So why don't you tell my about your favorite family vacation growing up?

[Mr. Silly]

I think mine was car tour of the south shore of Lake Superior.  I think I was about 4th or 5th grade.

Day 1 - Drove to Mackinaw and checked out the fort.

Day 2 - Head to Sault Saint Marie to watch  a freighter go through the locks.  Drive to  Tequonomen Falls and walk around, look at the falls then drive to Munising.

Day 3 - Ride the fairy around Picture Rocks.  Drive to Iron Mountain.

Day 4 - Go inside an old iron mine.  Take a chair lift ride to the top of some ski mountain.  

Day 5 - Drive to St. Ignace.  We stopped at some road side attraction on the way that was a super clear spring fed pond.  We rode a glass bottom boat across and saw some fish.

Day 6 - Take a fairy to Mackinaw Island.  Checked out the fort. Walked around a bit.  Took the fairy back.  Got in the car and went home.

[maddmaxx ★]

Drove to California and back twice by the age of 10.  Once by the wide route through Canada and back on the southern US border and once by a more central route.  So by the age of 10 I had been in all 48 continental states and all but one Canadian Provence.  Good times before my dad passed away.

[Kzoo]

15 minutes ago, Mr. Silly said:

I think mine was car tour of the south shore of Lake Superior.  I think I was about 4th or 5th grade.

Day 1 - Drove to Mackinaw and checked out the fort.

Day 2 - Head to Sault Saint Marie to watch  a freighter go through the locks.  Drive to  Tequonomen Falls and walk around, look at the falls then drive to Munising.

Day 3 - Ride the fairy around Picture Rocks.  Drive to Iron Mountain.

Day 4 - Go inside an old iron mine.  Take a chair lift ride to the top of some ski mountain.  

Day 5 - Drive to St. Ignace.  We stopped at some road side attraction on the way that was a super clear spring fed pond.  We rode a glass bottom boat across and saw some fish.

Day 6 - Take a fairy to Mackinaw Island.  Checked out the fort. Walked around a bit.  Took the fairy back.  Got in the car and went home.

You and every other kid that grew up in Michigan.

"Head to Sault Saint Marie to watch  a freighter go through the locks." Only slightly more exciting than watching paint dry.

 

 

[Mr. Silly]

4 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

You and every other kid that grew up in Michigan.

"Head to Sault Saint Marie to watch  a freighter go through the locks." Only slightly more exciting than watching paint dry.

If you don't have to wait 30 minutes for a ship to pull in then it is alright.  I think it only takes like 20 minutes for the ship to go up.  Being that close to a freighter is pretty impressive to a kid.  Pairing the Locks on the same day with Tequonomen Falls makes for a pretty cool day.

[Wilbur ★]

Definitely hockey camp.  Some guy named Don was the coach..

 

 

[maddmaxx ★]

1 minute ago, wilbur said:

Definitely hockey camp.  Some guy named Don was the coach..

 

 

That must have been the camp where they specialized in playing the boards..........with the other team.

[Wilbur ★]

Really though, every summer we went camping in the West National Parks.  Yoho, Banff and Jasper.  When we were a little older, it became fishing holidays on Vancouver Island or lake fishing where I now have a cottage. 

[Wilbur ★]

3 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

That must have been the camp where they specialized in playing the boards..........with the other team.

Yeah, and the guy was a Boomer so you know, we hated him instantly. 

[jsharr ★]

Never really took one.  We had a trailer on Lake Eufala just outside of Eufala, Oklahoma.  Spent most weekends there fishing and skiing and messing around with friends in lieu of a vacation.

We did drive to Corpus Christi once per year at Thanksgiving to visit my dad's parents and those were really our only long trips.  I never got on a plane until I was in college and working.

 

[Parsnip Totin Jack ★]

When I was a kid we lived in CA, close to Malibu. Vacations were driving trips to sightsee. Tiajuana, Sandy Eggo, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Francisco etc. My favorite was in 1970 I believe and was a two week trip from LA to Vegas, to SLC, to  Grand Tetons/Yellowstone. Spent several days there, then up to Glacier NP. Headed west from there thru ID to Oak Harbor/Seattle and down the coast back to LA. Two adults, six kids in a station wagon. Tent camping and cooler dining most of the way. I’m amazed we all made it.

[Mr. Silly]

11 minutes ago, jsharr said:

Never really took one.  We had a trailer on Lake Eufala just outside of Eufala, Oklahoma.  Spent most weekends there fishing and skiing and messing around with friends in lieu of a vacation.

The trips to Lake Eudala would definitely qualify as a vacation.  Is there an event that stands out from those trips?  

[Mr. Silly]

1 minute ago, Old#7 said:

When I was a kid we lived in CA, close to Malibu. Vacations were driving trips to sightsee. Tiajuana, Sandy Eggo, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Francisco etc. My favorite was in 1970 I believe and was a two week trip from LA to Vegas, to SLC, to  Grand Tetons/Yellowstone. Spent several days there, then up to Glacier NP. Headed west from there thru ID to Oak Harbor/Seattle and down the coast back to LA. Two adults, six kids in a station wagon. Tent camping and cooler dining most of the way. I’m amazed we all made it.

That sounds hecking awesome!  

[Parsnip Totin Jack ★]

Just now, Mr. Silly said:

That sounds hecking awesome!  

It was, my parents earned their space in heaven.

[Mr. Silly]

20 minutes ago, wilbur said:

Really though, every summer we went camping in the West National Parks.  Yoho, Banff and Jasper.  When we were a little older, it became fishing holidays on Vancouver Island or lake fishing where I now have a cottage. 

Where in Canada did you grow up?  Because if you haven't noticed, Canada is kinda large.  Going from Ontario to Banff is a long road trip.

[Kzoo]

2 minutes ago, Mr. Silly said:

Because if you haven't noticed, Canada is kinda large. 

And they said you weren't very smart.  Huh?

 

[Wilbur ★]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Silly said:

Where in Canada did you grow up?  Because if you haven't noticed, Canada is kinda large.  Going from Ontario to Banff is a long road trip.

I grew up in Vancouver.  It was still a two day drive pulling a 14 foot Fireball trailer with a '65 Galaxy 500 that overheated climbing every mountain.  

[jsharr ★]

18 minutes ago, Mr. Silly said:

The trips to Lake Eudala would definitely qualify as a vacation.  Is there an event that stands out from those trips?  

It was just a great time.  It was a tiny two bedroom trailer with a room added on.  Mom and Dad always let us invite friends.   It was very carefree.  Not a lot of supervision was needed or given.  We would take a whole bunch of boats to a beach to swim and play, go water ski and fish until late at night.

One time, we did get together with a bunch of people from the same little trailer park that our trailer was in and we trailered our boats to the Arkansas River just east of Lake Eufala and we took a multi day river trip to Little Rock.  We would at night and camp, or stay in a motel near the river.   It was a grand adventure for an elementary school boy.  I got to drive the boat some.  

[Mr. Silly]

2 minutes ago, jsharr said:

It was just a great time.  It was a tiny two bedroom trailer with a room added on.  Mom and Dad always let us invite friends.   It was very carefree.  Not a lot of supervision was needed or given.  We would take a whole bunch of boats to a beach to swim and play, go water ski and fish until late at night.

Was this big fish there when you went?

[jsharr ★]

4 minutes ago, Mr. Silly said:

Was this big fish there when you went?

I do not think so.  We almost always went to the number 9 marina if we need gas while out on the lake.  Our trailer park had an above ground gas tank and an old gas pump with the glass jar on top that we used to get gas for the boat.  We kept the boat on a trailer in a pole barn.

 

[2Far ★]

Ages ~ 5-12 (before the litter arrived) we used to go to Rehoboth Beach, DE for 2 weeks with the g'rents. Generally, the last two weeks before Labor Day. A day of fishing in the Chesapeake; a day of crabbing, a day of raking for clams, lots of days of beach & sunshine, boardwalk activities. Down south of Dewey there were WW II era concrete bunkers where they used to watch for submarines.

[jsharr ★]

Here is the area today.  Our trailer would have been on the road that does not have a name and about in the middle of the row of trailers.  I think it is gone.

Spent lots of good times there.

[jsharr ★]

3 minutes ago, jsharr said:

Here is the area today.  Our trailer would have been on the road that does not have a name and about in the middle of the row of trailers.  I think it is gone.

Spent lots of good times there.

Back then, small town businesses could survive.  Almost every trailer in there was owned by someone from Edmond Oklahoma, the grocer, the hardware store owner, a furniture store owner, my dad was one of the few white collar guys in there.   

We kept our boat in one of the metal barns you can see to the bottom left.  We helped build one of those barns, if those are still the same ones.   There was an old Dodge pickup from the late 50s or early 60s that we all used to pull our boats to the ramp by the small gray boat house in the corner.  We kept our boat in the big white boat house and that is where we fished as well.

[Dottleshead ★]

I can't remember mine but I'm pretty sure there was sex involved.

[Mr. Silly]

My Grand Parents used to take us to a lake a 3 or so hours north of us Bush Lake for two weeks every summer.

 

They rented a cottage along here someplace.

The lot that the cottage was on had two cottages.  One had plumbing the other had an outhouse.  That is when I learned outhouses sucked.

There was a girl who lived a couple doors down and my sister would go play with here leaving me alone.  I'd fish and take the row boat out.  They also had a couple wrought iron bikes from the '50s.  I'd take one of those out for a ride around the lakes.

 

[jsharr ★]

4 minutes ago, Mr. Silly said:

My Grand Parents used to take us to a lake a 3 or so hours north of us Bush Lake for two weeks every summer.

 

They rented a cottage along here someplace.

The lot that the cottage was on had two cottages.  One had plumbing the other had an outhouse.  That is when I learned outhouses sucked.

There was a girl who lived a couple doors down and my sister would go play with here leaving me alone.  I'd fish and take the row boat out.  They also had a couple wrought iron bikes from the '50s.  I'd take one of those out for a ride around the lakes.

 

That looks very nice

[Mr. Silly]

5 minutes ago, jsharr said:

That looks very nice

The second picture there looks a lot like the view I remember (minus the deck).  I remember not quite being able to see around that bend in the lake.

[Road Runner]

Bush Lake sounds like it would be very inviting.  I imagine it is quite popular with young men.  

[Road Runner]

My family drove to California one year when I was a kid.  Walley World was great.  

 

[Kirby]

My parents took us on a couple of vacations I recall fondly.  I loved going to Williamsburg and seeing the old Colonial locations (and the molasses cookies!), and we went to the Outer Banks a few times, but my overall favorite was just the summers in the Catskills.   My grandmother grew up in the area and when she moved to the city and started a family, she got a house in a nearby town in the Catskills where my Mom and her siblings spent all their summers.  The place was definitely old when we would go up in the summers, and it was a summer house with no heat or tv.  But we were city kids who lived in an apartment, so going up there was our chance to play in a backyard, go biking, swim at the local lake, go for long walks up a country road. ;try to spot the Big Dipper in the stars at night and even have our own room!  Sure you sometimes had to deal with bats and keep yourself entertained with no tv, but there was a big room filled with all sorts of toys and stuff left over from when my Mom was a kid including tons of old books  - and the real lawn darts that risked serious injury every time you used them!

They weren't exciting summers, but it was nice family time and I recall my grandma baking the best apple cake.  My room was right above the kitchen so the scents would waft up in the mornings!  The big excitement was the Penny Social for the Volunteer Fire Department every summer and the weekly band concert..

 

[Parsnip Totin Jack ★]

1 hour ago, Dottie said:

I can't remember mine but I'm pretty sure there was sex involved.

I believed you until the sex part. 

[jsharr ★]

47 minutes ago, Old#7 said:

I believed you until the sex part. 

He was alone in a skiff fishing in Florida.  Sort of a minimalist Hemingway vacation

[Dottleshead ★]

Your level of sickness continues to dazzle.

[Further]

I was packed off to church camp for 2 weeks. Did this about 5 times age 7 to 12. It was my mothers vacation  

 

[Mr. Silly]

15 hours ago, Kirby said:

My parents took us on a couple of vacations I recall fondly.  I loved going to Williamsburg and seeing the old Colonial locations (and the molasses cookies!), and we went to the Outer Banks a few times, but my overall favorite was just the summers in the Catskills.   My grandmother grew up in the area and when she moved to the city and started a family, she got a house in a nearby town in the Catskills where my Mom and her siblings spent all their summers.  The place was definitely old when we would go up in the summers, and it was a summer house with no heat or tv.  But we were city kids who lived in an apartment, so going up there was our chance to play in a backyard, go biking, swim at the local lake, go for long walks up a country road. ;try to spot the Big Dipper in the stars at night and even have our own room!  Sure you sometimes had to deal with bats and keep yourself entertained with no tv, but there was a big room filled with all sorts of toys and stuff left over from when my Mom was a kid including tons of old books  - and the real lawn darts that risked serious injury every time you used them!

They weren't exciting summers, but it was nice family time and I recall my grandma baking the best apple cake.  My room was right above the kitchen so the scents would waft up in the mornings!  The big excitement was the Penny Social for the Volunteer Fire Department every summer and the weekly band concert.

Are these the trips where you illegally picked currants?

[Mr. Silly]

13 hours ago, Further said:

I was packed off to church camp for 2 weeks. Did this about 5 times age 7 to 12. It was my mothers vacation  

 

Where is Camp Nazareth?  The ones I found via Google didn't have the same topology as the one in your google map.

[Further]

Adirondacks 

[shootingstar]

We never went far when I was growing up...

•  Family never had a car until I was 14 yrs. old. (I'm the eldest kid/or was at the time.)
•  Father did driving and we only went for day trips.
•  Camping was not part of their cultural upbringing in China so none of us kids knew much about camping until we became adults. 
•  So we went to Toronto once or twice a yr. It was Canadian National Exhibition, Chinatown (to pile in alot of Asian groceries) and some years, visiting our cousins in Toronto (who still live there with now their own children, etc.)
•  There wasn't enough money to travel far with a big family when parents didn't know about camping.

Did I live a narrow world as a kid?  Perhaps but it was also different/expansive when already familial cultural and linguistic background is not European.

Yea. sure it's true I envied my friends who went camping or on long cross-Ontario or Canada summer trips.  Siblings with their own children now, have determinedly changed things, to make sure their children experienced camping, other parts of Canada (and U.S. /Europe) before they fly the home coop as adults.

I appreciate Canada....alot as an adult. Some people think I'm well-travelled.  Well, I doubt it, but travelling in various parts of Canada by bike is a different type of exposure that draws more unintended attention to self, as well as living in 3 different regions of Canada with each distinctly different history, socio-cultural and political differences. 

As a child/teen, I didn't travel in the U.S. even though southern Ontario is not far from border.  Our school trips at the time, never involved crossing international borders.  I took my lst trip into the U.S. just after I finished university.  It was with my sister and her husband into Michigan.

 

[Dirtyhip]

We didn't do that.  Ok, let me clarify, I didn't get to do that stuff.  Mt uncles and aunt did that stuff..  I was the oddball.  My Mother next went anywhere. Kinda ridiculous.

[Guest]

On 11/14/2019 at 6:28 PM, Further said:

I was packed off to church camp for 2 weeks. Did this about 5 times age 7 to 12. It was my mothers vacation  

 

That’s about 45 minutes from me.

[Further]

1 minute ago, Zackny said:

That’s about 45 minutes from me.

Pretty country.

[Guest]

We never had a family vacation with the entire family. When I was 13 my mom, grandparents and one sister drove to northern Minnesota to visit family. We would go to the NYS state fair for 4-5 days for my sisters to show horses. That’s about it.

[Wilbur ★]

I think a transformative vacation when I was a kid, was one of my favourites. 

We just went camping in Anacortes, WA when I was about 10.  The Navy were conducting F4 low level training flights out of Navy Whidby NAS around the islands near Puget Sound.  All weekend, day and night was a steady barrage of F4's at about 300 ft zooming by.  At night, you could see the hot glow of the engines and smell exhaust as it settled back to ground.   That was the closest I would come to Vietnam. 

[MickinMD ★]

Coming from a poor family, we rarely went on vacations.  The most memorable was when I was about 13 or so, when we rented a small house with some neighbors for a week in Ocean City, Maryland. A whole week in Ocean City!

My earliest memories are when I was 3 years-old and getting splashed with ice cold water at the bottom of Niagara Falls while on a boat I later learned was "The Maid of the Mist." I guess the shock - I cried - imprinted the scene in my memory for good: I can describe the railing, the gate in it, and roof over the area where we stood along the outside edge of the deck.

I didn't understand why I had to wear a raincoat or and was upset that mine was a different color (yellow) from the adults (black) towering around me. Then I got splashed. I also have memory glimpses of things like eating at a picnic table in Canada with my grandmother and my mother yelling at my father for letting me get too close to the edge at the top of the falls.  My next earliest memory was when I was 5 and going to my first day of school, so that Niagara Falls vacation definitely left an impression!

[MoseySusan]

My family went on two types of vacation:  camping and fishing trips, or a week in Columbus/London, Ohio, to attend a yearly family reunion. I loved both.