A TALE OF THREE CITIES

For the past several years I have happily lived on the forested west slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in northern California. At this time of my life being far away from “civilization” is just fine. For most of my adult life, though, I lived in large cities. From about 1960 to 1980 the city was Chicago (except for a year or so spent in New York), and from 1980 to 2005 it was the San Francisco Bay Area.

CHICAGO

While growing up in rural Michigan, I visited Chicago only a few times. It seemed like the best of all possible cities, with the lake shore, museums of all types, and magnificent buildings.

Buckingham Fountain, near Lake Michigan

Moving there as a bride in 1959, I found much more to explore, and appreciated the city even more. There were theaters, concerts, universities. I fell into a challenging and rewarding job as a biology editor for Rand McNally. When my first marriage ended, other single women and I took classes at Northwestern University, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Field Museum of Natural History. We drank wine and ate delicious meals at little French and German restaurants.

Returning in 1971 after a year in New York and remarriage (to Harold Stone), I also met Chicago’s community of magicians, hung out at the Chicago School of Folk Music, and learned to love the Lyric Opera.

For me, the downside of Chicago is the weather:  hot and muggy in the summer, very cold and snowy in the winter. Usually only short periods in the spring and fall are appealing. Partly to escape the snow and ice that dragged on every winter, Harold and I jumped at the chance to move to San Francisco when he had a job offer there in 1980.

Meeting Sue at the Field Museum of Natural History

I still love Chicago, in spite of its rough politics, crime, and miserable weather.  When my partner (born in California) and I went there a few years ago, it was exciting to show him some of the places he had only heard about. We plan to return soon.

RV Facilities

Driving into the city center in an RV would be a mistake. Anyone intent on taking part in Chicago’s rich night life should simply find a reasonably priced hotel. (This is easy in winter for obvious reasons.) On a recent visit, I stayed at the Ohio House Motel. It was within walking distance of the Art Institute, the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Ave.), and the Loop.

Taking a commuter train into Chicago is easy.

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, a national park, has a good campground where we stayed for a couple of days. The park itself is well worth a visit, but we used it also as a convenient base from which we could visit Chicago.  About a mile from the campground, the South Shore train station has a free parking lot with space for our 24’ RV. We left it there while taking the train into the city. After a few hours of seeing museums and walking through parks, we returned to the RV for the night.

Other Rvers have told us of staying in a parking area at the McCormick ConventionCenter, next to Lake Michigan on Chicago’s south side. We have no personal knowledge of this “campground,” but it sounded convenient and reasonably priced.

SAN FRANCISCO

On a business trip in the early 1960s I saw San Francisco for the first time, fell in love with the city immediately, and vowed to live there some day. The same thing happened independently to Harold, whom I met in 1968. Though we settled in Chicago after our 1971 marriage and were happy there, we both hoped to move to The City, as San Franciscans call it. When that became possible in 1980, it was a dream come true.

San Francisco is indeed beautiful. As it is nearly surrounded by water, nearly every hilltop commands a view of the Pacific Ocean or of San Francisco Bay. Some areas have charming Victorian homes, and there are appealing shops. Fog provides a romantic evening atmosphere during much of the year, and the daytime light is like that nowhere else. Wonderful restaurants and coffee shops of every variety tempt gourmets. No other U.S. city is so much like Paris.

Of course there are things to criticize (I found some residents not only happy to live there, but a bit snobbish about their luck; and the financial district has become too much like that in any large city), but for visitors, the enchanting old city is still a place everyone should experience.

RV Facilities

Avoid driving on those hills! Stay in some nearby town and take public transportation in for the day. If all else fails, find a way to drive in to the strip of motels near the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge. That section is less hilly than others.

If we go there in the RV, we stay or find street parking in Alameda (an island on the east side of the bay), then take the San Francisco Bay ferry across the bay. Incidentally, that’s the best and cheapest way to see the Bay. Staying in an Alameda motel is also less expensive than staying in San Francisco.

There is an RV campground in Pacifica, fifteen  miles south of The City. It has mixed online reviews, but apparently is a convenient place to view the ocean before or after taking a BART train into San Francisco. The BART station is a few miles from the campground.

NEW YORK

Lured to the city in 1970 when I was offered  a job at Random House (which quickly fell apart during a publishing merger bloodbath), I spent more than a year sitting at my desk every day reading The New York Times. Every week end I visited one of the wonderful museums, especially the Museum of Modern Art and the American Museum of Natural History. Thanks to a man I was dating who had numerous mysterious connections resulting in free tickets, two or three times a week I saw Broadway and off-Broadway plays, listened to jazz, and enjoyed other popular culture. It was an exciting life that could happen nowhere else, but after a while I began longing to stay home with a good book. After a year or so I also realized I wanted to return to Chicago and marry Harold. So I did.

For many people, New York is the only possible place to live. I get it, in a way, and for a reason that may be startling. It’s not just the shopping, the museums, the nightlife, and other patent advantages. Most important, the people are fascinating! New Yorkers have a vitality and spirit (and a surprising kindliness) that I have seen nowhere else. The cultural advantages of the city are also great, but they are somewhat shared by other cities.

In spite of my liking for New Yorkers, I found the physical city very oppressive. Perhaps more than today, it was crowded and dirty. The tall buildings blocked almost the entire smoky sky. Because I lived only a few blocks from the East  River, I sometimes walked along the river to see some sky and water; it wasn’t San Francisco Bay or Lake Michigan, but it helped. Central Park, also, gave me some connection with the natural world.

RV Facilities

No one in their right mind would drive an RV into Manhattan (I never tried to drive even a car there), but there are RV campgrounds on Staten Island. From there, campers can take the famous Staten Island Ferry into the city.

 

All in all, staying out of large cities altogether is the least stressful mode of RV travel. However, if you are traveling from one national park to another, or on some other long trip, there may be must-see cities along the way. As these three examples show, with a little ingenuity you can combine RV travel with visiting cities. Googling for campgrounds, staying with friends in the suburbs, and using other strategies can make it possible.