Public-domain ebook
Motor Camping
by Long, J. C. (John Cuthbert); Long, John D.
Language: en1,051 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Travel Writing·How To ...·Sports/Hobbies
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #66988.
About this book
Motor camping is a practical guide to the burgeoning pastime of traveling the United States by automobile and setting up camp wherever the road leads. The opening chapter frames the activity as a response to the age‑old human urge to be “somewhere else,” then backs that sentiment with a flood of contemporary statistics: ten million cars on the road, millions of families using motor‑camp sites, and detailed figures from the U.S. Forest Service and the New York Times that illustrate the rapid growth of the hobby. After sketching the nationwide appeal of the sport, the authors promise concrete advice on equipment, budgeting, and legal considerations, positioning the book as a handbook for anyone who wants to turn a modest car trip into a low‑cost vacation.
Written in the earnest, instructional tone of early‑1920s nonfiction, the text blends promotional optimism with meticulous detail. Its prose is straightforward, peppered with the period’s civic pride and a belief in the healthful benefits of outdoor travel. Readers who enjoy historical perspectives on leisure, early automotive culture, or hands‑on advice for budget‑friendly road trips will find this work both informative and evocative of a bygone era of American adventure.
The opening · free to read
Over the Horizon Line
Introductory—Extent and Growth of Motor Camping—The Touring Spirit—The Economy of Motor Camping—Week-enders.
Most of us are possessed of the desire to be somewhere else. Since the dawn of history hordes of men have pressed into new countries. Sometimes the expeditions have been in search of food and plunder, but mixed in with these motives has been the human passion for something better, the hope for sunnier scenes lying over the horizon.
Hemmed in by the restrictions of modern business life, people no longer, even in this Western World, move by tribes or companies into new homelands. But the restlessness remains.
In the United States a new and increasing way of satisfying this desire for recreation and adventure has swept over the country. Motor camping has become a leading national pastime. Thousands play golf every year, tens of thousands play tennis, hundreds of thousands engage in baseball, but in the past few years millions have gone in for motor camping. There are over ten million cars in this country. Each year the number is increasing, and each year the number of families that join the national horde of motor campers mounts higher.
The New York Times estimates that at least five million cars were used in camping trips during the past year.
The number of visitors to the National Forests alone now mounts up into the millions. As far back as 1917 the U. S. Forest Service reported a total of three million tourists during the summer. In 1922 this had increased to 5,350,000, of which 3,692,000 were motorists. The motoring visitors to the National Parks during the past season totaled nearly 700,000. More than three-fifths of those visiting the National preserves to-day come by motor car and a large proportion of these are touring campers.
In Colorado during 1922 there were 1,173,000 motorists visiting the parks and forests in that state, as compared with 277,000 who traveled by other means.
The immense popularity of motor camping is easy to understand when one realizes that this pastime is romantic, healthful, educative, and at the same time economical.
Father can take the whole family for a two weeks’ or a month’s trip in his car at virtually the same cost as staying at home. The room rent he will have to pay on his trip will range from nothing to fifty cents or a dollar a day for the family.
There are many thousands of acres of free camping grounds in the national and state public playgrounds. In addition, nearly every town west of the Appalachians has its camp site, while on the Atlantic Seaboard there is a large increase in the number of municipal camp sites every season. The approximately 2,000 civic sites, which are listed elsewhere in this book, make no charge for accommodations or merely a nominal one. The towns in addition to the spirit of hospitality are anxious to have tourists for business reasons. The Executive Secretary of the Denver Civic Association has written: “An auto camp, in my judgment, is just as essential to any city, town or community that wants to thrive and prosper and keep ahead of the times, as a railway station.”
With provisions costing no more than at home, with moderate investment for camping equipment which will last for several years, the family can get a vacation in the open, can see other parts of the country, can get an appreciation of the national life which could hardly be realized in any other way. To the boy living in Connecticut, Georgia can become an actual reality rather than an inch or two of space on the map. The eastern family which has a full summer vacation can readily visit California.
But an extended period of time is not needed in order to enjoy the satisfactions of motor camping. There are wildernesses within a hundred mile range or less of any of our large cities, with the result that many motorists are becoming week-end campers. The New Yorker can find near-by camp sites in the Catskills, and in the State Forests of northern New Jersey. The Philadelphian may enjoy the wildernesses in southern New Jersey. Baltimore has a Forest Reserve actually adjoining the city, while near many of the western cities, such as Denver and Los Angeles, are some of the beauty spots of the world.
This chapter has aimed merely to sketch briefly the extent and some of the possibilities of motor camping. The following chapters discuss in detail the subjects with which the motor camper is concerned, such as preparation for the journey in the way of equipment, conditions he will find, where to camp for short or long trips, laws to be observed.
Motor camping is simple. With a little foresight in preparing for the adventure, and the observance of a few common sense principles in traveling any family may start on its camping trip with the assurance of happy days ahead.
Some motor campers carry an elaborate equipment of supplies and live in the height of comfort at comparatively moderate expense. Motor camping, however, is also a possibility for the very limited purse. It is the purpose of this chapter to give a few specimen budgets and experiences of campers.
Almost any way you may arrange it a motor camping trip can be made to save your vacation money.
Even if you tour as luxuriously as is possible for a camper, you will save a great deal of money over what your tour would cost traveling by rail and stopping at hotels.
Details of different camping factors, such as equipment, are covered in subsequent chapters.
How One Family Saved Money by Motor Touring
This family with guests numbered five adults. They made a motor camping tour from Bemidji, Minn., to Kansas City, Mo., and return. They had an inexpensive car, equipped with a modest camping outfit. They made the excursion described in thirty-one days, traveling at the average leisurely speed of seventeen miles an hour. Their total outlay for food was $66.76, and the entire cost of gasoline and oil for the journey was $34.27. This brought the total traveling expenditures for a party of five adults from Bemidji to Kansas City and return to the sum of $101.03.
Had this party taken the same tour by rail the cost would have been as follows:
Excursion fare Bemidji to Kansas City, 5 adults $233.75 Pullman berths, both ways for 5 adults 60.68 Meals at $1.00 per for 5 adults, 31 days 465.00 Hotels, 25 nights for 5 adults at $6.50 per night 162.50 ------- Total $921.93 Cost of tour, motor camping 101.03 ------- Money saved by motor camping $820.90
The railroad expenses, as will be observed, are put very low, as there is no allowance for such items as tips. And, furthermore, the party of five are assigned to only three Pullman berths. The hotel expenses, too, are drawn down as low as possible. In fact, had the trip been taken by rail the estimates given would have been exceeded.
How a Farmer Did It
An Iowa farmer with a small car of popular make started out with his wife and three children to see the Colorado mountains. He expected to take a trip of about seven hundred miles out and back. Before they were home again they had covered a distance of more than seventeen hundred miles. By the way, fully fifty per cent of all motor campers are farmers.
This farmer tells us that from start to finish of their motor camping vacation, they did not sleep in a bed, eat off a table, or sit on a chair.
Their equipment consisted of a small tent, the most necessary clothes, a tin cup, a tin plate, and a tin spoon for each person. They had a big butcher knife, one fork, a skillet for cooking meat, a two-quart pail for other cooking and to serve as a coffee-pot; also a gallon pail in which to carry water. A knife and fork per person were also provided.
For covering at night they took along a good supply of blankets. Their food was bread, meat and canned fruit—all bought in the small towns through which the family toured. In addition milk, butter and an occasional chicken were purchased from farmers in the country as they passed through.
Firewood for the cook-fire and straw for bedding in the tent they got for the asking. The cooking was done over an Indian fire on the ground.
Their car was in good condition at the start. They drove moderately and carefully, and their only expense on the car was for gas and oil. Their vacation trip of seventeen hundred miles was taken at but little more cost than the expense of staying at home. Any other kind of an excursion trip for these people would have been out of question as they could not have stood the price.
A Boston Woman
Now for some details of a motor camping tour taken by a Boston woman and her friends. This trip involved much more elaborate preparation and considerable more expense than the case just given, but nevertheless was much more economical than a similar tour by rail and hotels.
This Bostonian after minimizing baggage as much as she thought possible took along the following items: one light-weight cloth-tailored suit, half a dozen tailored shirt-waists, one foulard gown to wear of an evening should occasion arise, the necessary underwear, a motor coat and bonnet. She also took extra wraps, steamer rugs and rubber coats. The clothing was packed in suit cases. The party consisted of eight people and took sleeping tents, each tent large enough for two. They took hammocks and folding beds so constructed that they could be bundled and tied on the rear of the car. The tents cost fifteen dollars each. They had two luncheon or tea baskets and three thermos bottles. The baskets used were circular in shape, about the size of a cart wheel, and contained small silver, cups, saucers, and plates for eight people, besides an alcohol cooking apparatus and numerous metal covered dishes and china platters. When these baskets were closed they were carried after the manner of extra tires.
With this outfit and two cars these motorists toured through New England and a portion of Canada. They tented in open field or grove wherever night overtook them. Fresh eggs, milk, butter, and occasionally a chicken or two were obtained at moderate prices from farmhouses on the way.
Some long trips are made with a surprising economy not only in the matter of shelter and subsistence, but also in expenditure for motor supplies. A school principal in Montana made an excursion from his home to San Diego, Cal., and back. He logged a total distance of 2,503 miles. In doing this distance he used only 116 gallons of gasoline and three and a half gallons of oil. These cost the sum of $39.35, making his transportation cost him at the rate of a little more than a cent and a half a mile (1.6 cents). His mileage on gas figured out 21.58 miles to the gallon. Of course, in these figures no account is had of the wear and tear on the car or of depreciation.
Two New York Couples
Two New York couples forming a one-car touring party went motor camping through the Hudson River country. Their outfit was somewhat elaborate, and for the ladies consisted of toilet articles, underwear, flannel underskirts, linen shirt-waists without collars, gray flannel shirt-waists, sweaters, high water-proof shoes with heavy soles, woolen kimonos, sun bonnets, motoring bonnets, heavy raincoats, khaki skirts, flannel night-dresses, stockings (including extra pairs of heavier weight), and slippers.
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