Veebyes wrote:
I don't know how people enjoyed the RVing lifestyle before cellphones. How did you do the research required for multi month trips involving thousands of miles with all of the complications of weather delays & mechanical issues thrown into the mix?
Today is easy. The basic route is plotted out. CGs are found on the fly, usually making a same day reservation a few hours from the destination.
1). AAA Triptik (Mobil Oil)
โ Atlas
โ Compass
โ Binoculars
โ Handheld spotlight
โ State road maps
โ US Park Svc Directory
โ COE Directory
2). Yellow Pages (any phone booth)
โ Oil company maps with their locations
โ Best Western or other motel chain directories
โ KOA Directory
โ State travel guides
I today use an Army Messenger Shoulder Bag to carry this stuff (reproduction). My mother would fill the passenger footwell of one of those Chryslers or Cadillacs with her reference library of tote style bags. My grandmother used the backseat footwell. (We traveled weeks, they traveled months. Mexico, Canada and the US).
Learning to travel by car 3-6/weeks at a time is science, and then the art of how you want to do it. Itโs point to point. Not day to day. Clock matters a little, calendar not at all.
The research was the rest of the year (assuming one big yearly trip). Magazine subscriptions. Newspaper articles. Friends and family.
I donโt think anyones going to visit both coasts in one trip. So, arrive at an area and from one or two campgrounds day-tour the region by car. Make a few notes on where to stay on a future trip. (Canโt see or fish all of Colorado on one trip, etc)
Iโd say map reading was hardest (easiest to make mistakes which were stressful). Turn-by-turn even if experienced (notes made) you couldnโt do it without paying attention to compass headings. Thatโs planning from the night before: โx-miles W on US63 past Clarendon; T-L 1/2M past courthouse onto OK 667 for 6-miles . . . โ (you had to deduce actual miles despite distance aids as printed). An outline format, easily read at speed.
Some folks not naturally good at directions. Inner compass plus time/distance sense. My grandmother would direct you in her kitchen by referring you to the SW cabinet on the NE wall.
โ You needed โ as a man โ two wristwatches in the event one failed. Your World War infantry or sailors navigation training was finally applicable (was a joke I heard often as a child, men comparing routes on leaving a campground or National Park. โHold steady at 270-degrees for 18โ, and then take the . . . โ, how the joke unfolded.)
Phones at camp office, sure. But by mid -1970s you plugged in a land-line at the service pedestal. (My 1990 has this exterior plug). Local almost free if not quite crooks, but youโd pay over and above standard fee for long-distance.). Bought me a Western Electric desk model against that day.
Letter-writing, not just post cards, was an expectation. Mail forwarded to General Delivery was another.
Gasoline credit cards were new enough. But having ones for oil companies not in your home region was another. So, Diners Club, AMEX and some others (not easily approved). The thing was TRAVELERS CHEQUES. Who would cash them? How much? What fee? (Having a floor safe in a premium RV was a regular option check).
The REAL question was that you should ask, is, How did they do it without television? (It was a good long ways into the 1980s that nightly assumption was operable. Sometimes in aerial, sometimes on cable. Sometimes not at all. In the 1960s didnโt expect to have any service (why camp in or near a city; got that when back home).
Reading was its own pleasure. Strongly encouraged as the adults expected to feel rested once parked somewhere for more than a day. I recall the hours after lunch as being enforced quiet (nap, draw circles in sand, chase chipmunks, read).
Campgrounds often had a morning coffee hour, and maybe a camp fire a little ways into dark in the evenings. Local paper for sale at camp office.
Clear channel AM radio at night. FM near big cities days after 1970. Rural AM was owned locally. Could be quite informative.
Having a โcampground CBโ in the RV was another โthingโ by the mid 1970s. Folks would ask the Qโs youโd expect โ laundry, brake job, hair salon, catfish restaurant. (And tires. Always tires back then. Fuel pumps next).
(Put a 70โs CB in my current rig. Gets out a few hundred yards with an on-glass antenna I can unscrew and store. Bigger and fancier ones elsewhere).
2004 555 CTD QC LB NV-5600
1990 35โ Silver Streak
