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by Ryan Vagabundo
If you travel for long stretches at a time, summer is the absolute worst. Unfortunately, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, it's right around the corner.
It's ironic that so many people look forward to summer all year for vacations and travel. In fact, that's a big part of why summer sucks so hard.
Of course, it's fantastic if you're wealthy and can do whatever you want whenever you want. Then again, that's true of pretty much any situation in life.
For the rest of us who are traveling on some manner of a budget, summer means:
God-awful heat everywhere that makes you sweat through your clothes when walking and carrying stuff for even a moderate distance
Ever-present threat of sunburn and skin cancer if you don't goop sunscreen all over your exposed skin
School is out, everyone is traveling, vacation destinations are crowded and prices are through the roof at any place that is "desirable"
Bugs are wilin' out
AC not working becomes a serious crisis you have to deal with immediately
If you do remote work on your computer, a bunch of industries ramp down for the summer months
It just sucks. I hate summer. It's all sweaty cracks and spending stacks. I can never wait for it to be over.
Gotta get through somehow, though. That's what today's guide is about.
Location, Location, Location
If you're in the United States, the blue zone is the place to be. Or clear up into Canada. Get far enough north and you get to places where 80 degrees is the summer high. Of course, everyone else has the same idea, so any touristy areas are probably gonna be slammed and more expensive.
What if you're stuck in the heat? At least try to get into the right heat. I've done summers in both, and dry heat is 1000x more preferable to me than moist humid heat. Especially if you're already prone to sweating. You also get the benefit of having to deal with far fewer surprise drenching thunderstorms while you're moving about. It is awful in direct sunlight, but if you're in shade or inside away from a windowed area it's really not bad.
Image courtesy of Hand-N-Hand Designs
In general, the desert southwest is very affordable during summer. Particularly the places that center on tourism to national parks, 'cause no one in their right mind is doing their park vacation when it's 100 degrees Fahrenheit or higher pretty much every single day. Casino destinations, especially Las Vegas, still get packed with Californicators and people going straight from air-conditioned airplane to air-conditioned hotel on the weekends. However, they're ghost towns and usually have great deals Sunday to Thursday.
Clothes
So ... clothes. Wear as little as possible, right? Well, some of us aren't exactly exhibitionists. Also, clothing cover can replace goopy sunscreen and sometimes the trade-off is worth it.
Take your cues from the Bedouins. No, don't attack a Turk in the rear (unless you're into that, then God bless). I mean, light and billowy clothes that protect from the sun yet also allow air under them so that sweat can evaporate. Desert nomads existed for centuries without sunscreen so clearly they know what they're doing. And it turns out sunscreen can actually make you feel hotter since it can block sweat evaporation.
Conventional wisdom is also that you shouldn't wear black in summer as it absorbs heat. That is true, but only to an extent. Counter-intuitively, a thick black fabric is best for both sun protection and keeping cool. The key is that it's thick enough so that heat collects on the outside but doesn't transfer through to your skin ... also, some point for air to enter to evaporate sweat and cool your skin. That's why Bedouins wore those billowing black robes.
That's not practical for modern settings, but think of something like a long pair of thick shorts that goes below the knee. Covers most of your legs, but also allows plenty of air flow at the bottom. I'm also partial to loose, large raglan T-shirts that have sleeves that go below the elbow.
Travel
Expect buses and trains to be more crowded than usual, even in low-tourism areas. I chalk that up to school being out of session for the most part, I've noticed a precipitous drop-off in riders as soon as semesters start up again everywhere I've been. No way around this but to book tickets as early as possible online (which almost always gets you the best possible price anyway).
Summer also has the worst holidays in terms of vacation travel in the United States:
Memorial Day (final Monday of May, weekend ahead of it is busy)
July 4 (not as bad as Memorial / Labor but a surprising amount of people travel for this)
Labor Day (first Monday of September, big last hurrah for summer vacationers)
Also be aware of sports events in certain locations. Like, the World Series of Poker bombs out Vegas in June and for the first couple of weeks the weekdays there can be more expensive than usual (until all the wannabes get eliminated and have to shuffle off home). Two major sports (NHL and NBA) have their championship series stretch into June as well.
Sleep on the Beach
Ah, the temptation of the beach sleep. At least in America, this is virtually the only public place left where it is legal to just lay out for hours if you care to. Have a sleep, no one cares, the CorpoGoons won't come around and hassle you.
That isn't to say it's without its challenges. Sun exposure for hours, for one. Privacy, for another. And wind blowing sand all up into and over everything.
Voila! The pop-up beach tent. I have one of these and I love it. It folds down to a pretty small size and is light to carry. You set it up simply by pulling to pop up the center, then secure it with a couple of guy lines (bring a couple of small pouches to fill with sand and make a deadman's anchor to secure it). The good ones have a vented top like a good umbrella, so if the wind comes up it doesn't rip the shelter or try to carry it away.
Just one thing - check the beach regulations where you're planning on going to make sure they don't forbid any kind of covered shelters or anything that requires stakes to hold up. That's the only legal problem you could run into with daysleeping on a beach.
Sunscreen
For the longest, I thought higher SPF = more sun protection. Turns out that's a common misconception. Any sunscreen worth its salt, even the lower SPFs, should block at least 97% of the dangerous UV-A and UV-B rays. SPF is more a measure of how long it lasts before having to be re-applied.
It varies based on your skin's natural resistance to sun and the quality of the product, but generally expect every 10 points in the SPF rating to give you at least an hour of protection. So SPF 50 should be good for at least five hours. A good antioxidant cream before applying sunscreen is also a good idea as skin damage is caused by free radicals.
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