Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 18:12:35 -0700
Reply-To: mike <mwmiller@CWNET.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: mike <mwmiller@CWNET.COM>
Subject: Re: Nice (Vanagon Westy) VW roadtrip article in mainstream
press--TEXT format
In-Reply-To: <002001c22ad1$d21024c0$0201a8c0@pacbell.net>
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Thanks for posting this. Now I know what my cross country trip could have
been.
Mike
> From: Oakland Westfalia <westfalia@PACBELL.NET>
> Organization: Westfalia Oakland
> Reply-To: Oakland Westfalia <westfalia@PACBELL.NET>
> Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 18:00:17 -0700
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Nice (Vanagon Westy) VW roadtrip article in mainstream press--TEXT
> format
>
> NY TIMES Sunday July 14, 2002
>
>>>> Bidding the Interstate Goodbye
> By WAYNE CURTIS
>
>
> THE day started early with a cacophony of warblers and robins, followed
> by a car alarm erupting briefly in a distant part of the campground.
> Gray-haired power walkers started padding past in tennis shoes. The
> owner of the neighboring recreational vehicle set off to patrol its
> perimeter armed with a bottle of spray cleanser and a rag, touching up
> hubcaps and brake lights and anything else that might have gathered a
> faint patina of dust. ("If I'm not polishing, I'm not happy," he had
> announced to me the night before.) Then the aroma of bacon mixed with
> wood smoke drifted in from a few sites down. And that's when I got up.
>
> With some minor variations, that was how most mornings began for me
> during the month of May. No matter which state I happened to awaken in,
> the comforting rhythms of a public campground were pretty much the same.
>
> On the first of the month I had loaded my dog, Winnie, and some T-shirts
> and blue jeans into my 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon camper and headed west
> from my home in Maine. The idea took root over the winter, when I was
> making plans to attend my stepson's college graduation in Colorado.
>
> These plans were largely influenced by what I saw outside my kitchen
> window each morning. If there's a sight more melancholy than a VW van
> immobilized behind a pile of firewood and parabolic drifts of snow, I
> can't think of it. So I announced one day that rather than fly out with
> the rest of the family, I would take a few weeks and follow a desultory
> path westward to meet them.
>
> May, not coincidentally, is an ideal time to be on the road. The
> campgrounds are open but uncrowded except on Memorial Day weekend. I
> could adjust the temperature and the fullness of the foliage with some
> minor tweaking of latitude. And in advance of the crush of summer,
> residents everywhere are still friendly to early-onset tourists like me,
> even in resort towns soon to be overwhelmed.
>
> I billed this a camping trip, but the idea was never to get back to
> nature. My goal was more to get back to around 1961, when the Interstate
> system started to bridge those last remaining gaps, and chain
> restaurants, big-box stores and other invasive species started to
> overwhelm the delicate commercial ecology of the road's edge.
>
> I like authentic streamlined diners as much as the next guy, but I found
> it equally heartening to get breakfast at an unadorned roadside cafe
> that advertised "Jewish bagels," or a place where my coffee options were
> limited to "cream or sugar." And I'll admit to a small thrill whenever I
> come upon a flock of early motels, with their neon signs in full evening
> plumage.
>
> Much has been made of the split between red and blue America on the TV
> news programs' electoral maps. Once I set out, though, I realized that
> the far more significant division is between Supersize and Regular
> America. Much of Regular America still exists places like Midway, Ky.,
> where the first thing you notice is the splendor of the trees but
> Supersize America and its impressively large parking lots are fast
> eroding these places along the margins.
>
> I preferred the slower, narrower highways with gravel shoulders. The
> concrete paving made the tires sing, and the road's width fit the scale
> and speed of the van. Traversing Iowa on Route 30 or Michigan on Route
> 12 felt quite comfortable, like taking a skiff across slightly choppy
> waters. If I wanted to veer off to a distant shore, I did.
>
> Other than a few dots I wanted to connect here and there, I avoided a
> set itinerary. I first dropped south to get out of the late spring snows
> of northern New England, then turned right when it warmed and followed a
> midlatitude line, angling downward to New Mexico. On the return from
> Colorado, I traced an arc northward, clipping a corner of Wyoming before
> riding tailwinds eastward from Nebraska through Michigan before
> diverting through Canada and re-entering New England through uppermost
> New York State.
>
> Such random routing is astoundingly easy when you're self-contained. The
> VW camper is a brilliant invention it's like a Swiss Army knife for the
> road, possessed of everything you need and virtually nothing you don't.
> It's the stealth RV. The roof scissors open to reveal sleeping quarters,
> and it has a kitchen with stove, sink and a refrigerator that holds
> about three days' worth of fresh food. It has cabinets and closets
> galore. If you can find water and electric, great. If not, no matter. A
> VW van permits extensive dabbling in geography while absolving one from
> fretting over the whereabouts of the next meal or bed.
>
> Most mornings over coffee I'd study the road atlas to determine a
> reasonable destination and route for the day. These daily plans would
> often remain fully operative as late as noon, when some road sign or a
> brochure I found at a dollar store would set me off on a new trajectory.
>
> In West Virginia, I loved winding through random river valleys, suddenly
> coming upon miniature towns hidden away like something in a Faberg’ egg,
> assuming, that is, that Faberg’ had been inclined to fashion tiny auto
> dealerships and pun-based hair salons (among my favorites: Hair We Are,
> Making Waves, Hair Itage House).
>
> In Kentucky, I happened past the Jim Beam distillery, which offered free
> self-guided tours and samples of premium products, even before lunch. In
> Bartlesville, Okla., my water pump failed and I limped into a repair
> shop that happened to be two scant blocks from Frank Lloyd Wright's
> Price Tower. With time on my hands, I took the 2 p.m. tour of what is
> arguably the strangest skyscraper in the world, full of cramped and
> angular offices and apartments, and vertiginous exterior stairways. I
> learned that towns of every size serve one valuable purpose or another.
> Small towns were for doing laundry while flipping through tattered
> magazines and reading up on President Clinton's forthcoming impeachment
> trial. Midsize towns were for tracking down the former supermarket or
> five-and-dime that had been converted to an antiques mall and perusing
> the stalls filled with chipped Fiestaware and old Nehi bottles and local
> yearbooks redolent of mildew.
>
> For me, these emporiums have supplanted traditional local history
> museums I could learn a whole lot about a town's past with a
> well-browsed hour. And for a dollar or so, I'd always turn up a
> one-of-a-kind souvenir, like the excellent compendium of Jell-O salad
> recipes in Ottawa, Kan.
>
> I took a few detours through big cities to visit museums and to stock up
> on exotic foods. But these presented a logistical problem, since
> downtown campsites are in short supply and I don't much like
> overnighting parked on the street. (Police officers may not be open to
> an entirely reasonable explanation of why a man of advancing years is
> loitering alone in his van in his underwear at 3 a.m.)
>
> I solved this by locating a campsite as close to the city as I could
> manage the night before, then rising before dawn to get downtown before
> the rivulet of commuters turned into a torrent. In both Chicago and St.
> Louis I found good metered parking spots and brewed a strong cup of
> coffee. Then I walked Winnie to the park, where we sat and watched the
> city come to life in the champagne light of early day. After the rest of
> the world caught up, we started on our rounds. To locate campgrounds I
> relied exclusively on the Rand McNally Road Atlas, which places
> pine-tree-and-tent icons on the map in the area where, roughly speaking,
> a campground can be found. Late in the afternoon I'd consult the atlas
> and put my finger on a destination for the night.
>
> This approach added another pleasing element of happenstance you never
> knew what the evening would bring. In Lexington, Ky., I pulled into one
> campground to discover that it was the site of a large dog show, which
> gave the whole place the air of "Best of Show," with many of the canine
> contestants set out in little cages on the lawn in the manner of a
> farmers' market. (Winnie found it all highly distasteful.)
>
> In Bridgeport, Neb., my campsite was just a few hundred yards from
> tracks on which great convoys of freight trains rumbled all night long,
> seeming to make the ground to stagger and sway. Once I grew accustomed
> to the clatter, I enjoyed the free and relaxing Magic Fingers effect.
>
> Outside Independence, Kan., I pulled into a lush Army Corps of Engineers
> campground alongside a river that gushed from a dam. During the long
> twilight, pickup trucks filtered in and out, with anglers wandering down
> to slap fishing rods at water until it was too dark to see. Larger
> commercial campgrounds and chain motels are designed to keep visitors
> and local residents apart. At places like this, I felt as if I was a
> welcome guest in someone's living room.
>
> Once a week or so I'd give in to the siren song of a small motel,
> seduced by a particularly garish roadside sign or the promise of a long
> shower without someone waiting outside the door. After drying off, I'd
> flop on the bed and vacantly mash the buttons on the remote, ostensibly
> looking for the Weather Channel to find out the next day's forecast, but
> invariably ending up distracted by infomercials and "Cops" and the
> intriguing hairstyles of local newscasters. It was like a small vacation
> from my vacation.
>
> Yet a motel night was always like a drinking binge in the morning, I
> felt a little logy as I awoke, trying to make out where I was in the
> gray, dishwater light of the curtained room. Outside the sound of trucks
> and cars on the highway was curiously vacant, with high and low notes,
> and nothing in between. It didn't take much incentive to get moving on
> those mornings.
>
> I made the Colorado College graduation on time (the day was warm, the
> speeches involved something about pursuing dreams), and after four weeks
> and 7,052 miles I arrived back home. I've so far managed to avoid
> tallying up the credit card bills the new water pump in Oklahoma, new
> tires in New Mexico, new brakes in Colorado but when I do I'm certain it
> will have cost more than flying first class and staying in a sprawling
> suite for the duration. But I'm equally certain of this: I'd do it again
> in an instant.
>
> Basic Information
>
> The following companies specialize in Volkswagen campers:
>
> Northwest Campers, in Bellingham, Wash., (360) 733-1982, fax (360)
> 671-6353, www.northwestcampers.com, is in its fourth year and rents out
> eight VW Vanagon campers. "A lot of people are reliving their memories
> of the 60's in these things," says John Erickson, the company's owner.
> Peak-season rates (May through September) are $450 a week, including 700
> free miles; 15 cents per mile additional, or unlimited mileage for $15 a
> day.
>
> California Campers, Redwood City, Calif., phone and fax (650) 216-0000,
> or on the Web at www.californiacampers.com, with rental offices outside
> San Francisco and Los Angeles, has nearly three dozen Vanagons dating
> from the late 80's and early 90's. High-season rates (July through Labor
> Day) are $750 a week, including 700 miles; 25 cents per additional mile,
> or $18 a day for unlimited mileage. Off-season rates from $500 a week.
>
> Northeast Camper Rental, Pembroke, Mass., (781) 826-5625, fax (781)
> 829-4526, www.northeastcampers.com, opened last year and has four
> Vanagons with plans to expand. Peak-season rates (May through Labor Day
> and October) are $750 a week, which includes 125 miles each day;
> additional miles at 25 cents.
>
> Roamin' Holiday, Albuquerque, N.M., phone and fax (800) 969-8040,
> www.imua-tour.com/roamin.html, has been renting Vanagons since 1994 and
> has a fleet of six. High-season rates (July through Labor Day) are $92 a
> day, with a discount for 14 days or longer. Rates include 100 miles a
> day; 28 cents each additional mile. Plenty of used, functional VW
> campers are available around the country, although they are increasingly
> hard to find and those in top condition command a premium. Check eBay or
> the Web classifieds at www.westfalia.org, a site with plenty of
> information on VW campers.
>
> For basic guidance, I used the Rand McNally Road Atlas 2002 ($11.95).
> Two books I brought along proved both helpful and entertaining. Jane and
> Michael Stern's "Eat Your Way Across the U.S.A." (Broadway Books, 1997)
> is a handy directory of roadside restaurants I might otherwise have
> passed by. And Jamie Jensen's "Road Trip USA" (Avalon Travel Publishing,
> 2002) offered a number of tips about roadside attractions along some of
> the nation's better long-distance two-lane highways.
>
> WAYNE CURTIS, a freelancer, lives in Eastport, Me.<<<
>
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