Reflections on World Travel

31 Flavors of Naked: Vitamin D Data Collection

Where, why, and how you might give social nudity a whirl

We racked up about 20,000 miles on two round trips across the United States of America. When given the option, we’d stay at a naturist place en route.

I grew up in an era when there was a Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors ice cream store on seemingly every corner. They’re still around, but the logo and marketing strategy has evolved over the years. I don’t even know whether the 31 flavors things is still, in fact… a thing.

But here’s something that is a thing? There are at least 31 flavors of naked! And at least for those carrying the banner on non-sexual social nudity, I’ve tasted nearly all of them. As it turns out, there are way more the thirty-one flavors when it comes to nude recreation. This has become blatantly evident to me in my ongoing project that I’ve recently labeled, the Vitamin D Data Collection project.

What is the Vitamin D Data Collection project, you might ask? Well, when all the borders closed a few years ago, many of our favorite flavors of social nudity were suddenly no longer available. That little island in the South of France. Those awesome resorts in Croatia. The beautiful resort near Pretoria, South Africa. Even hot springs either closed or enforced strict policies about capacity and distancing. It was a sad time for a meandering naturist.

Regular readers may recall that I just barely made it back onto American soil from a naked place in Thailand before the entire world went into total lock down on Friday, March 13th, 2020.

Those who have an insatiable appetite for world travel can surely relate to the general sense of malaise we all experienced when the sights, sounds, and smells of international exploration were suddenly off the table. Not just the naked part, but that pitcher of wine at a Greek taverna, or morning espresso by the sea near Gibraltar. All of it! So, we turned inward to seize this opportunity to experience our own US of A, if only to see what we’ve been missing that doesn’t involve a trans-oceanic flight.

As to the Vitamin D data collection project, by the time we were able to fly across an ocean again, I think had made at least a perfunctory visit to about sixty naked places in America. That’s a lot! To that end, the pandemic provided not one, but two opportunities to drive coast-to coast across the United States of America. We racked up about 11,000 miles with various detours on the first trip, and a mere 7,000 miles on the more intentional subsequent voyage to retrieve a few family heirlooms in California. When given the option, we’d stay at a naturist place en route, which has provided oh so much fodder for storytelling.

Here are a few things I learned along the way…

• Every naked place has a distinct flavor, which becomes evident from the very first point of contact. A simple phone call might take you to a dedicated (volunteer) member of the club, a complacent staff member, or the impassioned owner of the property. There is no uniform protocol for booking a visit to a nudist resort.
• American nudist resorts love to give tours. And more often than not, that will take place on the back of a golf cart, quite possibly, NAKED! I try to remember our first clothing-optional experiences, and wonder how I would feel today if my first experience with social nudity involved following a middle-aged guy around — naked — while he explained the protocol of sitting on a towel while pointing out the new pickleball courts. Even after all these years, I find it all quite off-putting, even though I get why they do it. But interestingly enough, be it in Europe, Asia, or Africa, we’ve been left to figure out the “nudist etiquette” thing on our own, without coaching or a golf cart, and somehow everybody has figured out the sit on a towel thing. Bizarre! (Author’s note: In case you didn’t know, if you go to a naked place, you always have to sit on a towel. Common sense, right?)
• I can’t get naked in the US without a background check. Sometimes this takes place at the office while checking in. In other cases, you have to submit your request to visit weeks in advance so they have time to complete the full workup. I always wonder what that process involves? Are they cross-referencing the known sex-offender list? Calling the FBI? And then I think about the irony of it all, wondering what it would be like if you had to jump through that hoop every time you booked a room at a Marriott hotel. Surely, there are creepy humans hanging around the pool at the Maui Westin that may well be on somebody’s no-fly list, but because everyone is wrapped in nylon and Lycra, they apparently don’t pose a threat there.
• The owner is always right! That’s quite a lot different than my father’s mantra as an independent businessman, where the customer was always right. I had something of a tussle with the owner of a boutique naturist resort a couple years ago when I tried to book — under my real name — but was denied because I use a pseudonym as a blogger. He was kind enough to lay out his rationale for enforcing this policy, to which I retorted, in some detail, as to why I have chosen to maintain some level of anonymity in the blogosphere. He completely supported my rationale, but went on to deny my booking as it seems I’m permanently blacklisted from visiting that venue. The policies and rules of each naked place we’ve visited are widely varied. I have to say, simply the process of figuring those policies out on the fly can take up a lot of brain space — even on a free beach when you’re trying to discern where you can or cannot be naked.
• And then there’s the hot spring thing! A whole different tradition and set of rules as hot springs typically cater to people who don’t consider themselves naturists, nudists, or even clothing-optional enthusiasts. If it’s a commercial enterprise, like some of those in Colorado or on the West Coast, you have to comb through several webpages to figure it all out, but if it’s simply a hidden public-access hot spring, you likely won’t know until you get there if nudity will be forbidden due to the presence of the textiles who got there first. Spend ten minutes on TripAdvisor, and you’ll find radically opposing views about the “virtues or atrocities of naked people in in the pools” at any given place. (Spoiler: Some people are afraid of naked humans!)

Especially if you’re a newbie nudist, or simply social nudity curious, you may have to try a few flavors until you find one you that resonates with you, realizing there’s no such thing as a standard vanilla in the world of social nudity, and the fact that I’m not fond of pistachios in my ice cream may turn out to be of little consequence to you. But apparently, somebody likes pistachio ice cream!

I guess you simply can’t know what you like until you try a few different flavors.

This story is adapted from the original on The Meandering Naturist Blog. The pseudonyms remain the same to protect the innocent and those afraid of naked humans.

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