Roughing It the Easy Way

Let's take a trip in a trailer

No need to come back at all. . .

Let's leave our hut, dear, get out of

our rut, dear

Let's get away from it all.

Millions of Americans take the advice of that 32-year-old song seriously, striking out in neo-pioneer style, attempting to get as far from civilization as possible. Backpacking and exploring rustic roads by trailer have become so popular (see box page 61) that the national parks are clogged. The Interior Department has begun an experimental computerized reservation service so that people will be assured of a plot on which to lay their sleeping bags.

There is also another, more comfort-conscious breed of camper who disdains any real communing with nature. These refugees from city and suburb seek not spartan solitude but gregarious luxury--at reasonable prices.

To meet that demand and to keep up with the rapidly expanding trailer subculture, a new vacation industry is taking shape. The sites are variously called destination resorts, luxury campsites, hotels without rooms. They cater to families owning "recreational vehicles"--trailers, campers, motor coaches--whose number is now increasing by 25% a year. In 1961, 83,500 "rec vees" were sold; last year the number was 740,000. There are now some 6.5 million rec-vee families in the U.S.

Just a few years ago, a trailer camp was typically a scruffy mom-and-pop parking lot, often in a small corner of nowhere. The type still exists. But the new sites proliferating from California to Maine, as the following color pages show, are modern amusement centers in choice resort areas. On these spreads, hardship means going without a six-channel cable TV set or a phone hookup--both of which are likely to be available for a small fee. Such basics as running water, electricity and sewage lines are taken for granted; athletic facilities and organized social activities are common. Says Maxine Bessemer, who owns a motor home and lot on Florida's Nettles Island, the largest commercial campground in the country: "I don't know what you'd call this, but it isn't camping."

Mobile Retirement. What it is depends on who you are and what you want. For older people, trailers and deluxe campsites provide a peripatetic retirement in which vistas can be changed by a few days' drive to another campground. For younger families on holiday, the camps offer constant amusement for both parents and children without the high cost of restaurant eating and hotel rooms. To many couples like the Bessemers, who travel only ten miles from their home in Jensen Beach with their two children, the resorts are a togetherness exercise. "I like to have the kids where I don't have to worry about them," says Mrs. Bessemer.

Nettles Island is one of five camps run by Outdoor Resorts of America. With its neatly manicured drives, Nettles looks like a modern suburban development, except that the houses all have wheels. The parking sites are concrete rectangles, each with a short driveway, gate lamp, concrete table, benches and small lawn. From the trailers, plastic tubes stretch like umbilical cords into the underground sewage facilities.

Space at Nettles Island can be rented for $7.50 a day (the cable TV hook-up is 50-c- extra); the fee includes use of the tennis courts, saunas and gym. The 30-ft.-by-60-ft. lots can be bought, condominium style, for $7,000 ($14,000 for waterfront lots). Owners are assured of use of their plot when they want it and can divide rental income with the management at other times.

Life at the island is communal patio style. The children ride bicycles, Dad mans the barbecue, and everybody uses the marinas, miniature golf course, driving range and two swimming pools (four more are being built). Vacationers can take swimming lessons in the morning, play volleyball, basketball, bingo or bridge in the afternoon, and take in an outdoor family movie at night.

Tenters are forbidden from renting space, as are owners of superdeluxe mobile homes. "Large mobile homes--the ones that aren't really mobile--aren't permitted here," says Joe Agen, Nettles Island general manager. "We don't want clotheslines strung from trees, or anything like that."

Major Rival. Campers are further insulated by a 24-hour security force, and a shopping center now under construction will make island residents almost completely self-sufficient. Sheraton Hotel leases part of the land, providing campers with a cocktail lounge, restaurant and space for weekend visitors.

Like Nettles Island, most luxury camps are situated in well-traveled areas. Outdoor Resorts' 980-site camp near Orlando is within an hour's drive of Walt Disney World, Cape Kennedy and the Cypress Gardens at Winter Haven. In Gatlinburg, Tenn., both Outdoor Resorts and its major rival, Venture Out in America, Inc., run campsites across from the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the most popular national park in the U.S.

Venture Out now operates five campgrounds in Arizona, Florida and Tennessee. Gatlinburg offers an attractive combination of luxury and all the beauty of a natural setting. The views of the Smokies are spectacular, and campers are never far from clear mountain streams. Visitors can go hiking through the hills, horseback riding and fishing. There are also motorcycle and dune-buggy trails, the usual selection of Ping Pong and parlor games. Those who tire of sleeping indoors can take their sleeping bags to the woods.

"People in this country are starving for something to do," says John Fogarty Jr., a Knoxville, Tenn., jewelry-store owner who camps with three of his children in a 25-ft. motor home on one of the Gatlinburg complexes. "Here we can do anything we want to. Play tennis, ride trails, play shuffleboard, swim, or just loaf around. The kids meet lots of other young people, both the people who are staying here and those who just come for a short time. You meet and make friends. It's the best recreation in the world." It can also be a long-term investment. "I want to retire up here," says Larry Mattei, an oil engineer from Houma, La., who has bought a plot. "And if I don't keep it, I can always sell it, probably at a profit."

Far from the mountain air of Tennessee is Camperland, a 200-site concrete parking pad built by the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. Overnight fees are only $4--a lure that supplies the Stardust with patrons for its casino, restaurants and nightclubs. Since Jan. 1, some 70,000 camper-customers have been boosting the hotel's business. The parking lot itself contains a small swimming pool, bathhouse and laundry room, where women campers who have just been coiffed at the Stardust beauty salon compare notes on the evening's entertainment along the Strip.

Come nightfall, Bermuda shorts are sometimes exchanged for evening gown and tux for a trip to the casinos. To encourage a steady stream of new faces--and new money--there is a three-day parking limit on the Stardust grounds. Few campers stay that long; there is always someplace else to go. For some, keeping on the move is what it is all about. Foster Root, a retired salesman, sold his house in New Jersey and took to the road with his wife. "We're camping 52 weeks a year," he says, "until we decide where to live."

The entertainment is more homey and the style more spacious in Butterfield Country, an 8,000-acre resort area 51 miles northeast of San Diego. Throughout the mesas of the Palomar Mountains are sprinkled Butterfield's 475 campsites. A $5 rental fee gets a standard site with water and electricity. For oak trees and a sewage hookup, the fee runs $2 more. The park attempts to re-create the spirit of the Butterfield stagecoach days with hay rides, an old-fashioned swimming hole, community cookouts and country-music shows. The focal point is an old Wild West village; on Sunday, church services are held in the Jemu saloon, with the obligatory nude paintings over the bar turned toward the wall.

Most of the Butterfield campers come from the Los Angeles and San Diego areas; some, like the Robert Templetons and Dan Kivettes of nearby Yucaipa, arrive as two-family groups. While the husbands are off deep-sea fishing in the Pacific 25 miles away, the children can be riding on a bike trail and the wives taking a stroll in the woods. "We keep the camper stocked so we can take off on 30 minutes' notice," says Donna Templeton.

The knowledge that it is easy to move on quickly seems a large part of camping's allure, but the mood is ambivalent. Some campers put up little name plates or other signs as a kind of personal brand on their sites. They want to get away from home, but they trundle so much paraphernalia, from kitchen appliances to bicycles, that life on the road is not really too different. They want the atmosphere of camping out with the comforts of living in--plus fancy distractions as a bonus. It is a peculiarly American yen, and, in the American manner, it is being satisfied.

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