Tourism thrives on misery. The concept of profiting from pleasure-seeking travelers only emerged a couple of centuries ago, just as the Industrial Revolution began seducing Western populations from bucolic agricultural communities to crowded, dirty cities and monotonous labor. OSHA may have made working conditions a little less unbearable, but overcrowding has only worsened, and a deep-seated misery of the spirit persists.

A trip to Dover illustrates as much: Saturday traffic is all racing hell-bound northward, passing recklessly at every opportunity, and Sunday sees 75 miles of frustrated suburban refugees crawling homeward, separated by a car's length. What, besides misery, would make a weekend in North Conway or an Ossipee campground seem desirable enough to justify wasting all that fossil fuel and human energy?

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