way back, mostly because Lauren was running short on breath.  I sang a few more songs to Allison, hoping she would eventually fall asleep, though she never did.  We spent the last mile or so in the relative silence of blowing wind and the vaguely nearby sound of turnpike traffic.  Back at the car the wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped enough to prompt me to put on my fleece again… I’d changed my mind several times during the course of the hike.  As we put down our respective loads and got back in the car, Lauren patted herself on the back for the four miles she’d walked today. 

We drove five miles into Hershey where we stocked up on more bottled water at the local supermarket.  I also bought a small crock of beans to go with the hotdogs we’d be roasting tonight.  We filled up on gas and returned to the campground around three o’clock. 

While Lauren took Allison to the bathroom to take a shower, I spread out the picnic blanket and set up the stove to boil water for soup – once again producing a gas flame large enough to be impressive in other circumstances.  To keep me company while I worked, I rolled down the car windows and put in the next CD of “A Walk in the Woods.”  Listening to Bryson recount the trials and travails of he and his hiking partner, the indelible Katz, put me into such a relaxed state that after the soup was made and eaten, I laid down on the blanket, closed my eyes and just listened.  Lauren returned after almost an hour with Allison, who had the distinct look of a child that has just finished crying hysterically.  Apparently she was not a fan of the campground’s shower.  As Lauren ate her soup and tended to the task of reorganizing the tent for the evening, I too headed for the bathroom for a surprisingly hot and full-streamed shower.  You don’t often see that kind of luxury at a campground.  Places like Joshua Tree National Monument don’t have showers at all – or even flushing toilets for that matter.  I guess that’s one of the perks of frequenting a place that caters to the RV crowd.  Lord knows these people would never put up with the unacceptable burden of a trickling lukewarm shower. 

Back at the homestead I built a fire and began work on dinner.  I cut up and fried a couple pieces of bacon then dumped the crock of beans over the top.  Lauren was in charge of hotdogs and while she cooked, Allison and I alternated between eating beans and chasing each other around the campsite.  The poor kid had been stuck in backpacks and torturous camp showers all day long, and this was her first real chance to run around.  I obliged her as much as possible, but as dusk became nighttime she became crankier and crankier until it was apparent that she was overtired.  After dinner, Lauren took the car down to the camp store to get herself an ice-cream bar and I once again cradled Allison like a baby and sang her to sleep by the campfire.

Lauren and I sat up for another hour, making s’mores, drinking hot chocolate and talking about things I can’t even remember.  Although the overnight forecast called for rain, it was actually much warmer and less dewy than the previous evening had been and we were perfectly comfortable in just our t-shirts.  The three stray cats paid us another visit and helped themselves to the leftover beans in the skillet.  After they’d had their fill, I once again brought the skillet and other utensils to the bathroom to clean.  While I conducted my work at the sink an older man, who reeked of many packs of cigarettes smoked inside an enclosed space, came in to use the facilities.  On his way out he asked, “You the guys in the tent?”  I said I was, knowing we were the only ones in the whole campground.  “Looks like you’re gonna get rained on tonight,” he offered, I guess helpfully.  I told him I’d heard the forecast.  “Guess you’re gonna wanna keep your car close by.  You’ll be running for it before long.”  I told him I thought we’d be okay.  He nodded and told me to have a good evening.  I told him the same.

After packing up camp and putting out the fire, I crawled into the tent, absolutely spent from the long day.  It was much warmer inside than last night.  Almost hot actually.  I unzipped the window and the flap for the main entrance, allowing air to flow through the two screens.  Remembering how cold I’d been the night before, I brought heavy socks and a layer of long underwear into the tent, but as I flopped down on top of my sleeping bag, it became obvious that I wouldn’t even need the sweatshirt I was wearing.  I stripped this off and laid it in the middle of the tent below Allison’s feet, not wanting it to get soaked by the night’s eventual condensation.  I could have fallen asleep within five minutes, but Lauren reminded me that I’d promised to massage her hips.  I spent the next fifteen minutes doing just that with a special all-natural cocoa oil she’d gotten from another midwife before returning to my side.  I didn’t even get into my sleeping bag.  I simply covered my torso with the open flap, letting my chest and feet stick out either end, and, to my own amazement, fell asleep almost instantly. 

I woke up a couple hours later when Lauren got up to pee.  Since we were the only people on our side of the pond, and since it was a long middle-of-the-night hike to the bathrooms, Lauren simply took her roll of toilet paper and walked over to a nearby tree.  When she returned, I got up and made use of the same tree, noticing the first few drops of rain starting to fall on my arms.  The faint sound of thunder was just starting to rumble in the distance.  I crawled back into the tent and less than thirty seconds later the skies opened up.  The nonstop rattling against the tent was loud yet soothing.  I was asleep again in under five minutes.  Lauren told me the next morning that she had laid there a long time before falling back asleep, both from the pain that had returned to her hips, and from the fear that lightning would strike our tent and kill all three of us.  The rain fly did its job though, never giving us a reason to run for the car like Mr. Marlboro had expected.  The storm pelted us for God knows how long, but come morning we woke up completely dry.  The night had been so warm that our breath didn’t even condensate on the inside walls. 

I sat up around eight o’clock, more alert than I can ever remember feeling after having just woken up.  I unzipped the tent and stepped out into the daylight.  The rain had stopped at some point in the night, but the skies were still overcast.  The morning was glorious, warm enough that I could stand outside in just a t-shirt, but with a steady gentle wind that felt invigorating on my bare arms.  Last night, I’d set up the wettest of our logs around the perimeter of the fire so they would dry out, then stored them inside the car overnight.  The result was that I had a fire lit and roaring faster than any other time this whole weekend and was already working on breakfast by the time Lauren made her way out of the tent.  Knowing we had a long day at the Renaissance Faire ahead of us, I made an even bigger meal than yesterday’s, finishing off our bacon and eggs and putting enough batter on the skillet to cook up nine pancakes.  We ate it all.  Every last bit.  I noted, again with a healthy dose of smug pride, that no other patrons of the campground had been able to get their own fires lit. 

Allison had gotten herself good and muddy running around in the wet grass, and good and sticky eating the syrupy pancakes, so once again Lauren brought her to the shower where once again Allison screamed like Lauren was inflicting some kind of medieval torture on her.  Meanwhile, I broke down camp, stowing items unlikely to get stolen inside the tent.  I filled the daypack with bottled water, diapers, wipes, food and a change of clothes for Allison.  There was no way that kid was going to put up with another day sitting in a backpack, so we brought along her stroller instead.  We loaded up the car and headed out of the campground at eleven o’clock.  I drove past the lines of RV’s with a smirk that said, “That’s right guys; we stayed dry in the rain and got a fire going.”

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