Touring with Raymond Spears 
A Cross Country Tour Should Be a Source of 
apt to regard an automobile trip 
as a mere expenditure of money, 
time and energy for pleasure, without 
return, except in memories and plea- 
sures received. My observation is, 
however, that lurking in the _ back- 
ground of every touring party’s mind 
is a notion to seek business of some 
sort, look over some land of dreams 
with the idea of making a change, or 
even the definite intention of entering 
another region for sake of opportuni- 
ties, health, business or work. 
Of countless wanderers with whom 
I have come in contact, I 
recall few who did not 
have a valid reason for 
I 108 tourists of experience are 
being on the road. Con- 
sider, for example, five 
school teachers, three 
from my own town, who 
drove to the Pacific coast 
from central New York 
and return. To the dull- 
est of tourists a transcon- 
tinental journey changes 
the whole subject of 
geography; consider what 
such a journey would 
mean to a teacher—to five 
teachers of geography! 
Farmers are among the 
most astute tourists. They 
travel up and down the 
country between planting 
and harvest, and after 
gathering the crops. Their 
field-trained eyes witness- 
ing the conditions and 
methods of places remote from their 
own homes, gather knacks, short-cuts 
and ideas that immediately add to their 
own efficiency as growers. 
NE could not grant that the aver- 
‘age tourist, even in the summer 
vacation rush, is without definite plan 
or intention. The fact of the matter 
is, the automobile is so expensive that 
if the machine didn’t pay for itself we 
couldn’t tour in it. I question very 
much the statement sometimes made 
that automobile touring isn’t, as a 
whole, directly financially profitable. 
A friend of mine tours in his automo- 
bile every summer, if he doesn’t go to 
Europe. He is a jeweler; he goes to 
Newark, New Jersey; Providence, 
Rhode Island; visits the steel-produc- 
ing regions, looks over the coal coun- 
try, and returns with a first-hand, 
Profit as Well as Pleasure 
record of industrial conditions from 
the Potomac to the Maumee, and the 
Great Lakes to the Atlantic. His 
Christmas trade, his purchases of in- 
vestment stocks, and all his financial 
affairs are colored by a month of ram- 
bling up and down the highways. He 
could not possibly separate the “plea- 
sure” from the “business.” 
The summer months of commercial 
travelers are now long automobile 
tours, leaps from town to town, camp- 
ing delights in the tourists’ parks, 
joined by family and accompanied by 
friends. The Sunday lay-over is an 
N27 

Colorado National Park <~ \ 7 
Photo by U.S. Forest Service 
occasion for picnicing with the folks 
beside lake or stream, compared with 
the old Sundays in gloomy hotels. 
If one intends to make a consider- 
able automobile tour, the thought of 
possible business or professional op- 
portunity might well be considered. 
The traveler who just wanders from 
impression to impression, with no real 
basis for his journeying, will find it 
inexpressibly wearying after a month 
or two. 
HAVE talked to tourists making 
the transcontinental who found the 
trip one of boredom. They could see 
nothing in the desert. The mountains 
presented no delightful spectacle for 
their eyes. They were tormented by 
alkali and bothered by snakes, utterly 
uninterested in the historical signifi- 
eance of the Old Pony Express and 
California Stage routes “which they 
were following. 
HESE travelers had started with 
the highest hopes. They expected 
to find paved highways from coast to 
coast; they did not know how hot the 
deserts are, nor even that they must 
cross deserts to tour the continent; they 
were generally city people, who, if 
they saw motion pictures of desert 
stories, did not grasp the fact that the 
scenes «vere of desolation in their own 
land. ° nprepared for the difficulties, 
discomforts, and regarding the most 
glorious country scenery 
on earth as “monoto- 
nous,” they were disap- 
pointed. 
The least disappoined 
people are those who seek 
definite ideas, data, busi- 
ness or opportunity. The 
most satisfied tourists are 
invariably those who find 
that their pleasure trip 
resolves itself into a busi- 
ness expedition. The 
spring and autumn 
months, and early summer 
period, before the schools 
close, find the tourists 
practically all engaged on 
the highway in some busi- 
ness. 
In May and June hun- 
dreds of young couples 
go forth on a honeymoon 
in an automobile. They 
appear in all the camp 
grounds. They may have a home pre- 
pared for their return. The thing most 
remote from their thought may be the 
responsibilities, life’s work, ahead of 
them. But I noticed that one young 
couple who spent a year on the road, 
out of New. England, returned with 
deeds for California land in their 
pocket. Imagine a New Englander buy- 
ing land 3,300 miles from his home! 
HE automobile has started countless 
business men into branching out. 
Touring the country, they come to a 
town without any adequate representa- 
tive in their own commercial lines. Here 
is a town without a clothing store, or 
an up-to-date grocery, or meat market, 
or stationery store, or drug store. The 
tourist cannot fail to observe the lack. 
His oldest boy, perhaps, needs an op- 
portunity to become independent—and 
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