Story time! Childhood especially but, other exceptional memories of your travels too

[Coiled]

Preamble (may or may not be relevant later):
- Dad loved to travel and Mom was deathly afraid of heights.
- One older brother and a beagle (Taffy) in most family travels.
- We went to all states west of the Mississippi (the song helped me spell that ) and most east.
- We also went to Canada and Mexico (Monterrey).
- A huge, canvas, 8 man tent for the 1st half of family vacations and then we "graduated" to a whopping 16' Shasta.
- As an adult I've been to @10 European countries and Saudi Arabia.

Ours was blue but that's about as close as I can find. Roughly 12'x12'.

A Dad, 2 boys and an extremely modest Mom using a porta pot before bedtime. How does a kid forget that?

 

[Coiled]

KY or TN, somewhere out that way we toured a timber mill back in the day kids could be kids.

After seeing 5'D+ saw blades chew up timber, the guide said *you want to run across the jam?*
Big brother followed him w/o hesitation crossing to the other bank in a flash. I got 20, maybe 30' out, stuttered on a small log an went under. I panicked and flailed, reaching on top of logs but they kept rolling sending me under water. Mom screamed to Dad *SAVE MY BABY* but he was busy catching Kodak moments, literally.

Fighting and graveling with fear, my feet touched ground and I stood up.

I rode back to campsite in the very rear of a '71 Buick Estate Wagon, stripped to my drawers and covered in pine sap. Good times.

 

[leVieux]

Many years ago, we were sitting in a small boat on a large lake along the Gulf Coast, waiting for sufficient daylight to anchor our outboard and wade into the marsh, for hunting. Then, suddenly & silently several large extremely bright objects appeared in the night sky, very high above the Earth. I watched them cross, East to West, using Zeiss 7x50 marine binoculars. It was spooky, but not really scary, as they sped away from us.

A couple days later, the Soviets announced that they had successfull launched the first Earth-orbiting satellite, “Sputnik-I”.

What we had seen was the satellite, with its launch vehicle & some debris in trail.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1

 

[Army 1911]

I was 20 and getting off the train in Glasgow Scotland when I ran into some marines. One looked familiar so I asked where he was from. Georgia he said. Bingo, he was one of the four future farmers of America guys who my dad found lost in a dangerous part of Kansas City. He brought them home for diner. 5 years later I meet him in Glasgow. He was on a 3 day pass from guarding nuke subs at Holy Loch.

 

[Coiled]

Wisconsin, Minnesota, maybe Iowa, IDR; I was just a kid.

Family traveling at speed when Mom the plant lover shouts *Oh! let's stop THERE.*

A little ole man's horticultural bug gone wild. Rows, and curved rows of meandering rows of flowering plants, all aligned with a flowing stream. It was impressive, even to a kid.

 

[no2gates]

On my return business trip from Orlando to San Diego. Was going to have a stop over in Denver, then on to San Diego. As I normally did, I fell asleep shortly after take off. I heard the announcement about putting seat to upright position, yada yada yada, didn't think I was asleep for more than 30 minutes and looked down and was seeing that it didn't look like Denver down there, but somewhere else I had been just a couple of weeks before. Got closer to the ground and I was then positive that we were landing in Atlanta. Pulled out my ticket to confirm that I wasn't mistaken of where I was going. When we landed, the pilot told us we were forced to land at the closest airport due to a security breech, and everyone needed to get off the plane. When I got off, there was a LOT of people all over the place, and a lot of military with rifles all over the place. Then saw the TV's in the airport telling the truth about why we landed.
Yes, this where I was stuck for the next 5 days on 9/11/2001.

 

[striker55]

Early 70's drove from Long Island NY to San Diego with two buddies. That was an adventure, one memory was going to Tijuana. I had long hair, I guess I would be a hippie, Mexico wouldn't let long hair's in. I was stopped at the border and made to exit the car and Mexico. Two buddies went in, I went back to the motel. They came back that night and talked me into getting a haircut. Went to Tijuana, got drunk, got arrested for having a switchblade that I purchased from a shop down the street. As the Mexican cop was arresting me some young Americans told me he didn't want to really put me in jail, he was looking for a bribe. It was the end of the night and we were out of money. Guy said to offer the cop something, I gave the cop my Timex watch. What got me mad I didn't get the knife back, he probably gave it back to the shop owner to sell again. I have other stories about that trip.

 

[Sam7sf]

Coiled cool thread and once I get photos scanned I’ll share.

Good thread to share old photography

 

[benenglish]

Yes, this where I was stuck for the next 5 days on 9/11/2001.

9/11 was painful to me in odd ways. One of the worst was seeing the people working in the conference room next to us. It was in a hotel and they were from a convention services company HQd in one of the towers. I watched them as they watched all their co-workers and friends die on TV. A little while after the first impacts, one of the surrounding buildings was badly damaged by a building falling on it and it catching fire. One of the women lived in that building and realized she was watching her dog die. That was too much for her and she lost it, collapsing on to the floor and had to be carried away.

It was about too much for me, too.

That's a travel story I wish I could forget.

 

[leVieux]

I’ve got 2 ‘’9/11’’ tales.

#1). MY wife & a group of some 12 friends from Deep South Texas had reservations for first lunch seating @ ‘’Windows on the World’’ Restaurant atop the WTC.

This would have had them in the building on time for the first plane strike.

One of the ladies got sick, so they called and rescheduled for 2 weeks later.

We all saw what happened. Wife had dodged that bullet !

Merci a Dieu !

leVieux
.

 

[mroper]

When I was a kid we would go camping at echo lake in Afton, New York on all the Holiday weekends. We would go with a few other families it was a Fun time. During the Summer we would go to New hampshire or Maine and stay in Cabins on a Lake.

 

[deemus]

I guess I was around 11 when we took a road trip to see my cousin at Camp Pendleton. Got to stick my toes in the Pacific for the first time. But only my toes. The water was full of jelly fish. Couldn't go in.

Drove up the coast and spent the night in Sequoia and Yosemite. In Seqouia I think, I had been giving the family instruction on what to do in case we encountered a bear. I was an avid reader from a very young age, and had covered all that prior to the trip.

Its getting dark and I see what looks like a bear in a clearing. "Holly shit its a bear!" and took off running for the bathroom. I could hear my family laughing hysterically as I was running so I turned around. My sister was rolling on the ground she was laughing so hard.

Turns out they had all noticed the big round rocks at places in the clearing, and I had NOT seen those. It wasn't a bear after all.

For most of my life I have endured the occasional, "OMG its a bear!!" from my family. They literally won't let me forget it.

ETA - still have my mug from Sequoia.

 

[baboon]

My dad for the most part spent his vacation doing crap around the house. If anything we belong to a recreation club that that had swimming fishing camping.

My older brother is like 6 years older & I got a bunch of hand me down things that he had bought & posting interest in when girls, beers & car came into play. He had a 125 cc Honda murdercycle he gave me the summer my parent were going to dump me off in Colorado for the summer.

The night before they were going to square up my trip I busted my foot. Not sure of if he was feeling guilty about wrecking my dad first brand new car which screwed me from ever getting to use any of my dad future vehicles. I could have been the cast on my foot figuring I I would just tool around the neighborhood bore with a busted foot .

The firstly I had it broke a turn signal off it. Instead of going bat shit crazy he just stripped a bunch of crap off it.

My parents were clueless to were I spent those daze. I'd ride down to the stone quarries and trail ride & shoot. I ran into a bunch of Outlaw M/C members once. I really figured they would give me shit, instead I was even offered up inner tubes & trash bags for the cast.
It was as if they were trying to recruit me. I swim with the chicks who pretty much always skinny dipped & partied with the guy on shore. I'd get home with the worse munchies right before dinner time. I remember my dad wondering WTF I did all day that with a cast on my foot not doing much was like I worked a full time job.

 

[deemus]

This one didn't involve travel. Well, I guess it kind of did.

My dad would sometimes take me to school on his way to work. One morning he is right in front of the school, and a small dog runs out in front of him as he drove through the cross-walk, and he ran over it. Its squirming around trying to die and stuff, while all the kids out front were crying and yelling. My dad pulls on in and drops me off.

I go to my 2nd grade classroom only to be confronted by a bunch of girls asking why my dad ran over little Susie's pet chihuahua. They were relentless. And ruthless. And they kind of ganged up on me. I panicked and told them he was drunk.

My teacher, after she stopped laughing, made everyone be quiet and assured me that there was no way my dad, in his police uniform at 7:45am was drunk. (he didn't drink at all) When I got home my mom met me at the door, and told me some stuff about what a horrible thing to say it was. "They were ganging up on me!" My dad laughed the loudest, and in fact couldn't stop.

 

[thescoutranch]

This is what we had for our family vacations and temporary housing when we got to a new base and they did not have housing ready yet. We spent four weeks living out of this thing in North Dakota when we got assigned to Grand Forks.

4 kids (9,11,15,17), a dog and 2 parents.

I do not know how my mother did not kill us all

Would not trade those memories for the world.

 

[jrbfishn]

Oh the joys of military travel in the 1960s and 70s. Temporary housing , sometimes for months. Sometimes arriving and leaving when orders get mixed up. Had some fun times though.

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