Thinking Out Loud: About this Vacation Thing
So much for bucket list destinations: An immediate, low cost cure.
When I sat down to type this morning, I had a bitch-fest rattling around my brain in which I was going to decry the degradation (as I see it) of so many of my bucket list travel destinations. Initially, I planned on growling about how my bucket list of places I want to visit is being polluted by tourists. An example is the way my long-time goal of visiting Machu Picchu in Peru has been taken off my list.
Perched at 8,000 feet, that amazing Inca ruin is so remote that traditionally, it required serious intestinal and physical fortitude to reach and, once there, accommodations were limited and rudimentary. The difficulty of getting there combined with a shortage what what tourists have come to expect limited the number of travelers who could make the trip. No more! Now there are major hotels at the base of the mountain. Tour buses can make travel from the closest airport comfortable in the extreme. Shops hawk Chinese-made Inca tourist goodies. And to protect the site, authorities are having to severely limit the crowd size and require a tour guide for every ten people because it’s getting out of hand.
Machu Picchu is at 8,000 feet and represents an amazing accomplishment in any time frame but especially at a time when everything was done by hand. It was huge and terribly hard to get to but today is threatened by the ease in which it can be reached. Too many tourists always tends to trample history to death.
It’s hard to think of a major tourist destination anywhere in the world that isn’t being overrun in the same manner. Tourism eventually destroys, or at least degrades, what created the attraction in the first place. Anyone been to Aspen or Telluride lately?
As if that isn’t bad enough, as with almost every world wide, semi-remote tourist destination, freelance videographers have populated YouTube with video tours that are so well done, there’s almost no reason to make the trip. You’re already seen it all. Maybe more than you would if in person. All from the comfort of your lounge chair with a cold brew one hand and the remote in the other. It’s not the same as actually experiencing the location, but it’s a helluva lot cheaper.
Originally I was going to layout the bucket list of places I’ve wanted to visit but have now lost their attraction because they’ve become too much of an attraction. However, the AZ Redhead (AKA Marlene) and I were having our own little bitch-fest yesterday about traveling. Anymore, most of our time on the road is either headed for LA (an easy 383 miles one way) to see West Coast grand kids or maybe a local fly-in or some sort of celebration back in Nebraska (opening the Time Capsule is coming up! Will you be there?).
In the middle of that conversation, we made a decision: We are going to set aside three or four days, toss Nikki-the-dog in the car and take an actual vacation. In our 31 years together, we’ve had exactly one actual vacation. That was 12 days in England and three of those had me at work shooting the Bovington Tank Museum. This vacation, however, is going to be a different kind of vaca and in formulating it, I was reminded of a national vacation trend my dad often homed in on.
When he and mom came to visit us in NJ (which wasn’t often, it’s a long haul from Nebraska) and they’d meet some of our NJ/NY friends inevitably he’d ask them, “Have you traveled to the west?”
He got a kick out of folks answering, “Yeah, I’ve been to Pennsylvania. And Chicago. And LA.”
Or he’d ask if they knew where Nebraska was and the usual answer was , “It’s out by Chicago isn’t it? Not sure”.
While it’s dangerous to make generalities, it’s common for folks from one geographic region to seldom, if ever, visit any of the other regions. From the time the West was settled, plains states mid-westerners have thought New York existed only in movies and California was nothing more than Los Angeles and San Francisco. They weren’t, and aren’t, likely to visit either. By the same token, to the population of most major metropolitan areas, the Midwest and west are out there, somewhere, but they see no reason to visit. There’s a reason it’s called Fly Over Country.
It’s also common for folks from cities and different regions to never visit their local attractions. I lived in far northwestern NJ for nearly 25 years and there were lots of NJ citizens who had never visited the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island (the original entry point for immigrants) which are in plain site. It’s just as common for folks from Nebraska to never visit Fort Robinson (last horse cavalry post), the Strategic Air Command museum, Arbor Lodge (birth place of Arbor Day), Buffalo Bill’s Ranch or the internationally well-known and amazing Agate Fossil Beds and Lakota Indian museum, and on and on.
That brings us to our mini-vacation that’s going to happen in May. It has two specific guidelines. One, we’re never going to leave our home state, Arizona, and we’re never going to visit some place we’re visited before. We’re going to just cruise around seeing what we can see.
Vacationing in Arizona has several interesting aspects. For one thing, AZ is the 5th largest state and is 20% bigger than England. So, distances are long. Also, only 18% of the state is eligible for private title, so 82% will remain totally empty. 26% of the state is Native American reservation, 42% is military and the rest is BLM and Park Service. So, what few towns and villages exist are really spread out. That’s one of the reasons The Redhead and I haven’t visited some of the little towns, most of which were either mining towns, ranching towns or cavalry outposts. We have no idea what we’ll find, however, we’ll have fun finding it.
We’ll stay in touch. Will post cards be okay? bd
Travel safe, and ya post card will be cool ( even by email) If ya get lost and cross the border we will return your B&B hospitality for free ,here in Oliver BC Canada. Lots of cool airplane to fly too ;)
Had two friends, one male, one female visit Machu around 10 years ago and they hiked in and out with a guide. Don't remember the details but it was days each way! AND, if your going to go old school vaca look up Phlash Phelps Phunny Pharm with XM/Serious satellite radio. He travels the US by car almost continuously. He is the DJ for their 60's radio channel 73 I believe. You will find he has 1,000's of places to visit that you have never heard of. Worlds biggest ball of barb wire, got it, 7 story statue of Super Man or of any other famous person you can think of, he's been there and will show you where it's at! Just Google the full name above and you get right in to his face book page. This is a link to his Facebook group but you have to join to see it.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/372389967032596/