Pike’s Peak, Silver Dollar City, the Smoky Mountains, Six Flags, camping, fishing and visiting relatives will leave you with lifelong childhood memories. Taking a vacation with your family is great when you’re young!
We all have different memories and different perspectives of our childhood. Being the oldest sister, my vacation experiences were not the same as those of my two sisters who were 5 and 10 years younger.
These are the things that I remember:
I spent most of my childhood in Kansas – from the time I was 4 until I was 15. So the majority of my childhood memories and vacations revolved around travel between states. We lived in Kansas and my Grandparents were in Missouri, about 7-8 hours away. We visited twice a year most years – during the school break in the summer and at Christmas.
And the trips were memorable.
Clothes for 4 people (five after baby Janet came), pillows, Cheez-Its, drinks, and all the Christmas presents in the trunk. My Dad became a master packer. Thank goodness for HUGE car trunks in the 60’s!
Shenanigans in the car. That’s a really long trip and difficult for kids to sit still and behave hour after hour.
Stuffing the baby sister in the floor or in the back window – she was a little bitty thing and there wasn’t a “car seat” rule (sorry).
Singing at the top of our lungs. Putting the hot watch on the back of Daddy’s neck. Time spent “not touching you”. Drawing a line down the middle of the back seat.
As we drove along, I’d watch those machines in the fields, trying to pump up some hills – at least that’s what my 7-year-old brain saw – for the poor Kansas folk. (There are lots of hills in Missouri, but Kansas is lacking in that department)
Sleeping in Grandma’s bunk beds, visiting all four sets of Grandparents at Christmas, eating “That Salad” until we were sick (at least I was), and Uncle Jimmy shorting out my electric train track with his keys…
Our Wheeler Family Reunion in the summer. We hung out at the Gazebo, ate a lot, enjoyed homemade vanilla ice cream, got reacquainted with cousins, listened to aunts and uncles tell us how much we’d grown, and enjoying some guitar pickin’.
Camping trips, the farm, fishing with Grandma Ruth, visiting Grandad Thornton’s station for “the Best Cheeseburger in the USA”. Sitting on a tall stool at the counter, getting an orange soda from the machine and a bag of peanuts from the TOM’S jar…
I think this will be the next photo series – vacations during my childhood. (We’ll have to dig around in the archives for those pictures.)
I was fortunate as a child, to have vacationed with my family. Where you go doesn’t matter as much as who you go with and who you visit or meet along the way. Good Memories of Good Times!
The return to “vacationing with my parents” over the past few years has been incredible! You can’t imagine how much it has meant to me, spending time with my parents, my sister, and our husbands. (We took the husbands to AZ). If you want to read about our more recent trips, just check it out here.
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