With the kids out of school now and all these threads about summer camp and vacation planning I started to think about family vacation's when I was growing up.... My favorite vacation - Camping with my family... Nothing fancy, no electricity, no running water - just an outhouse and a roof over our heads... I don't know if my kids could handle using an outhouse...
Going to the cabin in the mountains!!!! Not much to do, so we found our own fun. The creek, the woods (the VERY cold outside shower!!) Finding chipmunks under our pillows one year!! Walking to the honey stand down the mountain and feeling all grown up! Deciding Thanksgiving was WAY too cold in the mountains without heat, once our Milk froze while sitting on the table, it was a sign!!! (we had one small wood burning stove and ALLL of us tried to sleep around it at night) Maybe it is time to take my kids!
Took a family vacation for a week one summer, we headed out to grandfather mountain, tweetsie rail road and then made our way back across the state and ended up at our beach house at Harkers Island. So fun. After going this weekend, I really hate we don't have a little house down there anymore. :cry:
I grew up in Kentucky and we were poor!! Our very 1st family vacation was to Myrtle Beach when I was 12.....bro, sis and I learned how to swim there and it was the 1st time all of us kids saw the ocean. (tear)
Really too many to list! Our family camped all the time, mtns, Myrtle beach, Nashville/Grand ole opry, Grandfather's mtn, GA. I suppose one that stands out is because it WAS different. When I was in HS we were going to Disney World for the first time. Had a great aunt that lived in Ft Laud, so grannie wanted to go too to visit her sister. Grannie vacationed alot, had flown all these different places and we would always pick her up from the airport since she lived in Burlington - and me and my sis would always talk about how we wished we could fly somewhere someday..... so when we went to Fla that yr to go to Disney - our parents let me and my older sis fly down (and the 3 of them drove)! We were SO excited - and then after staying for the week - all 5 of us had to ride home - no mini-vans back then (1975ish) so it was very crowded car/sedan and seemed like a very long ride home...........:? Really - any kind of vacation with your kids will be memorable as long as you spend time with them and have fun (at least most of the time)!! :lol:
DC I remember going to Washington DC by car with my mom, grandmother and brother. We had lots of fun and I have fond memories of it. Seeing all the monuments. Going to Kennedy's grave, the grave of the unknown soldiers, mount vernon...etc. I remember to this day when we went to the old FBI building (the front of which was used in the old tv show FBI) and my mother asking the tour guide what will happen when J Edgar Hoover dies. I do not remember the tour guides response but I do remember that He kicked the bucket a month later
OH!!! This is easy for me!!! Some of you know that I grew up on a dairy farm, with that being said, we never really could take vacations!! (24/7 job...somebody has to milk the cows!!!!) However, when I was in fourth grade, my dad had an offer to buy his whole herd of cows at the time!!! Well...he took that opportunity and we went on vacation 8) For a month!!!!8) Now, mind you, I am the oldest and the only girl in our family, (I have three younger brothers), we bought a pop up camper, a truck cap for our Ford truck, threw a mattress in the back of it and took off!!!! Yup, it was us four kids in the back, mom and dad riding up front (there was a sliding glass window in both the truck and the truck cap so normally there was always one of us riding between mom and dad, when it was time to switch, one crawled through the windows to the back and one crawled back through the window to the front.) We drove cross country (as far as Boulder, CO)..(oh..started in NY) stopping at alot of tourist areas along the way, went to Bear Lake, Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone Park (got to see a rodeo...whahoo!!!) visited friends who recently moved to CO heading back east we went up through Michigan and attended a huge family reunion up there so I saw lots of cousins!!! My favorite stop on our vacation was going to the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder!!! My brothers hated it of course but it was my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE stop!!!! I will never forget this trip!!! Oh and my dad put cows back on about 6 months later and has been still farming ever since!!!!
We would go for two weeks to my Grandma's house. At first she lived in Kansas City, MO and would rent a house at Lake of the Ozarks, but then she had one built there. It was really nice because it on a cove off the lake. It was really peaceful. We would swim, fish, jet ski, paddle boat, and go for boat rides. We'd go in town to play put put, go horeseback riding, and go-carting. It was lots of fun. That area is all built up now with a lot of resorts. So to go back and take my kids, it wouldn't be the same. My favorite vacation with my kids would be last year when we stayed in my MIL and FIL's camper at Emerald Isle. The kids had a blast, it was inexpensive, and we were able to spend a lot of quality time together. They have continued to talk about it. We're doing it again this year and hopefully we'll be able to buy a camper of our own.
Growing up: Favorite vacation was my summers in Lake Tahoe. The beauty was incredible. The hikes I took with my brothers were the most memorable. With my kids: Disney vacation in Orlando. The timing was good as no one was hardly at the park so we didn't have lines. Future vacation: This Christmas I hope to go to Lake Tahoe again.
I grew up on a tobacco farm, and we almost never were able to vacation during the summer, since we were busy with the farm. However, I remember one year when I was about 12 that we went to White Lake (near Elizabethtown, NC) for a long weekend (Thursday to Sunday). My dad had the brilliant idea to borrow a camper top for the bed of his pickup, and we 3 kids rode there for the ~3 hour drive. We were thrilled, seeing it as quite an adventure. We stayed in the top floor rental unit of a house that had 2 beds and a bathroom. My parents got one bed, my 2 sisters the other, and I slept on a folding lounge chair. It sounds uncomfortable now, but as kids we enjoyed things like that. We spent the weekend lounging on the white sand beach, playing in the clear water, spending lots of money in the arcade and on rides in the small amusement park. I remember so clearly that the amusement park opened at 3 in the afternoon, and we were so anxious to go there the first day at opening time. Most of our meals were sandwiches except one meal we went to a restaurant. We even got to ride on the big glass-bottom boat. On the way home we were all so hot because of terrible sunburns. But we had such a fun time. We visited White Lake for several vacations over the years in the 70's and early 80's, and I returned with my wife and infant son back in 1990. Things had changed so much. The rental houses were run-down and dirty, the amusement park was gone, the beach was trashy and everything was extremely crowded.
Huntington Beach, CA when I was 4 years old. Here I am! My SIL put all Dad's slides onto CDs for him this year. It was a huge job but I'm so glad we all have our old family pictures.
We had some big, well-planned family trips across country, but honestly it was the local camping trips to the state park with a lake and swimming area that I enjoyed the most. We were kind of given free run of the place, could hike around the lake and had a canoe to boat in parked right at the campsite. Roasting marshmallows, fishing, catching fireflies, meeting other kids and biking the camp roads, and bacon and eggs in the morning over the campstove with hot cocoa. Those trips were definitely the most fun and most enjoyed. The big expensive well-planned ones...well...not so much.
A few times after working hard over the summer my parents would suprise us kids by saying "ok, you guys have 30 mins to pack up enough clothes for 2 days and be in the car. We're going to...." Heck fire it didnt' matter where we went. It was just the fact that they suprised us with a mini trip. One of them we couldn't find a decent hotel to stay in and I had to sleep on the couch. We still had a blast anyway.
I thing mine were when we went sight seeing when my dad was stationed in Germany. We never really too "vacations" unless we went and saw relatives. Last year was good when we were able to spend Thanksgiving with my folks for the first time since we moved here to NC, And another favorite was when we surprise the kids and took them to Graceland, at the time son was a big Elvis fan. We had such a good time and I got to see some people I had not seen in years!
Here's a great link to an old vacation haunt. Yes, I know that it is not for everyone but I had the best time with these folks and it really is fun and great. It is the Rainbow Family Gathering that is happening this year. Open the mind and enjoy life. This link will give one a chance to understand the Rainbow Family: http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow/index.html This link will give the upcoming events: http://www.starsrainbowrideboard.org/welcomehome_mirror/rainbow/sites/annual-site.html My daughter and I are looking at some Ashram resorts. Anyone know of any close by? Sherry
