Saturday, January 30, 2021

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Your Best Summer Vacation as a Kid

 Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!


Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along - cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1) Tell us about a memorable summer vacation when you were a child. What are your memories of summer vacations with your family? Did you travel? How? Did you visit extended family? Who?

2)  Put it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link in a comment to this post.

Here's mine:

The first summer vacation my family took was in July of 1954. I was 10, my brother Stan was 7, and my brother Scott was just a gleam. My father drove up Highway 101 to Los Angeles and then onto Highway 99 over the Grapevine, into the hot San Joaquin Valley to Fresno, and then up Highway 41 to the turn off to Bass Lake, just south of Yosemite National Park. It was about 450 miles.  We had never driven much further than 30 miles before, it seemed.  My mother's right arm was badly sunburned from her window being down. What a long day, but we were on an adventure, some place new, and we would be staying for a week at a campground.

I don't know what the name of the camp was, but we were in a rustic cabin, I think with a kitchen, and there was a general store nearby. I think my mother cooked dinners, and made sandwiches for lunch, and we probably had cereal and milk for breakfast. All of the mundane household things didn't matter - we were at a lake with boats and fishing and, oh my, it was going to be fun.

Stan and I learned to swim in Bass Lake. We used inner tubes for awhile, but soon we were cruising around the shallow waters on our own. We went fishing from a boat, putting worms on hooks and catching, as I recall, some small fish and a good sunburn. Then there was the hiking on the trails and in the brush and trees around the cabin. We went up to the store and bought candy and baseball cards. They had most of the baseball cards we didn't have for the 1954 series of cards back home. I think we bought them out so we could trade with our buddies back home.

One day, we drove into Yosemite National Park, stopped in the big Sequoia trees (the car tunnel one) and took pictures, then to Yosemite Valley and went to several waterfalls. We got wet and it was cooling for us because it was hot, and lots of fun. We had never seen these places before, and it was like a new world for two little San Diego boys.

All too soon, we headed home in the 1954 blue Mercury that my dad had bought earlier in the year. Two-door, no seat belts, no air conditioning, stick shift, etc. We had fun on the roads (no freeways then) too, counting trucks, looking for license plates, counting train cars, and singing camp songs.

That was the best vacation we took as a family. My brother Scott came along the next year and we went off on trips to the state bowling tournament for five years or so during the summer, and stayed in motels, but this was the only real vacation we had at a fun place.

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Copyright (c) 2021, Randall J. Seaver

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5 comments:

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

My first trip on an airplane in 1969 on a trip with my Nana.

https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2021/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-your-best.html

ByAPearl said...

A road trip in 1970 from Alabama to Oregon and back to Alabama. https://geneajournalsbyapearl.wordpress.com/2021/01/30/my-most-memorable-summer-vacation/

Liz said...

Just a hodge podge of memories...

https://gatapleytree.blogspot.com/2021/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-your-best.html

Linda Stufflebean said...

Here's mine. I cheated a bit and went with Easter vacation. https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2021/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-127/

M. Diane Rogers said...

Hi, Randy and everyone. I guess I cheated a bit too, Linda :-) https://canadagenealogy.blogspot.com/2021/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-your-best.html