More than a half century ago,
American writer John Steinbeck (if you were awake in high school, you may remember
The Grapes of Wrath) took off on a road trip with Charley, his
middle-aged French poodle. A bit past middle age himself, age 58, Steinbeck
said he wanted to recapture America.
In Travels With Charley you can read about his trip, the people he
met, and the three-quarter-ton truck on which Steinbeck built a house-like cabin,
much like you would find on a small boat. He named his truck Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse. The
idea was to stay in campgrounds. There were no big box stores in 1960, much
less Walmart parking lots where so many of today’s RVs adventurers find a place
to spend the night.
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| Photo courtesy National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, Calif. |
It wasn’t long after Steinbeck’s trip that my husband and I took our
first cross-country road trips. My husband and his college friends rambled
between Portland, Ore.’s Reed College and New York City in his Rambler
American. As for me, in 1962, our family moved from southern Virginia to southern
California in our Dodge Coronet. I
wasn’t yet a California girl, but I knew enough to be mortified of our family
car's pink and white color scheme.
They don’t make ’em like that any more. And, road trips, whether with
poodles, friends or family, are far different than when Steinbeck and Charley
criss-crossed the nation.
What’s different?
For one, the 47,000-mile
Eisenhower Interstate Highway System is completed. Authorized just a few years before
Steinbeck and Charley left Long Island, Steinbeck likely navigated Rocinante on blue highways and state
roads, which gave him a closer view of people and places.
Two, motor vehicle travel is much
safer now, by a factor of five. (Full disclosure: My pre-retirement job was writing for the
National Transportation Safety Board.) Today, the fatality rate on U.S.
highways is about 1.1 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled compared with 5.1
when Steinbeck and Charley were traveling.
Motor vehicles remain the
riskiest form of interstate travel, but today’s cars and highways are better designed
and built and include seat belts, air bags, anti-lock brakes, and many other
safety advances. Today’s drivers…well, that’s another story.
Three, there are now many
more places where Charley could rest his head instead of getting his
middle-aged bones up to Rocinante’s
cabin.
Today, there are thousands of
hotels, motels, lodges, inns, B & Bs and more that are pet friendly. There
are also a growing number of restaurants and retail establishments that
recognize that welcoming Fido is good business. Americans spend up to $60 billion annually on their pets.
I’m paying close attention to
these trends as we plan our cross-country trip with Piper, our middle-aged (I’m
being kind; she’s 12) Chesapeake Bay Retriever. Just tap a few keys and you’ll
find great resources for pet-friendly travel, including:
When you’re looking for a
place to hang your heads, as well as your pet’s, it’s important to read the small
print. Pet friendly doesn’t mean all pets
or all shapes and sizes. At the vet last week Piper weighed in at 63.8, which
makes her, say, 63.5 lbs. without her collar. That is still way over the 20-lb.
maximum some hotel chains stipulate. There’s also a range of non-refundable fees,
ranging from about $25 to $75. And, you need to travel with papers – I’m not
talking toilet training or AKC – but a record of current vaccinations.
There are great resources
available from pet bloggers. I’ve found several; these two offer great tips on
traveling with pets (somewhere in the middle of southwest Texas Piper will be
glad I read these):
As I research the options on
our proposed route, I’m encouraged by IHG’s Candlewood Suites, both its locations
and its pet policy.
Piper doesn’t need to slim down to
meet Candlewood’s 80-lb. maximum.
Fifty years after Steinbeck’s
trip, journalist Bill Steigerwald retraced Steinbeck’s trip to match
people and places with what Steinbeck chronicled in his book. Steigerwald’s fact checking found that Steinbeck stayed in motels a lot, sometimes at fancy hotels.
That’s okay, it’s still a
great book. But, what about Charley? He was along for the ride in a less
pet-friendly period.
Where did Charley sleep when
Steinbeck was at the Spalding Inn?
I don’t know about Charley,
but I do know about Piper.
Thanks to the increasingly
pet-friendly travel industry, Piper won’t be sleeping in the Subaru. She’ll be
on her own bed near us. Now, that’s progress.
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| Have bed, will travel. |
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