Seeing the United States Aboard a Bargain Bus

You’ll find in the glossy brochures that you can take a bus tour that will give you the United States, from east to west and back, for anywhere from $1,000 and up, plus spending money en route.

You’ll travel on modern coaches, sleep in air-conditioned hotels and motels and see the sights the tour operators choose for you. It’s a great holiday, no doubt. But if money is tighter, you can have a transcontinental holiday for a lot less.

You’ll still travel on modern coaches, sleep in air-conditioned accommodations and see the sights--the sights you, the traveler, choose for yourself. The cost, including spending money, will be about $750.

List of Experiences

I know because I did it. I:

--Stood where Gen. Custer fell at the Little Big Horn in Montana.

--Played the slots and blackjack in Las Vegas.

--Explored the flea markets of Juarez, Mexico.

--Drew a bead on Wyatt Earp (actually on his statue) in Tombstone’s OK Corral.

--Went looking for gold in the path of the Forty-Niners in the Sierra Nevada.

--Marveled at that monument to vulgarity, “Twitty City,” home of country singer Conway Twitty in Nashville, Tenn.

--Drank (cheap) beer in honky-tonks from Pocatello to Paducah, from Glendive to Globe. (Those are towns in, respectively, Idaho, Kentucky, Montana and Arizona.)

And I did much, much more. For an 18-day trip this worked out to about $40 a day, whereas for most holidays the accommodations alone, not counting fares and spending money, will be more than that.

Key to the Bargain

The key to this cut-price “see America” vacation is a little item called the Ameripass. It’s a batch of blank bus tickets that you can use to go anywhere in the United States and Canada served by Greyhound bus lines, unlimited travel within the time limit of the pass you buy.

The Ameripass sells at $189 for a seven-day pass, $249 for 15 days and $349 for 30 days.

I bought the 15-day pass; to each pass you can add days at $10 a day, so for my 18-day trip I paid a total of $279.

Then I rationed myself to $20 a day in spending money, $360. And I tucked $100 away for the odd little splurge, such as the rental of a little car in Reno to explore Gold Rush country and the Comstock Lode silver mines.

My total was $739.

I departed from, and returned to, Toronto, Canada, but the price is the same all over Greyhound’s routes.

When you’re traveling cheap like this, the bus becomes your overnight sleeping quarters. But the buses are air-conditioned and you quickly learn how to sleep with your head propped on your makeshift pillow (in my case a rolled-up raincoat) against the bus window.

You’ll get over (or learn to live with) the crick in the neck. But there are other adjustments to be made on a vacation like this.

Little Adjustments

Eating, for instance. It helps if you have a cast-iron stomach for, on $20 a day, there are no gourmet restaurants waiting to receive you. But you can live for a couple of weeks on cheeseburgers and burritos, and the country breakfasts you get (for about 3 bucks) in little towns such as Elko, Nev., and Dickinson, N.D., and Tomah, Wis., and Willcox, Ariz., can keep you going well into the afternoon.

Many’s the time, having spent my allowance on something trivial like the blackjack tables at the bus stops in North Dakota (blackjack is legal there), I had to settle for a cowboy’s supper. (That’s when the hungry Westerner gets off his horse, tightens his belt a notch or two, and remounts, his hunger sated.)

It’s a good thing to get in a bit of practice walking before you leave on a trip like this, for the cheapest way to explore any area is on foot.

(But exploring after nightfall is not advisable in most bigger American cities; that’s the time to closet yourself in the bus station to wait for the next coach out.)

Ask for the location of the local transit company when you arrive in a city. Thus, for 75 cents, I rode all the way (about seven miles) from downtown Oklahoma City to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame out on Persimmon Hill, near where the old Chisholm (cattle) Trail used to cross Oklahoma on its way to Abilene, Tex.

In Search of Stars

And for 85 cents I rode a Rapid Transit bus (it was anything but “rapid” but it got me there) from the Los Angeles Civic Center to beautiful downtown Beverly Hills, in search of the stars of the big and small screen. (I didn’t find them, but I saw where they live, shop and eat.)

Using the bus for overnight accommodation meant that every morning I arrived fresh (well, comparatively so) in a new city or town, ready to explore its wonders while daylight lasted. It was just a matter of throwing my battered bag (I traveled really light) into a Greyhound luggage locker and shaving in the washrooms. The world was my oyster.

What will it be today?

Perhaps a tour around the Alamo in San Antonio, where Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie died fighting for Texas independence, then a stroll along Paseo del Rio, the city’s beautiful, tree-lined river walk where Spanish guitars waft music in the air.

Or a trip across the Rio Grande from El Paso into Juarez, Mexico, where you can buy huge margaritas for $1 a shot and come back wearing a beautifully decorated velvet sombrero that you bought for $8.50.

Maybe a trip into the bowels of the earth far below Virginia City, Nev., where a guide will show you the inside story of the workings of a silver mine.

How to Sleep

And what about sleeping? There are a few things to learn, apart from trying to avoid that crick in your neck. First, it’s a good thing to be at the bus terminal early, find out what gate your bus will be leaving from and be first in line if you can. That way, when you climb aboard you get prime choice of seat.

I found it best to sit about halfway down the bus, in a window seat. It seemed to me that the ride isn’t as smooth at the back (which is where the smokers are forced to gather, anyway, and I’m a non-smoker), and the continual clatter of the washroom door opening and closing is hardly conducive to a good night’s sleep.

A window seat is imperative, for it’s difficult to sleep for long in an aisle seat. You keep falling into the aisle or onto the shoulder of the person next to you. But with a raincoat stuffed into the space between the seat and the window, you’re set for the night.

For entertainment I took a Sony Walkman cassette player with headphones and lots of tapes, and found the new talking books on cassette a terrific travel companion.

To save the cost of a second night’s motel room in Los Angeles, I caught the 7 p.m. bus to Las Vegas, arrived about 2 in the morning and played the slot machines till 3:30 a.m. when I caught the next bus back to L.A.

Two Nights in Motels

In my 18 days away I spent only two nights in motels, and the luxury of steeping in a hot tub for an hour is unbelievable. For the rest of the time you keep yourself clean as best you can. I showered in a newspaper office gym in Tucson, the friendly manager of a saloon in Virginia City let me use his bathroom, and without going into details let me say thanks to some of the best hotels in half a dozen cities for, unwittingly, letting me use their facilities.

I remember one afternoon in a hotel swimming pool in . . . but no, let’s not get into that.

My pilgrimage took me through 19 states, with stops in dozens of cities, towns and hamlets. I covered maybe 8,000 miles.

The fares, if I had bought tickets at each stop instead of presenting my Ameripass to be validated, would have been $939.63. I had my whole holiday for a lot less than that.

A few points worth noting if you want to take this kind of vacation:

Travel light, really light. I had just one bag, containing soap and towel, etc., a second pair of pants, some underwear and a few shirts, and another pair of (strong) shoes. With minimum luggage you can carry your bag onto the bus, saving time boarding and thus getting your choice of seat.

Raincoat Treasured

I found a wrinkle-proof raincoat invaluable. Besides being my overnight pillow I could button it up during the day and look respectable enough to be at home in the lobbies of the best hotels, a good place, now and then, for killing time and watching the passing parade, and perhaps getting free hospitality from the convention that happens to be in town that week. And the hotels have such clean washrooms. . . .

Carry plenty of quarters--for bus terminal luggage lockers, coin laundries and, if you happen to be outdoors after dark in the wrong city, for the panhandlers.

A mini-flashlight (the kind you can put on your key ring, for instance) is a must for checking maps and timetables and looking at tape labels to listen to on the bus.

Don’t plan too far ahead. One of the joys of a holiday like this is deciding to leave a city at, say, 11 p.m., then looking at the departures board to see where the overnight buses with the fewest stops are running, and choosing a new city at random for tomorrow.