THE TROUBLE WITH GUIDEBOOKS:
Why You Should Just Throw Some Away
Are guidebooks more bulk than you want to carry, more words than you want to or will read, more trouble than they're worth?
We brought a pile of guides and histories for this trip, covering various aspects of the regions we expected to cross and recross. We're steadily accumulating even more of them, mostly free literature from governmental tour bureaus. Some even have great value, when we bother to read them. Sometimes we're in too much of a hurry to dig them out and read. Hmmm.
Sometimes we divert through an area much earlier than anticipated, and its guides remain packed away in a far corner of storage. On this trip, we'd planned to drive home-Reno-Spokane-Banff, then north, then maybe hit the Northern Rockies (US) on our return. Instead, we drove home-Reno-Winnemucca-Glacier, then spun through Glacier National Park (US) with ROADSIDE GEOLOGY OF THE NORTHERN ROCKIES and some Glacier material buried in the box.
Some guides, we only get around to after we've already passed by. Sometimes the names and descriptions mean nothing until after we've already been there. I spent a few hours traversing Glacier National Park (US) and a few days reading the EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER WANTED TO KNOW book and other Glacier material. OK, if/when we get back there, we'll be ready. If we know we'll be somewhere, we'll study up on it, pour over the maps, get familiar. But since Glacier was to be near the end of the trip, not the start, we just weren't prepped; and the labels would still have meant little until we'd seen what they're attached to.
Sometimes the guides tell us what to see, and that's what we see, no more. SKIP EVERYTHING WITH LESS THAN THREE STARS, RIGHT? It's much better if we have the time to hang around somewhere and poke around its undocumented corners. Our trips to Kauai (Hawaii) and Amalfi (Italy) were thus perfect. Go beyond the guide. Be your own guide.
Sometimes we're just in too much of a hurry, trying to outrun weather or fatigue or low fuel or commute traffic or bodily functions. Too hurried to stop and smell the sweetgrass, too hurried to read about what we're speeding past. Life is always a learning experience, but some things we only learn after-the-fact.
Then there are the guides that are just plain WRONG (for whatever reason) but only intermittantly. Thus, the official Alberta campground guide, which often has the price wrong by a couple bucks, but sometimes slips a decimal place or drops a digit. Or the most recent commercial guide that warns against a long scenic section of unpaved road, that has since been beautifully paved. Darn, we missed that one.
And of course many guidebooks are PR puff-pieces pushing specific commercial entities: stores, resorts, eateries. Maybe you NEED certain advertising. But a lot of it just ends up as landfill.
Still, without the guides, who knows where we'd be? If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up somewhere else. Our appetites wouldn't be whetted (or dulled) for certain adventures, and we might as well go jump in the Pacific Ocean and float away. Hey, good idea! Let's do that on the next trip!
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