Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 18:00:17 -0700
Reply-To: Oakland Westfalia <westfalia@PACBELL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Oakland Westfalia <westfalia@PACBELL.NET>
Organization: Westfalia Oakland
Subject: Nice (Vanagon Westy) VW roadtrip article in mainstream
press--TEXT format
Content-type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1252
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.<<<
