The Ambassador & the RV

We undo the hookup as fast as possible and head for freedom: Route 28, which will take us across the Adirondacks on our way up to Ontario. The farther away from the campground we get, the better we feel. The road along the eight Fulton Chain Lakes showcases the Adirondacks at their best: pine trees on both sides, water sparkling through the woods, fishing boats hiding among the reeds. There are signs to the "white otter game fishing camp" or to a Boy Scout camp. We decide to pull in at a little hidden campsite on the last of these lakes. It is described as "primitive camping," meaning no hookups. This turns out to be the real thing: few RVs, many tents. It's your typical father-son-fishing-bonding situation.

Our site is only a few feet from the lake, and trees are the only neighbors. Wolfgang and Rocky embark on a canoe trip in the last beams of sunlight as the birds hum their evening chorales. It's time for a sundowner, I decide. Baby Josie gets a bottle of milk, and I a glass of chilled Sancerre.

Next morning we head northwest. Wheat fields, black-and-white Holstein cattle, green hills and silos: This northern tip of New York state feels like farmland back home in Europe. In the village of Copenhagen, we stop to take a photo for my Danish sister-in-law. Soon we pass Watertown and cross the bridge over the St. Lawrence River to Canada.

Eleven hours after we set out from Lake George, after a long drive through thunderstorms on Canadian Route 62, we reach Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve in Ontario.

Peter Schleifenbaum, with whom I played ring-around-the-rosie in a German kindergarten many years ago, is a professor of forestry and rules over 60,000 acres of land, including more than 50 lakes. He offers every activity wilderness fans dream of: survival training, canopy tours, a wolf center, sled dogs in winter, hunting, mountain biking and more. Visitors can stay in the base camp or cabins along some of the lakes.

But we are lucky: Peter sets us up in his father's old log cabin with a big stone fireplace. After several nights in the vehicle, it feels good to breathe the scent of cedar wood instead of the plastic from the RV. A few feet down from the deck lies the lake. No Internet, no phone, no cell phones, no TV. Instead: bears, raccoons, lumberjacks. We get up at 9, brew strong coffee, take the baby and the dog for a swim, eat, sunbathe, explore the lake with the canoe. It's Scandinavia with an Italian climate.

The downside: Whenever we want to go somewhere -- watch the wolves feeding, buy sunscreen or T-shirts at the base camp, have dinner at Peter's beautiful log home -- we have to travel in the RV, which somewhat disturbs the feeling of being out in the wild.

One attempt to do without is not exactly successful. When we walk over to Peter's one evening, he drives by in his Jeep and drags us in. "Didn't I tell you just yesterday not to walk too far because of the bears?" So much for that.

We stay as long as we can. But then withdrawal symptoms in my ambassador husband cannot be ignored any longer, and our trips to the base camp (which has a good phone connection to the embassy) become more frequent. Finally we move on, heading southeast across New York state, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, then back to Massachusetts and the RV's home town. Still several hundred miles to go.

At Cornwall, we cross the St. Lawrence River back to the United States. Nobody checks the vehicle to see if we are hiding any terrorists.

It is raining, and the border region of New York seems deprived: decayed houses, sheds without roofs, abandoned stores. Vermont looks much greener. Our campground in South Hero lies on an island in the middle of Lake Champlain. When we check in, it is still raining and we have to eat in the RV. While a teething Josie cries incessantly, Wolfgang cooks spaghetti and garnishes it with Newman's Own pasta sauce. We eat under the neon light from the car ceiling. At 10, the electricity is shut off and we climb five feet up to our mattress, which is over the driver's seat. Josie occupies the queen-size bed in the back of the vehicle, the only place where her travel crib fits without blocking the bathroom door. Our "bedroom," in contrast, is blocked by nothing; only a thin curtain hangs between us and the void of the vast RV.

We survive another night and take Interstate 89 south. After a stop near Montpelier, Vt., we head for Maine on Route 2.

Everything on Route 2 is about cars: car dealers, new cars, used cars, auto body shops, repair places, wrecked cars under sun umbrellas, garages, scrap merchants. It all seems to symbolize a mobile, throwaway society.

In Germany, people seem to be less ready to give up old things. Here you start something, give it up and go somewhere else. Buy, sell, tear down the old, build up the new. Are we in Europe too attached to the past? Wolfgang and I discuss these issues for 200 miles while the baby sleeps. Driving is good for talking. No escape. Or as the diplomats say: In together, out together.

We reach Maine's Atlantic coast and Mount Desert Island, my favorite stop of the trip. It's like the Norwegian fiords and England's Cornwall all in one. We stay in a beautiful, big old house on the ocean that belongs to a dear friend. Neighbors come by in their boats. Lobsters all day long. We have a great time. The success of such a trip clearly depends on one essential: to be equipped with a long list of friends. "You can park in our back yard," they would say, not knowing what they were getting themselves into. Because in the end, only the RV would stay in the back yard.

One campground and one visit to a friend's home later, after almost three weeks on the road, we return the RV, retrieve our car and take the ferry to Martha's Vineyard. We've rented a house there, and at dinner parties we share our vacation stories with British aristocrats, football team owners, Washington power brokers and writers who live on the island year-round. They all stare at us in disbelief.

"You did what?" one gentleman bursts out. "All alone, no help, with the baby? Thank God you did not bring the vehicle on the island!"

Yes, it is true, I do not lie sleepless in my Vineyard bed longing for the motor home or the campgrounds. But I wouldn't have missed our road trip. Let's face it: Between professional socializing, embassy functions and fundraisers, how else could we have ever felt so cut loose, so independent and so mobile -- so American?

Jutta Falke-Ischinger worked in Berlin as a political journalist before coming to Washington as the wife of the German ambassador.