
Photo courtesy U. S. Forest Service 
Bath houses at Medicine Hot Springs, Bitterroot National Forest. 
USED to feel that going camping 
meant abandoning all the normal 
conditions of living. On my first 
trip alone into the woods I carried 
bread, salt, and a blanket. Sometimes 
I punished myself with hardships, 
merely for the joy of it. I would go 
back to primitive conditions, and even 
now I cannot quite reconcile myself, as 
a matter of conscience, to the countless 
things that add to the comfort, con- 
venience, or elaborateness of a trip into 
the woods; for example, folding chairs 
and a folding table as part of a camp- 
ing outfit for touring. ~ 
The automobile is a marvelous thing. 
Containing a score, or thirty-six, or 
fifty or seventy horsepower, the driver 
controls the machine with a pressure 
of his foot on the accelerator, or a 
twist of his little finger. It carries a 
greater weight than the old prairie 
schooner wagon over the same prairie 
trails, and it traverses miles in an hour 
that in “hose old days took a team a 
day to ‘cavel. Where we see now the 
bones of horses and cattle that died of 
thirst trying to cross a vast arid land, 
the automobile goes over in three or 
four hours run. But there is on some 
of those old trails, jeopardy that a 
broken axle may bring down upon the 
heads of complaisant tourists, thirst 
first and then hunger, and the dread 
pr:vation of a two or three days’ tramp 
to the nearest ranch. 
Food for immediate consumption is 
a matter of day-to-day purchase in the 
stores of the cities and villages along 
the trails. One may well purchase 
cookies, bread, meat, and the rest at 
ranches where there are no towns. But 
there should be in reserve a number.of 
days rations, either as raw material 
for stews, gravies, soups, potpies, flap- 
jacks, and all the other “cooked meal” 
668 
stock ingredients, or as emergency 
lunches, which include canned sardines, 
tuna, salmon, dried beef, peanut but- 
ter, crackers, etc. Ham, bacon, Irish 
and sweet potatoes, carrots, and other 
vegetables may be mentioned. Also, 
such easily obtained and _ prepared 
canned goods as corn, peas, tomatoes, 
peaches, pears, etc., are worth consid- 
ering. Indeed, all the food that one 
is accustomed to eat at home may well 
be listed, and when the cook grows 
skilled, the open fire with a sheet iron 
hood oven will supply all the list 
worth having. We roasted beef, broiled 
steaks, made milk gravy, warmed up 
canned stuffs, cooked hash, oyster 
stews, and the rest in camp. Biscuits 
—hot bread—are within reach. 
Conditions make the food vary from 
region to region, however. From the 
maple syrup in pickle bottles beside the 
roads in New England to the drip of 
ribbon cane molasses in Louisiana, one 
finds “sweetening” according to one’s 
delight. Honey, sorgum, fruit butters, 
have their native homes where the pass- 
ing tourists may patronize the local 
industries. 
IR map of the country is worth 
studying, just to learn where to 
buy the country’s products at their 
savory best. We stopped, here and 
there, and bought watermelons off the 
vine. We found genuine home-cooking 
in the lunch booths beside the road. 
And we paid exactly the same price for 
oranges in California that we paid in 
New York state, so delightfully have 
the orange eaters been treated alike. 
But we learned, after a time, to find 
“spots” and “seconds” and “ripes” at 
ten or twenty cents a dozen, instead 
of eighty cents, as fixed. 
. Eggs are bought by the big cold stor- 
Food Supply 
for the 
Auto Camper 
Getting One’s Larder 
Along the Way Offers 
Great Possibilities for 
Variety 
By RAYMOND S. SPEARS 
age speculators in the remotest corners 
of the country. The day when the tra- 
veler bought eggs for ten cents a dozen 
at the farm house has gone by. Chick- 
ens vary in price, however, from fifty 
cents each to thirty cents or more a 
pound. 
EESE are scorned as food in some 
sections, and in others are priced 
above anything else. The tame turkey 
crop can be tried in the home country 
of turkeys for from thirty-five cents a 
pound, up to the conventional seventy 
or eighty cents a pound, in holiday 
season. 
There are regions where great flocks 
of sheep insure the best of lamb and 
mutton in the local butcher shops. 
Trust an old cattle man to demand that 
the local butcher have good beef, or 
that fine delicacy, meat from an ani- 
mal too old to be a veal, too young to 
be beef. 
Keeping tabs on the country, one lo- 
cates sausage at twenty cents a pound, 
which is real sausage, and it is feasi- 
ble to find mast fed (acorns and such) 
“meat to remind one of the days before 
hogs were pen-fattened, and leef stall 
fed. The tourist may go into the lands 
where good eating is to be had, and en- 
joy the old-time flavors, with modern 
cleanliness and delicacy. 
One expects too much, some time. 
Approaching the Pacific ocean, we an- 
ticipated oysters. Our mouths watered 
for them. We had visions of delicious 
milk stews, bakes, fries, and the rest. 
Well, we rolled dowr. into a seashore 
town, and at a “sea food” emporium, 
found that oysters were seventy-five 
cents a dozen—the best Louisiana oys- 
ters at that! And then, when we had in 
mind fish, those we ate had a most de- 
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