The trip I remember the most is the one to Canada. We were just across the border and DB and I started fighting about something - we're a year apart, I was maybe 9 and he was 8. Anyhow my Dad had had enough and stopped the car, made us get out, took off his belt and gave us each a swat. There was a Canadian kid standing nearby and he took off like a bullet - I think he thought he was next. Crazy Americans I'll bet he thought!

I remember standing in front of Paul Bunyan and his Ox too - I think that is in Minnesota. We caught lots of Sunfish on that trip.

Hey Flamingo.. have you ever saw the dinosaurs in your town? DH and my DBIL took the kids one year while SIL and I shopped. The video they took is priceless! Thems some ugly dinosaurs, but the kids loved it! haha....

We never traveled much. My Dad liked to sleep at home in his own bed. We did go visit family for weekends, but most trips were day trips.

My favorite memory was when we went to Goliad, TX to tour the missions there. My Dad had the car washed before our trip and it was shiny clean. It was a hot day and we stopped at the Dairy Queen window for ice cream cones. My Mom couldn't eat all hers so she threw what was left out the window......only she thought the window was rolled down! Actually it was up, but so clean that she didn't notice. She had ice cream smeared all over the inside of her window. We all laughed so hard that our sides hurt. We still teased her about that for years afterwords.

I remember the trips up to Montreal and Quebec every simmer, just after school let out, with our grandparents.

We always took the train from Grand central Station in NYC, after buying seceral comic books (and as we grew up, Movie magazines) and spending some time in the movie theater inside, that just showed newsreels.

The train would stop at towns, heading up north, with a long stop in Albany, where they would switch engines, fron the electric one out of Manhattan to the other type that would take us up to Montreal.

It was an all day ride, and we would have dinner in the dining car...with heavy silverware and waiters who wore large white, what looked like tablecloths, around their waists as aprons. Another thing unique thing was that the waiter would leave the menu and a blank order form, and we wrote in our choices.

I loved those trains rides.

We took lots of road trips when I was young . . . now I look back at them with warm fuzzy memories . . . back then, not so much so. I was the only girl, and I was always seated between my two brothers to keep them from fighting. (sigh, all that did was make them fight over me, LOL) My dad has always been a night owl, so most of the driving was done during the night while we all slept. Then we'd find a motel (usually with a pool too :) and we'd drive my mom crazy in it all day while my dad slept.

I remember one trip to Mt. Rushmore with a 3-car caravan of relatives. We were all eating at a picnic table and a bear decided to join us. One of my cousins ran to their closest car, jumped in and locked all the doors. The rest of us had to all pile into the other 2 cars . . . funnier than h@!! now, not so much back then :)

We also still laugh at the 'road sandwiches' my mom used to make . . . everybody always groaned about them, but we couldn't have afforded eating at restaurants all the time . . . plus they must have been good, as they were always gobbled up. Once when we were driving home from Los Angeles to Minnesota, my mom made a huge container of them. My dad still swears they were all gone before we got to Nevada . . . and I still make 'road sandwiches' whenever we're on the road for more than a few hours :)

We took the kids to Yellowstone this last summer. There are tons of memories. My kids loved it and are mad because we probably won't get the opportunity to go back. My kids loved running through the spray of the geysers.

We still laugh at the Park Ranger with a 'time machine' in Dinosaur National Park. His message translated to if we recycle, we won't be killed like the dinosaurs. (Popular opinion is that the dinosaurs were killed when a huge meteor hit the earth.) We also got stopped in traffic in Utah where they were working on a road. The flagman was getting attacked by a gigantic swarm of ants. He told us to keep our windows rolled up. It was one of those situations where you shouldn't laugh so that made it even funnier. Fortunately for the guy standing there. The vehicle behind us had bug spray. My kids are still talking about it.

My Dad worked for Southern Pacific Railroad, we traveled for free. We traveled to Oklahoma to visit Relatives and another Summer we traveled to New Mexico and California by train. I loved the "clickety clack" of the railroad tracks.

My Parents were "Waterbugs" and we spent Summer Vacations on the Texas Lakes. Waterskiing and Fishing. We rented a Screened in Cabin with a kitchen and slept on "cots".

My Parents finally bought a Winnebago and we felt "first class" after that. But, in our Teen years we lost interest in "family vacations".

We took a driving trip down near Tampico, Mexico to Ciadad Viaz. We climbed a Pryamid and visited the Village Priest (who was a Golfing friend of my Fathers). LOL!

Gayle

When I was a kid we took a vacation every year and I never remember my Daddy using a map. My DH has such a poor sense of direction that I wonder how my Daddy did it! We rode on trains a lot--once to Mexico City. We always took our kids on several trips a year and those are some fine memories. I used to put back money every month for those trips and we had some great times.

We only travelled a modest amount (no surprise with four kids) so every trip stands out. We took some ridiculously budget trips that we've laughed about for years (I'm talking about staying in cheap hotels where odd men lived LOL). We had our share of 99 cent breakfasts and cheap buffets but I was much older before I figured out the budget angle. Just eating out was a treat no matter what the meal costs so it was all great to me.

My dad drove a bus for a live-in school for the deaf and he would often take us to places he scoped out while travelling with the students - things like amusement parks and Washington DC. Oh, I loved the two days we spent in DC. We saw so much in that short time since my dad had made so many trips there. I plan trips like that now but I have the internet to guide me.

We didn't have SUVs or even a station wagon - we travelled in a huge gold Chrysler, 3 in the front and 3 (or 4 if one of my sister's brought a friend along) in the back.

Lydia, there are two famous Paul Bunyan & Babe statues in Minnesota. One in Bemidji and another here in Brainerd. Brainerd's is better;)

We were too poor to do much traveling. Our first trip was the summer of second grade, 2-3 hours in the car. On our first try, our car broke down so we had to wait until we could afford to fix it. We were going to visit some of Dad's friends when he came home from WWII, single and alone, and they "adopted" him. An older Norwegian farmer couple. She loved to feed Dad and loved to meet his wife and kids and feed us. We called them Grandma and Grandpa and played with all their grandkids like cousins. We stayed about a week or so. We got to stay at their rustic cabin which was a distance from their house and their son and family's house. The cabin didn't have electricity or running water and we cooked our food on a wood-fired range.

We got to go to the local small-town 4th of July festival and watch the parade, go on carnival rides, eat carnival foods, etc. We got to meet Dad's many friends from that long-ago time before he met Mom. A couple were guys from the Minnesota Twins "farm" team that Dad used to be the catcher for, so long ago.

My little sister fell in love for the second time with one of the "cousins" who was also in kindergarten. She said, coyly blushing, "Little boys with dirty faces are SO cute!" And my 5th grade sister developed a crush on a cousin her age, too. Me, I hated boys at that time but had a good time with catching a frog or two and feeding worms to some baby birds. When we went home, we brought a family of three baby red squirrels with eyes not yet open after a cat had killed their mother and siblings. We raised those babies until they got big enough to chew through the cage and escape. We never saw them after that. It was surprising that Dad let us bring them home and raise them since he hated red squirrels so much. They are little but vicious and destructive as adults. When we got home, the mother robin in our spruce tree had hatched her eggs, and we were excited to be able to "help" feed them worms.

While still on vacation, we were looking forward to picking wild blueberries with "Grandma", "Grandpa", and the whole clan. They lived in the middle of a deep forest. But the night of July 3 there was a hard freeze and so no blueberries, we were so bummed. The usual first frost date is late September so the July freeze is virtually unheard of. But "Grandma" had a basement full of canned goods and made up some pies anyway. The best I've ever had.

Oh, the memories of the family vacation road trips out West! So many wonderful memories that I couldn't begin to write about them. Yellowstone was a favorite, as was Rocky Mt. National Park, we even made it to Disney Land once. We hit all the National Parks out West over the years.
When I got married and had kids of my own my husband and I took our kids to all those places too. Now the kids are grown and we love going on trips by ourselves.

Here I am (14 years old) at a rest stop somewhere in New Mexico, 1968. My folks weren't very good photographers so we don't have very many good vacation pictures. I think this was taken with a Polaroid camera.

I grew up on a dairy farm so vacations were rare. Once in a while Dad would hire someone to milk the cows and we'd go to northern Minn. and get a cabin on a lake so Dad could fish. It was a 4 or 5 hour drive and it was a huge production to drive that far in a day. My brother and I didn't care about the fishing; we just wanted a place where we could swim. I didn't have a lot of patience back then. We'd all go out fishing and if I didn't catch one in the first 5 minutes I'd be ready to go back to shore. Sometimes I'd be fed up with it and Dad didn't even have his line wet yet. It's a wonder he didn't toss me in.
My own kids were raised in New Mexico where it's miles and miles to anywhere. On a whim we'd decide to go for a Sunday drive. In half an hour we'd have food packed and the truck loaded and go for a drive of 200 to 300 miles through the mountains and think nothing of it. The kids were all excellent travelers.

Ron

We seldom traveled as a family unless it was to visit relatives. We took only one road trip as a family. My father decided to drive down the coast and stop where-ever the summer I was about 11.

I did have the good fortune to have a best friend who's family always included me on their camping trips, snow trips etc.

My family never took vacation trips, however, my Dad was always on the move from one state to another looking for greener pastures, better paying jobs, etc. I was born in Idaho, the 5th of 6 kids, and have lived in Fl. several different places, Mn., and Ca. several places.

He built a 'house' on the back of a truck (years before RVs were the going thing) and followed the fruit crop thru Oregon and Ca.

I learned to read maps early on and was the designated map reader for Dad. My Mom was too busy taking care of my younger sister who was retarded.

We never took a family vacation when I was young. I guess it was because my mother was always so sick (she had various cancers and died when I was 11). After that my father remarried and we did take one vacation as a blended family. We went to Lake St. Clair in Michigan and had a cottage on the lake for a week. Had a blast! Fishing, swimming, canoeing. Shortly after that though, the evil stepmother and her evil offspring left and that was that. That union only lasted about a year. My father then decided to find comfort in the bottle :(

I tried really hard to make sure that my kids and I took lots of mini vacations while they were young. We have so many great memories of those trips!

~Betsy

Nearly anyone who grew up in the Philadelphia area will tell you that the primo vacation spot was either Atlantic City NJ (pre casino) or Wildwood NJ. AC is about 60 miles, Wildwood 95 - 100. The six of us would climb into the old man's Hudson Hornet, slow as molasses but built like a tank. A trip over the Tacony Palmyra Bridge cost a nickel. Once past there it was a trip through peach & apple orchards for a good part of the trip. Then around the Circle Drive In; someone thought it would be a great idea to have a drive in movie right in the middle of Rte 73!!!

The whole trip to Wildwood took 3 hours with me standing behind my Dad, next oldest brother behind Mom. We stood because we couldn't see out if we sat down. The two youngest did sit the whole time. A week in a rooming house cost about $100 - a large amount for Dad who never made a lot of money. We had to get a place with a kitchen because my parents couldn't afford to take us out to eat. What did we kids know? I can remember getting an awful sunburn one year; no one ever heard of SPF back then. I leared that lesson well - been pale as a ghost ever since!

Traveling to Revere, MA every summer (my father is from there) and we would stay with my Grandmother. We would walk to the ocean, hang out at the food stand that my cousin was running.

Sometimes we would stop in CT and pick up my father's sister and her monkey (she and her husband never had children).

Interesting trip with the monkey, 3 adults and 7 kids in a station wagon.

Sheryl - NJ

We didn't take vacations when I was growing up. The road trips we took were to move from one of my dad's duty stations to another. I vaguely remember driving from Virginia to California, via Alabama to meet my dad's relatives. I was only about 6 years old. When I went back to visit them years later, they told me a funny story about that trip and my mom. The water quit or power went out or something so they couldn't take a hot bath. My mom asked for water from the stream by their house because she just couldn't go without a bath, even for a day. They got buckets of water and poured them over my mom so she could get clean. She's Japanese so I guess she wasn't embarrassed bathing in front of the female relatives. They said she yelled and carried on from the cold water but got her bath.

This was the year my brother got three birthday parties! One in Alabama on this trip, one in San Deigo at another stop we made at the home of one of my dad's old friend's. Bill got a puppy from them too! Then when we got to San Pedro, my dad was assigned to a submarine and they had another party for him, in the sub! Brat.

The other big trip we made was from San Pedro to Fallon, NV when my dad got stationed there. We drove through Sequioa and Yosemite National parks, and through the Lake Tahoe area. The only thing I remember about that trip was the trees.

When I was in high school a friend came to visit from Virgiina and my dad took us to Bodie, the ghost town in California. (I forgot about this trip!) Then after I grew up and was in the Air Force, I came home on leave and my dad and I took a trip out to New Mexico to help his step mother and brother. We went through Utah's Bryce, Zion and Capitol Reef parks. On the way home or to, we stopped in Santa Fe and visited his dad's grave, went to the capital building. I'm glad we took that trip, even though it was kinda sad.

The kids and I took a short trip to Cave City here in Kentucky a couple years ago and stayed in the teepee motel...they still joke about that place. It was old, with no updates to the electric or rooms, probably built in the 50s. Then we went cross country last year out West. I don't know if they are going to remember anything, though...I bought them both moose Christmas ornaments to remember Yellowstone..or rather outside of Yellowstone. Coming into it we saw a moose and then after we left we saw a mom and her baby, but Alex said "what moose?" when I explained the ornaments. How could his memory be that short?!!!

We went to Florida just about every single year for March Break (what we call Spring Break in Canada LOL). When we were young, my parents would pack the car the day before. Mom would make a million sandwiches and pack a cooler full of drinks. Then in the middle of the night, they would squish us into the station wagon with all the seats down, covered in sleeping bags and we had pillows and blankets. We would sleep for most of the trip there (anywhere from 24 hour drive or longer depending on where in Florida we were staying). Some years we drove all the way through, a few years we got motels on the way.

We started out in a tent trailer (no hard top), then a pop up, then a pop-up with a fridge and stove and sink. Then a small regular prowler trailer. Then we moved on to hotel rooms. Now my parents own a trailer there and DH and I have gone there a few years.

The things I remember most? Assembly line sandwiches. Take a loaf of bread out of the bag. Pass it over. Next person butters and mustards, the person after that puts in the meat, and the last person cuts them and places them back into the original bread bag - no need to individually wrap. We did ham, balogna, tuna, egg salad, and peanut butter and jam. She also packed boiled eggs and pickles and cut celery and carrots.

We all had our favourite sandwiches, and we would scream if my brother had egg salad - being stuck with him in the back of a station wagon with all the windows up was a fate worse than death. I think we should have stopped at one of those army surplus stores and got gas masks LOL.

We stopped only for fuel on those trips, so if you had to go you went then or forever held your peace until the next stop. Say that with a sort of foreign accent, and picture a bunch of kids laughing their arses off in the back of a station wagon ROFLMAO!

When we got older we would each take our turn driving. Somehow I always ended up having a turn at night, in the mountains and it was always foggy.

We went on other trips too. Several to Niagara Falls, the Laura Gorge (Alora? Something like that). Montreal and various other areas of Quebec. A few trips to Manitoba and Saskatchewan. But mostly Florida.

I would still drive too (staying the night at a motel though) but after my back surgery I can't take the drive. I am crippled and in pain for days afterward.

Only one. It was around 1954 and we rented cabins on a lake in northern Indiana called Beaver Dam. Our maternal grandparents went with us which was nice since there were six of us kids then, ranging in age from 16 to 2 and I don't think the 8 of us would've fit in one car. Three of us stayed in grandma's cabin. When we unpacked the car, grandma had brought her iron skillet, pie pans, baking dishes and a mixing bowl. She cleaned that cabin the minute we got there and every day thereafter. She made pies, biscuits and all kinds of good food. It was fun for us kids since we'd never been more than 50 miles outside our little home town. We swam, fished and laid in the sun. There were no facilities in the cabins so we had to use a community outhouse (we spared no expense on that trip, huh?). It made my sister Annie ill every time she had to go, mom got a bad case of sun poison and we older girls all got major sunburns. No wonder we never went anyplace!!

Oh, gosh! These have been so fun to read, thanks everybody!

I remember getting stuck with the lunch making job in the back of the station wagon, I was the littlest so it made sense to torture me, I guess. lol We had the whole deal, sandwiches made from scratch back there (what a pain!), carrot sticks, a piece of fruit, some chips or Fritos, etc. And water. We would stop for a soda in the afternoon when Pops needed some caffeine.

I also remember feeding chipmunks in CO, I would lie down on the dock by the frigid lake and let them crawl all over me looking for peanuts. Ah- the good old days!