ON THE ROAD AGAIN

The bag of recyclables was in the middle of the aisle again, and I kicked it in frustration. After being on the road for a month in the RV, I was tired of the inevitable clutter and lack of enough storage space. At home, we have a cabinet that is dedicated to various recyclables, and another that holds trash.

Much as I enjoy RV travel, I must admit there are times when I long to get off the road for a while, to return to a better-ordered life. Though I am far from a perfect housekeeper, at home I do have more space for storing things, and more time for housework. The laundry doesn’t pile up (and certainly doesn’t sit in a duffel bag in the shower until it gets moldy, as can happen when we are traveling!). I do the dishes every morning, rather than leaving them in the sink to conserve water. I’d like more opportunities for personal care, too. I’d like to shampoo my hair on the same day when I need to, and take a shower whenever I get dirty.

Another thing I miss is the El Dorado County Library, where I belong to an enjoyable book club and hang out often to read magazines and newspapers as well as to check out books and videos. Not having yet invested in an e-book reader, I sometimes run out of reading material when we travel—and for me, that is a major problem. There simply isn’t space in our RV for more than a few paperbacks.

Keeping up with world events on the road is difficult, too. (I’d be lost without NPR.) Unless I have wi-fi on a Tuesday, I am liable to miss The New York Times’ weekly Science Times. Finding the print version would be even better, but that often isn’t possible. At home, I would simply walk down the hill to the local newsstand to buy it.

I miss the sociability of life at home, too. I’m far from being a party animal, but do enjoy talking with neighbors, salespersons, and so on. It’s nice to chat with people I meet often in everyday life. Because of our travels, I see too little of friends and family in California.

On the other hand, one advantage of RV life is the opportunity to visit old friends in other parts of the country. Many people of our age seem to travel very little, and so the RV can take me to them. I can visit my old college campus, go back to cities where I once lived. In spite of the irritating aspects of living for months in an RV, at this time of my life it seems preferable to staying at home. And so, I hope to go on roving about for as long as possible, until old age or illness prevents it. There will likely be time enough for staying home in a tidy house and remembering with nostalgia what it was like to travel in an RV.

REMEMBERING JANE

In 1971 I returned to Chicago after a couple of years in New York. Rand McNally was much the same as when I had worked there in the sixties, but they had just acquired the Lyons & Carnahan company, and brought in their editors.

One of their editors, Jane Robinson, was ten years younger than I, and at that tumultuous time we should have been on opposite sides of the generation gap. Surprisingly, Jane and I hit it off immediately. We were both feminists, political liberals, and voracious readers. (We also tended to have a critical view of the world, and to broadcast our opinions.) Jane was a bright, hardworking editor whose talent was probably wasted on the social studies textbooks she worked on.

Jane was a perfectionist, which made her an excellent writer and editor. It affected other aspects of her life as well. I used to tease her about what I thought was her obsessive approach to shopping—then saw her furnish and decorate a series of beautiful homes. More importantly, Jane was a warm, humorous woman who made many friends easily.

Soon after we met, both Jane and I married. I had come back from New York to marry Harold, and she had met Larry McGoldrick, a brilliant young professor at the University of Chicago. Harold and Larry were very different men, but they shared a wry sense of humor. All of us got along well, and we saw each other often.

About 1980 we all left Chicago. We did so with some regrets, because we loved the city. But, Larry had accepted a job with NASA in Washington; Harold, with a young engineering firm in San Francisco. Larry and Jane had also just become the parents of Daniel, who would keep them very busy in the coming years. In spite of living on opposite coasts, Jane and I managed to see each other every so often, and we kept in touch by mail. Jane became an editor at National Geographic’s World magazine, I went back to grad school and set up an editorial service.

When Jane was about fifty, she made the major decision to return to grad school in order to become a Jungian psychologist. That would have been a tremendous effort even for a younger woman, and must have been extremely difficult for her. With her typical determination, she spent several years achieving her dream. As Dr. McGoldrick, she became a psychologist for the Air Force, then established a private practice in New Mexico. (Larry and Jane had fallen in love with the Southwest, and finally managed to relocate there just a few years ago.)

Jane and I exchanged some gifts over the years, and I treasure those concrete reminders of her. But, her greatest gift was a visit to us a few years before Harold died. Realizing she might never see him again, she flew to California to spend a couple of weeks with us. We had a wonderful time showing Jane the Monterey Peninsula, North Beach restaurants and the City Lights book store in San Francisco, and many other places. It gave Harold and me a much-needed respite from his surgeries and hospitalizations, as he managed to stay well during her entire visit.

In the spring of 2012 Jane called to tell me she had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, but intended to do everything possible to survive. Knowing her perseverance, I thought that she would succeed. For more than a year afterward she was subjected to chemotherapy, radiation, and alternative treatments, traveling from her home in New Mexico to southern California and New York. In spite of everything, the cancer metastasized, and this August she succumbed to it.

I think Jane believed, as I do, that our death on this earth is not the end; that in some way we rejoin the Spirit. That belief should comfort me, and in time it will. Now, though, I want to rage as Macbeth did, “She should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word. . . ” September 3 would have been her sixty-fifth birthday. Jane should have lived for many more years, giving of her love and intelligence to all of us who remain.

 

 

 

ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD

We are settled for the night at a Walmart in New York state, having started out too late to find a good campground. Not far outside our dinette window, a young man has set up a mobile detailing business, complete with pressure washer and hoses. We’re incredulous—in California, storm sewer openings are labeled with a sign warning that the drain leads to a waterway, and water used for washing cars is supposed to be recycled.  The young man tells us that in New York, what he is doing is perfectly legal.

He had returned home after a couple of years away for reasons he left unspecified. He traded a dozen bottles of beer for a 350-gallon water tank, got some free or low-cost hardware, and invested some money in the pressure washer only. Then he went into business in some public spaces, including some Walmart parking lots, apparently without any objections from Walmart, charging customers a low price for a quick detailing job. We had to admire his entrepreneurial spirit.

That reminded us of some other people we have met in our travels. When we stopped at Morro Rock in Kings Canyon, another young man was sleeping in his car, obviously avoiding campground fees. As any food might be seen as an invitation by the local bears, he stored his containers of food in the toilet building.

One hot summer when we were visiting Yellowstone, we went to the parking lot at  Old Faithful extremely early, fearful that we wouldn’t find a shady parking spot later on. A tiny car was parked near us. As we were eating breakfast, the car doors opened. A young couple (still wearing pajamas) and their huge dog emerged, apparently having spent the night there.

Sometimes the people we meet are a pure joy. When we were blundering our way through Ontario, we stopped at a Mennonite coffee shop and warily asked the way to our destination. The waitresses not only gave us accurate and clear directions, but drew a map that was easy to follow. Unfortunately, even knowing which way is north seems beyond most people, so we were extremely grateful to these women.

Others come up with just the right information by coincidence. When Thane was on his way east this year in the hope of helping with Acadia National Park’s Night Sky festival, he stopped at Dinosaur Monument in Utah. He asked an NPS ranger to change a $20 bill so he could pay for a campground site. She couldn’t do that, but casually mentioned a star party to be held that night at Dinosaur. He was able to participate in an excellent program.

Some encounters are downright scary. At the Bridge campground in northern California, we saw what looked like a monster rising out of the creek. It turned out to be a large man wearing black wetsuit headgear; he was a good guy removing trash from the water.

One night at the Columbia River gorge, we drove to an overlook for a spectacular view of the gorge. No “no overnight parking” signs were in evidence, and we were tired, so we stopped for the night. A young man driving a pickup that held an apartment’s worth of furniture was parked near by, and it turned out that he was staying overnight, too. He told us he was moving to Oregon from Texas, but he appeared to be living at the overlook full time, and sleeping on the cab seat.

We have met a few European travelers, who all seem fascinated by North America. Some have gone to extraordinary lengths to travel by RV here, shipping their own rigs over the Atlantic at enormous expense. We hope they can stay in North America long enough to justify the cost.

Winnebago View and Navion RVs are rare enough to inspire some loyalty and fraternal feeling among owners. When we went to the Quartzsite rally last January, we met a man who had organized a special View/Navion gathering. For a few days, we were surrounded by our tribe, a great bunch of people. The same man who was responsible for this gathering has been a savior to many owners who frantically post their problems on a Yahoo! Site while en route—he answers with advice that has probably saved thousands of dollars and some marriages. 

A woman pounded on our door in the middle of the night in Winnipeg, saying her rig was out of gas and she wanted money to buy some. We turned her down.

And so it goes—wherever we travel, sightseeing sometimes is overshadowed by the people we meet or avoid meeting. It’s another fascinating facet of the RV life.

 

 

THE TIME TRAVELER'S TRAIN

 

 

Even today, when there are no steam whistles to bring about that “Blues in the Night” feeling, trains are a romantic way to travel. We shun airplanes when possible, and take long vacations in our RV, but manage an occasional train ride.

Recently I took Amtrak’s Blue Water line from Chicago to Kalamazoo, both for an enjoyable and inexpensive ride and for reliving much of my life. The journey began at Chicago’s famous Union Station,

where I changed trains a few times in 1959 as I returned from grad school at the University of Wisconsin to my home in southwest Michigan. I recall gazing out the train window at snowy landscapes—Wisconsin always seemed wintry then—dotted with only a few leafless trees.

Last week the train moved slowly through Chicago‘s south side toward Indiana. For about 20 years I lived in various parts of Chicago and its suburbs, first as a young bride, then as a divorcée, and finally as a happily remarried woman. During those years I found  my vocation as a science editor, and edited many textbooks for Rand McNally. Chicago was and is a magnificent city. Only the unrelenting ice and snow drove us to move to San Francisco in 1980.

We rolled through Indiana quickly, with Lake Michigan near but unseen to the north. As soon as we crossed the border into Michigan, I felt at home. Cottonwoods and maples were still August-green, but would begin to turn gold and scarlet in a few weeks. My grandparents had a farm near Bridgman, and these same railroad tracks ran through it.  As a child in the forties I often visited Grandma and Grandpa, where I balanced precariously on the rails and put crossed pins on them to be fused into miniature scissors by passing trains. At night I could hear the trains passing though. That was still the era of steam trains with the lonely sounding whistles that promised adventure far away in miles and years.

The train of today continued on through the many small towns of Berrien and Van Buren counties. I was born in Watervliet, a little paper-mill town that has nearly vanished (the mill closed years ago, and the Pere Marquette trains no longer go there). Though I still treasure my friends from childhood and high school, I was glad to leave the oppressive life there. In the fifties my English teacher, Roy Davis, made the mistake of introducing me to Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, which helped me recognize the worst side of midwestern rural life. Roy is fonder of small-town life than I am, and still lives in the next town, Hartford, in a lovely century-old home. (On this nostalgic trip I had the chance to visit him and his wife, Marion.)

The train was delayed,  as most trains tend to be, but finally reached Kalamazoo. As it entered town I looked up past the huge campus of Western Michigan University and saw the dome of Stetson Chapel at Kalamazoo College. Four of the happiest years of my life were spent at “K” College, where I was exposed to the wide world of literature, the sciences, music, and art. Three of my college roommates loved the city so much that they have gone on living there for more than 50 years, and a cousin who taught at Western has remained there also. Going back to see them and walk around the campus is a treat that I indulge in every few years. Old roommate Diane Worden met me at the station, and we drove off to a Middle Eastern dinner. (Kalamazoo is more cosmopolitan than it was in the fifties, when pizza seemed esoteric.)

I have spent longer in airplanes waiting for takeoff than the train ride lasted, but in that short trip I had relived much of my life. After a happy week I rejoined my partner, who had driven the RV from California, and we began driving toward Maine. Though this would be a wonderful vacation, I was grateful to have spent some time alone aboard that train to yesterday.

HEALTHY AGING IN AN RV

There is a stereotypical RVer, and too often the stereotype is accurate: an aging man or woman wearing Bermuda shorts topped with a beer belly, sprawling on a folding chaise longue, eating barbecued meat, drinking beer, watching TV outdoors with the aid of a noisy generator. These people are just pathetic, and many are actually ill as a result. Fortunately, the RV life—and those of us who live it—can be much better. My partner and I have found that it actually can help us stay healthy if we avoid some rather obvious mistakes.

Spending too much time driving is one mistake that interferes with health. Driving an RV can lead to a mad dash across hundreds of miles a day, with few breaks. While one family member is driving, a passenger is making sandwiches that are eaten during the drive. Instead of driving for a long time, we stop often and walk for a while. This is less stressful and provides a little needed exercise. In addition, we see much more of our surroundings on foot than from the RV.

Many of us elderly Rvers are on a lot of medicines (I take about 20 pills a day, including vitamins as well as prescription meds). These need to be easily accessible at all times, especially in case of an emergency. We keep all of ours in a bag behind the passenger seat. It’s easy to reach at any time, and if we ever need to escape quickly, we can grab the bag on our way out. Once a week, we dole out a seven-day supply of pills in one of those handy divided containers. (I keep my daily pills in my backpack or purse to help me remember to take them. It’s important to maintain that daily routine.)

Too often it is tempting to stop at a restaurant as a longer break from driving, but this is likely to end in taking in too many calories and eating the wrong kinds of foods, as well as spending a lot of money. Nearly always, we prepare meals in the RV and eat them at a roadside picnic table or at our own dinette.  Farmers’ markets are a wonderful source of healthful food that is also an enjoyable part of experiencing a local area.  Rather than carrying a heavy cookbook, I loaded my own book, Cooking without Sugar, onto my  laptop computer, where I can easily use the search function to locate recipes or ingredients. If I learn about an appealing recipe en route from another camper or from a newspaper, I add it to the collection.  Being addicted to coffee, I may get an occasional “restaurant fix” and get to know some locals by spending time in a coffee shop.

Cooking in an RV must be rather basic to save pantry space (unless you have one of those humongous RVs, in which case I have little to say to you), so I don’t bother with any recipe having more than five ingredients. We eat little meat even at home, which helps in keeping things simple.

Drinking a lot of alcohol seems to be a major activity for many Rvers, as it goes along with campground sociability. Though a couple of drinks a day can be part of a healthy lifestyle, you need to be careful not to overdo it. Alcohol can be fattening and has little nutritional value. Besides, it can make you relax so much that you eat too many snacks along with it! If you are trying to lose weight, or taking certain medications, it is better to skip the booze altogether. (I know.  . . I used to drink my share of wine, but have gradually given it up, and no longer miss it.) There’s always iced tea, cocoa, or some other substitute.

Getting enough sleep is essential, even when you are trying to rise early and do as much as possible in your travels. Be sure your RV bed is comfortable; you may need to add a mattress pad, for instance. The Travasak was a wonderful sheet-and-comforter combination that could be turned over for comfort summer and winter. It is no longer manufactured, but turns up for sale at Tuesday Morning and similar shops, as well as on eBay, occasionally. Especially in hot summer weather, you may want to get up early, then take a nap in your moveable bed after lunch.

Mental health can suffer in an RV; you may be cut off from the classes or other educational opportunites you have at home. Unless you can find something really worth watching, turn off  the TV in the evening. Have a few good paperbacks with you to read. (I confess that I read a lot of mysteries, but try to alternate them with something more serious.) My partner and I are fond of playing Scrabble on a small travel set, finding that the game helps us stay aware of spelling and word usage.  On Sunday mornings we try to find an NPR station wherever we are, so we can listen to Will Shortz’s Sunday Puzzle and try to solve it. (We have solved it many times and submitted our entries, but have never been called.) Luckily, we both love museums and libraries, so visiting them during our travels is another mental boost.

Loneliness can be especially hard on us older RVers. Our old friends are dying, and we may feel cut off from friends and family while traveling. Most of  us try to stay in touch with people by using e-mail and phone calls often. Also, we can chat with our neighbors in campgrounds.

Some of these suggestions may not appeal to you, but if you apply the general principles of eating healthfully, getting some mental and physical exercise, and resting, you can avoid being the kind of Rver seen in cartoons. You will return home healthier than when you left.

DEATH IN THE SUNSHINE STATE

In the seventies, my parents retired and moved to Florida. Wanting a peaceful, nonstressful environment, they picked the small town of Sanford. Sanford seemed rather dull to me, but I could understand their wish to be away from the faster-paced life in Orlando or Miami, and they seemed content with life there. So, when Sanford was suddenly in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, I was horrified to realize it was not so different from Chicago or Oakland. There is no escape from "urban" problems.

George Zimmerman was acquitted by a jury of six women—five Caucasians and one Hispanic—an outcome that didn’t surprise me. I had noticed plenty of prejudice against African Americans when I spent time in Florida, and would have been amazed if Zimmerman had been found guilty. Whether he actually was guilty of murder, or even of manslaughter, is another question, one that I cannot answer. Certainly the prosecutors failed to prove their charge against him.

Trayvon Martin

What is certain is that a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, was shot and killed because he walked through a white gated community and appeared to Zimmerman as if he might be up to something. Zimmerman, a self-styled neighborhood watch volunteer, followed Martin and confronted him. The details and sequence of events following that are unclear. Zimmerman claimed that Martin pounded his head into the sidewalk, and that he shot Martin to death in self-defense. Which of them was the attacker, and which was the victim?

Having been an officially sanctioned Neighborhood Watch block captain for several years myself, I feel strongly that Zimmerman should have called the police to report his suspicions, then stayed in his car instead of following the boy. Neighborhood Watch members are not supposed to be vigilantes, but to be extra eyes for the police force.

If only he had simply waited for the police. If only he had not followed Trayvon. If only he had not been armed! For that is the final link in this tragedy. Too many people like Zimmerman are carrying weapons and are too eager to use them. We need tough laws that restrict access to guns to those who must have them, and who will use them responsibly. Without such laws, more Trayvon Martins will die, and more Sandy Hook children will be murdered. More moviegoers like those in Aurora, Colorado, will be victims. During the twenty days of the Zimmerman trial, three teenagers and a five-year-old boy were shot to death in Chicago alone. There will always be murders and violence, but we can at least lower the number of shootings.

DISAPPOINTED WITH NPR

Years ago, while living in Chicago, I discovered the “Midnight Special” radio program. WFMT, which ordinarily broadcasts classical music and brief news items, every Saturday night substituted their  “weekly aberration of folk music and farce, show tunes and satire, odds and ends, madness and escape.” Hosts Ray Nordstrand and Norm Pellegrini had come up with that inimitable program in 1953. When NPR was formed in 1970, WFMT became an NPR station, and the Special continued. I listened to it nearly every Saturday, along with other NPR programs.

In all the years since I have listened to NPR, even during pledge breaks, and have been a member at whatever level I could afford. Sometimes today, though, I question my allegiance to it. Recently NPR cancelled “Talk of the Nation,” a long-running show moderated by Neal Conan. For years, Conan took calls from listeners around the country about various issues, handling them with tact and intelligence. The program has been replaced, for no apparent reason, with an inferior one.

It would be bad enough if this were NPR’s only grievous error. Unfortunately, this is only the latest one. Terry Gross, for example, is an excellent interviewer, and in the past I greatly enjoyed her conversations with interesting subjects ranging from academics to entertainers. More and more, though, her program has been invaded by fading rock musicians and hack writers pushing their latest books. As she is the co-producer of her “Fresh Air” program, I find this hard to understand. Surely she knows better.

On the morning of 9/11, I turned on my kitchen radio in California to learn from “Morning Edition” host Bob Edwards that planes had just hit the World Trade Center. As I struggled to deal emotionally with that tragedy, the only thing that kept me from breaking down completely was Edwards’ voice. Somehow he managed in spite of obviously being shaken himself to sound sane and reassuring. His listeners got a feeling of “this, too, shall pass.” I will never forget it. Surely millions of people were as fond of Bob Edwards as I was, and were just as disgusted when NPR let him go.

I could go on and on.  For instance, Capital Public Radio, my local NPR station, recently replaced some of their excellent classical music and jazz programs with hard rock—I guess that‘s what you would call it—that is simply unbearable.

What is NPR thinking? Are they firing middle-aged broadcasters, and changing the content of programs, in the hope of attracting a younger “demographic”? (I hate that word.) I wish that they would base their choices instead on whether their programs appealed to their listeners’ intelligence.

In spite of this criticism I still listen to NPR in preference to any other radio program, and to most television. Michael Krasny’s “Forum” on KQED in San Francisco is a fine source of information, with a brilliant host. I play Will Shortz’s Puzzle every Sunday morning, but am yet to be the winning player. “StarDate” and Ira Flatow’s “Science Friday” are usually good programs about the sciences. Back in Chicago, the “Midnight Special” is still running! Sadly, Nordstrand and Pellegrini are both dead now, but Rich Warren does a good job of continuing their work. So, NPR, you still know how to do it right. Just do it!

CELL PHONE MADNESS

 

Before my partner began the long RV journey, we bought an extra cell phone and made sure that we could call each other easily. ICE numbers and contacts were added to the phones. We each had copies of the phones’ manuals. We were confident that we would stay in touch daily. What could go wrong?

It worked well as he drove from California through Nevada and Utah. Then he didn’t call for four days, and I panicked when he didn’t respond to my voice-mail messages. Had he had an accident? Was he ill? Had someone hijacked the RV? The temperature in Utah was over 100 degrees—had he been overcome by heat while boondocking? My imagination is better than my common sense when it comes to disasters.

At last he called, blissfully oblivious to my worry. He had been camped near Dinosaur National Monument, out of cell phone range, and in a small campground where the pay phone didn’t work. He had simply assumed I would realize he was traveling through an area with numerous dead zones and  might not be able to call often.

There is a problem here, aside from the obvious Men from Mars/Women from Venus difference. Before cell phones became ubiquitous, no one expected to stay in contact with others under all circumstances. Occasional long-distance calls and postcards were enough. Now we demand instant access to our friends and business associates. One woman I know says her pet peeve is people who turn on their cell phones only to make calls! I can hardly blame them for wanting to be untethered. Must we always be available for anyone who wants to reach us and doen’t even want to bother with voice mail?

When other RVers heard my story, they sympathized, but with some I also detected an attitude of annoyance that we didn’t have some higher-tech communication system. They seemed to feel that GPS, satellite devices, and God only knows what else are essential for the good life in an RV. I disagree. Though my anxiety would have been allayed, my partner would have spent too much time fiddling with electronics instead of studying the dinosaur fossils that were very important to him. He might just as well have watched television at home.

Fifty years ago the English actor Dirk Bogarde starred in The Servant, a powerful psychological film about how the roles of master and servant were reversed. It was primarily a comment about the English class system, but I also interpreted it another way: When we depend too much on a servant like technology, it may become dominant over us. I had depended too much on our cell phones in this instance, and was betrayed by the many dead zones. Others go off too far into the wilderness carrying gadgets that can broadcast their latitude and longitude, and risk injury or death; or they depend on a ghostly voice in the RV to tell them which way to turn, and it gives them bad advice.

There is also some research indicating that using too much technology is harmful to the creativity and thinking skills of both adults and children. We need to retain our abilities to memorize, to imagine, and to make simple calculations without relying on computers.

I am no Luddite, and have no desire to return to life without my laptop computer and cell phone. On the other hand, I need to keep them in their place as tools to be used with discretion. I can live with some uncertainty in return for not being burdened with too much technology.

RV TRAVEL ON 5 DOLLARS A DAY

Long, long ago I saw a copy of Arthur Frommer’s Europe on Five Dollars a Day, and was enchanted by the idea of such inexpensive travel. I had studied  French in college, and fervently desired to see Europe, but had little money. (At the time I was a young editor living on a salary of less than $5000 a year.) Could Frommer somehow tell me how to visit Europe anyway?

He could. The book told of many restaurants offering full meals for a dollar or less, hotels where the bathroom was nonexistent or down the hall, cheap forms of transportation, and low-cost museums. The book also contained much advice from seasoned travelers who wanted to share their low-budget finds. My favorite advice was that from a woman who traveled for months with no luggage except a large purse; if I recall rightly, she wore one outfit everywhere, varying it slightly with scarves and a sweater.  If she could manage that well, perhaps I could also.

Though all that detailed information would prove to be extremely helpful, the main thing I gained from reading Frommer was his outlook. He advised scrimping mightily on unimportant items in order to save money for the truly memorable ones, such as the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Alhambra, with perhaps one luxurious splurge.

As it turned out, it took several years and a divorce for me to visit Europe for the first time. In 1971 I saw an ad for a special American Express tour from New York to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco that cost only $250, and realized I could combine it with Frommer’s approach in order to see some of Europe at last. The tour lasted only ten days, but I had a wonderful time, felt very cosmopolitan, and carried one of Frommer’s books everywhere. (By that time travel was a bit more than five dollars a day, but most of his advice was still good.)

It has been more than forty years since that first adventure, during which I have traveled as much as possible. Even when it has been possible to spend more, I have continued to use Frommer’s “biggest bang for the buck” principle. Today, traveling in an RV having a small closet, I think appreciatively of that woman traveler with her one outfit, who helped point the way. A few good tee shirts and pants can go nearly everywhere!

Amazingly, on some days we do spend only five dollars or less on RV travel. If we are boondocking in a Forest Service or BLM campground, we may pay nothing at all for the privilege. Until we move on, gasoline costs us nothing. The fridge is already filled with supermarket foods. Hiking a nearby trail is free.

Of course, my remarks are made with tongue firmly in cheek. The RV cost nearly as much as some small houses, gasoline is very costly when we are driving all day, and if we stay at an RV resort in order to have campground power for a night, the costs can add up quickly. However, the principle is still true: RV travel helps makes it possible to cut costs for unimportant items like hotels and restaurants, and to save up for the worthwhile things like taking a tour of the Biltmore estate or the Hearst Castle, spending a day at Chicago museums, steaming across Lake Michigan on the Badger ferry, and buying Canadian gasoline. Thank you, Arthur Frommer!

WASTED RESOURCES

The Target stores have become known for good design at low prices, and I have happily bought quite a few things there for the RV and our homes. So, when I needed some clothing recently, I headed for the nearest Target.

The bras I chose were on small plastic and metal hangers rather than in packages. As I handed them to the cashier, I said, “I don’t need the hangers—you can keep them for reuse.” She refused to do so, saying that larger plastic hangers can be recycled, but these smaller ones cannot. I indignantly pointed out that this was a waste of plastic and metal. The clerk rolled her eyes—I was obviously being one of those obnoxious customers clerks dread—and told me to just throw them out if I didn’t want them. Muttering “That’s not the point!” I took the hangers with me and left the store. I certainly don’t hang bras in a closet, and doubt that any other woman does. (Well, maybe an elaborate bustier deserves its own hanger.) So, these hangers will end up in my own trash bin.

There must have been several hundred bras in that store, each one on one of those hangers that will be thrown in the trash. How many stores are doing the same thing? What a waste! And how much pollution they will cause! It’s not as if the hangers are necessary—a bra can be packaged in a bag that uses very little paper or plastic. Better yet, hangers can be used for displaying merchandise, but the store can keep them for reuse.

My ire in this case was directed at one Target, but that particular store is only one of many across the country, and Target is only one of the big-box stores with similar wasteful practices. Walmart, K-Mart, and others all do it. Sears, Macy’s, and Penney’s put clothing and other purchased items in huge plastic bags. Supermarkets such as Safeway and Food4Less almost seem to make a point of putting only one or two items in each plastic bag; I have seen some customers leave with what looked like hundreds of plastic bags in their shopping carts.

We customers are at fault almost as much as the stores are. Only a few of us carry reusable bags, though it is easy to do. Like me, some customers allow themselves to be coerced into accepting hangers or other wasteful packaging rather than vociferously objecting to it. Clerks sometimes add to the problem, too. Many of them seem annoyed if they must interrupt their robot-like filling of plastic bags to use our reusable bags instead.

Recently a bill banning plastic bags was introduced in the California legislature, but it failed to pass. As a result, the problem will continue in this beautiful state that thrives on tourism and prides itself on environmental awareness. Except for stores in the few cities that have wisely banned plastic bags, supermarkets and other stores in California will continue this wasteful, polluting practice. A few of the bags will be usefully reused in homes; some may be returned to stores for recycling; most will end up in landfills or waterways. Birds and mammals may choke on them or be asphyxiated by them. Roadsides and picnic areas will be made ugly.

Being an RVer, I see some of this wastefulness in campgrounds, but think having to live in a small space actually encourages conservation. We campers are less likely to load our grocery carts with unneeded items, and to accept extra packaging, than those having lots of storage space at home. In some campgrounds we even have to “pack it in, pack it out,” which truly discourages schlepping a lot of extra items around with us. Most of us care deeply about preserving the natural environment, because we have made an effort to spend time in the national parks or other areas for aesthetic and spiritual reasons. With any luck our concern will have some impact, and our attitudes will prove contagious.