ABSTRACT
When trying to come to terms with any aspect of North America a European has to allow for an immediate and powerful expansion of scale. So it is for the European geographer, who is presented with a continent, a unit economy and culture, so that he is ill-at-ease with many of his preconceptions. At mid-century in the United States there were sixteen million retired people, the average length of the working week was forty hours, 34 per cent of total national time 1 was spent at leisure and the weeks of paid vacations totalled more than seventy million. Income levels and the increasing mobility of the American population, both difficult variables to measure but both of great importance in the recreational equation, produce a pattern of leisure activities which differs radically from the primarily European ones described in previous chapters. What to the British is a holiday abroad in terms of distance and cost is to the North American a weekend excursion to a cottage or camp site.
