OUR STORY

There are probably as many answers to this question as there are people who ask it. After owning a clothing-optional travel company for more than 25 years, I am still not sure I can answer the question with sufficient clarity, but here’s my attempt. It has been my experience that people who are able to leave their clothing behind in a social setting are also more able to check their egos at the door and be themselves, as they really are, rather than who they think others would like them to be. Of course, what happens to my vacation-mates sans clothing also happens to me. I find myself withholding less of who I am as I hide less of my body. I begin to accept myself, imperfections and all. I can assure you, for a woman who tried for years to match the unrealistic standards of beauty in our society, this can be very liberating. Clothes-free vacationing leads to body acceptance. I can recall so many vacations that Tom and I took together before we discovered clothes-free vacationing. We would long to genuinely know some of our fellow vacationers, but never seemed to have the opportunity to push past the boundary of “Where are you from? What do you do? How about those Cowboys?”

When I take a clothes-free vacation I know that the trip is more likely to produce friends, in the real sense of the word. Friends I can count on the way good friends should be counted on, during the vacation and after. Now, I not only come home with photos of this mountain or that river, but also with a picture of my new friend Robin and her husband Bill and Sally with her roommate, Jane. Now, I no longer measure the quality of my vacation experience only by where I have been and what I have seen but also by the people I’ve met along the way, people I will no doubt meet again on future vacations. For me, this is the essence of social nudity. We strongly believe there are no strangers on a Bare Necessities vacation, only friends you have yet to meet.