America In Search of Ease

FROM The Bronx, in perennial imitation of the pioneers, a salesman or engineer heads west in his camper--past the northern borders of Harlem, across the Hudson, through the almost Dantean landscape beside the New Jersey Turnpike, where his family rolls up the windows against the stench of chemical plants. Down the road, as the Howard Johnson's tick by, all breathe easier. By mid-Pennsylvania, past the Amish country and into the Allegheny foothills, the father is almost counting cows with his children. Local radio stations dissolve in static every 50 miles; insects detonate against the windshield. He stops and has the oil checked. The American is in his seasonal migration.

Vacationers by the tens of thousands poured across the countryside last week toward mountains, lakes, trout streams and ocean beaches. Nearly as many, brandishing credit card and camera, were climbing aboard 747 jumbo jets and chartered 707s for London, Rome, Madrid or Tokyo. In Washington, the U.S. Passport Office has accumulated a backlog of 30,000 new applications. The New Orleans passport director has a bleeding ulcer.

Drink and Travel. In this summer of America's economic discontent, oddly, the travel industry may be enjoying its most lucrative season ever. "There are two things Americans always do," says Clarence Stansbury of Michigan's Automobile Club. "Drink and travel." Despite inflation, recession, unemployment, few are willing to forgo at least a brief period of summer's ease. Indeed the impulse to get away from it all is, if anything, even more intense this year. There is so much more to get away from. Observed Hugh Johnson, an American Express manager in Beverly Hills, Calif.: "People figure they can't do much about the stock market, and they are fed up with the terrible headlines. And maybe there is a feeling that they might as well do it now because they won't have it to spend a year from now."

By far the most popular method of saving money and enjoying it is camping. Last week, from Maryland and Virginia's Assateague Island to California's Yosemite Valley, the national parks were in something like a state of siege--and they were still a month away from the season peak. Unhappily. Americans in their massive, neo-Thoreauvian urge threaten to create precisely the environment they are trying to escape. A haven like Yosemite, once celebrated by naturalists and the National Geographic, offers roughly the solitude of Central Park on a weekday. Says one Interior Department official: "Visiting Glacier National Park is like going to a Safeway parking lot."

Peaceful Interlude. Even though most regular air fares are higher than ever --there have been more than a dozen rate increases since 1958--foreign travel has become so routine that it has almost lost its status. According to the Census Bureau, $10,000 or less is the annual salary claimed by 50% of the U.S. tourists abroad this summer--although this includes the horde of students who are wandering the Continent. With round-trip charter fares to London sometimes under $200, it can be cheaper for Americans to vacation abroad than at home. It can be chancier as well. This month Cincinnati's World Academy charter service stranded 3,500 students in Europe when it suddenly went bankrupt.

Weathier tourists are seeking more recondite or merely more ostentatious excursions. At the end of May, the Matson Lines' Monterey sailed from San Francisco with passengers who had paid from $1,510 to $4,565 to visit the Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin once pondered the origin of species. Los Angeles' Hemphill Travel Service offers a" 32-day round-the-world tour for 60 people flying in a chartered Convair 990 with stops in Copenhagen, Malagasy. New Guinea and other lands. The fare is $9,960. Lindblad Travel. Inc., which spec;alizes in the exotic, has organized tours to Easter Island and the Ross Sea area of the Antarctic. In the works now is a cruise to the Seychelles, "the forgotten islands" in the Indian Ocean. Some customers are canceling out of such tours, though, because they cannot afford to spend several thousand dollars in a recession.

Most Americans, of course, do not try to travel that first class, and are simply looking for the easing sense of change, however temporary, that comes with movement from one place to another, with altered perspective. But many hunger less for hectic motion than for a peaceful interlude with nature. Says

Cecil Garland, a former Las Vegas croupier who now runs a general store in Lincoln. Mont.: "For too many people, the ideal vacation has been determined by how much scenery they could see blurred across their car's windshield. Now more people are looking simply for a quiet, soul-healing, unwinding experience. They are not looking for the super-duper deal anymore. People are beginning to appreciate their natural resources more. The wilderness has a way of making friends for itself."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.