What was the best vacation you ever enjoyed with your family when younger or growing up? What made it so wonderful?

My family (parents and three kids at the time) took a car trip from where we lived in San Francisco up to Washington State for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. What made it a great trip is we took three days to get to Seattle because we stopped a lot.

We too the redwood Highway, so we saw Paul Bunyan and Babe at the Trees of Mystery; we drove through a redwood at the Avenue of the Giants. We stopped at the Sea Lion Caves in Oregon and went to the Tillamook Cheese factory.

And after the wonder of the World’s Fair and the Space Needle and the monorail, we went up to Puget Sound to visit family friends that had a farm. It was the perfect trip for a seven year old!

We took vacations every year. The one I remember the best, because I was older, was, starting in 1972, renting Cabin 10 for 10 days every year, at Harmels Ranch Resort near Gunnison, Colorado.
Sometimes we’d catch trout. We were all very surprised the first time, that Mom knew how to cook it them!
Horseback riding was my favorite.

When I was younger, living in Florida, we went to all the touristy places. Saw alligators. Went to different beaches.

We stayed in motels. Always, always one with an outdoor pool. (You know…I think that was the pool I almost drowned in once. Dad saved me. 15 minutes later I knew how to swim.)
A lot of the motels had those crazy vibrating beds. At bedtime Dad would stick a dime in them and we three girls would try to fall asleep before it quit vibrating. Begging for more dimes! He would usually stick one more in, but none after that.

Even going to Texas was an adventure. (Me and my accident prone sister. Yes, that was the age when I was expected to keep her from getting eaten by alligators, or drowned in the bay or the neighbor’s pool, when we got back home to our canal-side home in Florida.)

I remember one winter in the early 1960’s when my parents drove my brother and me from New York down to Miami, Florida! The drive down took a few days because we stopped frequently along the way hitting all kinds of tourist places. No rush.
For me the most striking sight was reaching Pedro’s South of the Border in Dillon, South Carolina. There were billboards for it many miles, hundreds of miles, and the lights lit up the sky. We walked into a fireworks stand that was the most spectacular thing I had ever seen! So many of everything all neatly stacked! Magic!
We took pictures of us in bathing suits on the beach in December and swam in the warm ocean!
(Not long after my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and that was the last trip we took as a family. I wonder if she knew… )

Oh, God @LuckyGuy….

My parents were savers and very conservative. This trip was wonderful, but uncharacteristic.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she knew. Both of my parents are long gone now so I’ll never know.

I am feeling so very sad. How old were you? Do you still have the pictures?

Most memorable was one month before I turned 6. My father, mother and her parents. Also my sister and brother. We stayed at Yosemite in a log cabin in July, There was frost one morning when we got up. My grandfather asked what time it was on the wind-up alarm clock. It was 6 AM which is what I told him.
My mom had a bag of Campfire Marshmallows, I was eating one while we were walking over to the lodge center, a fawn came up to me and kicked me in the shin and I dropped the marshmallow which was promptly eaten by the fawn.

@Dutchess_III Of course I have the pictures. I would have been about 12 and my brother 10.
Don’t be sad. Her illness helped form me into the person I am today. I watched my Dad work hard to keep the roof over our heads. I could have misbehaved but I didn’t. Life wasn’t a game. I helped around the house. I did my homework.I was a good kid and did well in school because I knew my Dad was just hanging in there.

I ♥ you @LuckyGuy.

I want to see the pictures!

I’ll dig them up.

I’m a bit of a stick-in-the-mud and don’t like change so holidays have always been quite stressful for me. Thinking about it, I think my mum is the same. So I don’t have many good memories of holidays in my youth. I have a holiday house now and holidays are brilliant there.

What is a holiday house?

A second home that you go to for a holiday