Eco-travelers' vacation plans bypass the pump

September 10, 2008|Michelle Higgins, New York Times News Service

When Robert Huether and his fiancee, Heather Wierowski, go on vacation, they typically take a plane or a car to get away from it all. But spikes in gas prices, which reached beyond $4 a gallon this summer, spurred them to try a new kind of trip this year. Over the last weekend in July, they set out from their home in Buffalo, N.Y., on their bikes for a four-day trip, following the Erie Canal to Albany, with the goal of using only pedal power the entire 346-miles.

"Heather and I are active and love to bike," said Huether, a graduate student at the State University of New York at Buffalo, "so we combined traveling and biking as a way to save on the cost of gas."

Eco-travelers have long embraced low-impact travel, biking from campsite to campsite or taking cross-country jaunts on buses powered by veggie-oil to make a point. But the high cost of fuel is inspiring even more mainstream travelers to embrace the gasless vacation this year.

"We just queried our e-newsletter list - over 30,000 people - and got a landslide of stories" from cyclists taking gas-free trips this summer, said Winona Sorensen, media director for the Adventure Cycling Association, in Missoula, Mont. Inquiries about bike trips were up 7 percent from last October to July, she added, while the group added 6,496 members, a nearly 15 percent gain over the previous year.

Recognizing an opportunity, the association has been marketing cycling as the ultimate gas-free trip. "When you travel by bicycle, all you need - oil-wise - are a few drops (chain lube, anyone?), not many gallons," stated its website, www.adventurecycling.org, earlier this month. "As far as we're concerned, less expensive, gas-free vacations rule."

Gas-free travel poses some obvious vacation limits. To cover any significant distance by bike, on foot, by kayak, or even on horseback you'll need a lot of energy and a lot of time off.

Marvin and Nancy Webster from Bloomfield, Mo., are both retired, so they didn't have to worry about missing work when they decided to take a mule-drawn wagon to visit their two sons in Richland Center, Wis., earlier this year. The couple, both 65, set out on April 29, using a homemade wagon, pulled by three mules. The trip, which typically takes about 11 hours by car, took them 26 days by mule, traveling roughly 30 miles each day, they said.

Lacking the time that the Websters had, most fuel-conscious travelers compromise by taking short gas-free trips, not far from where they live, or by using public transit, or car-pooling with friends to cut fuel bills.