Flashback Friday: Writing Your Story One Week at a Time

             

            It has been a short week for me, but you know how sometimes short weeks can feel extra long? TRUE OF THIS WEEK! It hasn’t been bad by any means. Just extra long! But today we celebrate the arrival of a brand new month and hopefully some inching toward spring arriving to stay.

            Today, as I encourage you to enjoy the memories of days gone by, I want to talk about one of my favorite topics: travel! What were your favorite travel memories as a child?

            This might include exploring things like…

·         Did your family always go to the same destinations every year, or did you keep visiting new places?

·         Where did you stay? (Hotels? With family? Camping?)

·         What was your favorite vacation and why?

·         How did you travel most frequently? (Airplane? Car? Boat? Train?)

·         Did you travel as an immediate family or with all the grandparents and cousins? Friends?

·         Where was your first vacation without your family? How old were you?

·         Was there a place you really hoped to go as a child, but your family never went? A secret bucket list item?

·         What was your favorite thing about traveling when you were little?

·         What was your least favorite thing about traveling back then?

·         Any fun vacation traditions?

When I was a kiddo, my parents worked in the school system, so we had the privilege of always having summers off together. I didn’t realize until much later what a rare treat that was for us! We didn’t have to worry about one of my parents not being able to get time off work, because all of us always had the same days off!

Mom made sure we had a family vacation every summer, and I appreciate that so much. I like to think much of my travel planning love and skill came from her. It was much harder for her to plan, of course, because the internet was still years away, so all travel planning took place at our kitchen table, with Mom laboring over AAA books and maps. She sat down with highlighter, atlases, and books, and drew out routes, made hotel reservations, and because of it, we had a trip every summer!

Airbnbs were also not a thing yet, and we weren’t a camping family, so our trips were always taken by car, and we stayed in hotels unless we were visiting my sister in Kansas, and then (once we arrived, of course) we stayed with her. I begged my parents to let us fly sometimes, but it was cheaper to drive, so that’s what we did. Fun fact: I was 26 before I flew for the first time! Turns out I hate flying and it was better that we did travel by car all those times!

While many of our trips during my growing-up years were centered around visiting Lori, we did do many fun side trips:

·         Little House on the Prairie locations

·         Mall of America

·         St. Louis Arch

·         Niagara Falls (Canada, too – before passports were needed!)

·         Washington D.C.

·         Chicago (that one was by train!)

·         Springfield, Illinois

·         Detroit

The only trip I can think of that we took that wasn’t just the three of us was the year we went to Washington D.C. and my sister, Julie, went along with us. My parents owned a station wagon back then, and seat belts weren’t a law, yet, so Julie got the back seat to herself, and I traveled the entire time in the very back of the wagon, in a little bed I set up for myself. I read books, played games, took naps, and had the best time.

I always kept a travel journal (you’re seeing some patterns here, aren’t you) where I documented important facts – like the very moment we crossed the state line into a new state, the name of the hotel where we stayed – and the room number, too. I would write the places we ate our meals and all the sights we saw.

Mom also put together little gift bags for me, and every few hours, I would get to open something new. She always chose things that would keep me occupied on the road, so it was a win-win! We also had snacks in the car, too! I learned one year that you shouldn’t store an open bag of M&Ms in your dad’s hat when it’s in the car window. That hat was immediately retired…some spillage of the M&Ms may have occurred.

Oh! And Mom always made sure we stayed at hotels with swimming pools so I could swim after we arrived. Mom and Dad would take turns resting in the room and sitting with me at the pool. And speaking of the hotels – my favorite was having a TV at the end of my bed (NOVELTY!!!) and getting to eat take out fast food in bed. The stuff dreams are made of when you’re little.

I’m not sure which vacation was my favorite, but the Washington D.C. trip did have a lot of stand-out moments, including the time I got separated from my family in an elevator – and the time I got to help cast a vote in the Capitol Building.

Ahhh, yes. This is where I get my love for travel! But how about you? What memories do you have from travel days gone by?