Tourists
TOURISTS
by Raymond S. Spears
THOUSANDS, literally millions, of people are making automobile tours of varied distances. The instinctive urge to migrate has found its ready answer in flivver or twelve-cylinder limousine. Any highway leads to all the roadways in the country. One can roll out of his own yard, along his own alley, and strike the transcontinental, or ocean to ocean trail—and the land of the Nation lies before him.
Never was adventure so completely at the command of average humanity. The home-bodies, who twenty years ago regarded a fifty, even a twenty-mile journey with dread, now roll away forty miles after supper to visit some sister, brother or friend. Actually, it is easier to drive an automobile five hundred miles than it used to be to drive a horse seventy-five miles.
Some regions are and always must be an adventure to visit; the Rockies, the deserts, the Sierras, for example, offer some highway approaches. But for all time precipices must be skirted, thirst con fronted, and the possibility of cloudburst or accident figured into one’s calculations on that stretch of twelve hundred or so miles, from eastern Rockies to western Sierras.
No less interesting are the Cumberlands, the Appalachian system that reaches from Katahdin to the picturesque bluffs that mark the Great Bend of the Tennessee. Fine roads lead one to the forested mountains, but the ridges and the valleys are forever the answer of the human longing to climb, and no matter how well the main trails are built, side roads are sure to lead into difficulty and make demand on the tourist’s ingenuity and resourcefulness.
The marvel is that so few of the automobile travelers—men, women, and children—do meet genuine, hard-to-bear troubles. Lacking money, husky manhood rustles a job; a mother takes care of an ailing child; and a break-down or stall in desert waste or bottom-land flood but seems to add to the joy of one’s lists of memories.
The water-tank on the running board is sure sign of the tourist’s experience and preparedness. With good water, almost any kind of grub, and makeshift outfit—well, five million wanderers are answering the road call.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1950, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 73 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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