Childhood Travel Turn-offs
 

I remember 7 to 8 hour drives from Washington D.C. to the Syracuse area and the awful sick headaches I used to get, the warm bologna sandwiches at the rest stop, and sharing the back seat with a St. Bernard. What are your worst childhood travel memories?

Driving into the mountains with my parents, in the back seat,around those curves, up and around, getting sicker and sicker, around those curvey roads, Stop,I am getting sick,stopping on the side of the road,throwing up,getting back in that damn car:O(

Riding every year for over 2 hours to see the zoo in Phila. -- never been much of a zoo goer, but that ride was far too long for a zoo, especially more than one time.<BR><BR>Seems to me you either love or hate zoos.

In 1970, my Dad bought a 1963 hard top cadillac, complete with electric everything, and white leather seats. He then decided it would be great to leave our home at the beach and visit the mountains. We left Montauk Point NY in August and headed for the Maine mountains around Bangor to a lake side cabin. Well for some reason the air conditioning only blew hot air so we travelled hours with this on and the windows down (DAD philosophy: it will start to cool soon!, right up there with I'm not lost!) Turns out some switch had to be flipped under the hood to stop the heater and start the air con. Before you all rag me on my lack of car knowledge, I was 10 ok, and it was my Dad's story and he stuck to it until he passed away.

Leaving early Christmas morning to drive to Ponca City, OK from Tulsa to visit my Grandparents. They were very strict and not very loving. Although the drive was only 1 or 2 hours, all I wanted to do was stay home and play with the gifts Santa had left me. We would usually return that same night around 9pm. It was a miserable day! After growing up I realized that my Grandfather was actually the President of a major oil company and had a PhD in Chemistry, a brillant man...but not who a little kid wanted to be with on Christmas. Micki

The time my sisters and I were bored on a long boring stretch of interstate, so we were holding up a cute little sign that said, "help we're being kidnapped". People were laughing 'cus it was obvious that we were laughing and just being stupid kids. Well.....some kind soul reported us, so the cops stopped us, we were all hauled out of the car,(my poor Dad just thought he was being pulled over for speeding--teehee) and we were royally reamed out by the head-honcho cop. Oops. No arrests thank goodness, but it was a VERY SILENT 8-hour ride home, and my family did not discuss this incident for MANY MANY years. Time has obviously healed the pain, 'cus I'm writing about it on the world-wide web. :)

I hated the trips my dad got us excited about that never happened.

Karen, how funny!<BR>Mina, how sad! <BR><BR>I'd have to say mine is the same as CarSick.<BR><BR>

We only went to the grandparents' homes for "vacation". There was no air conditioning in the back of the station wagon, so a small electric fan was mounted. I was so bored, I got my little brother to moon passing motorists. He still holds it against me. The highlight of the trip was a stop on the NJ turnpike at HoJo's for a chocolate lollipop. Once, we got stranded in a snowstorm on the Verazano Narrows bridge and had to stay in a roach infested boarding house in Brooklyn. The highlight there was the owner had a Myna bird and gave me a Hoho. Ah, the memories!

My father smoking vile-smelling cigars as he drove, with the air conditioner blowing the smoke towards us in the back seat.<BR><BR>Never realizing that with 3 kids, we could not all have a window seat.<BR><BR>

Sunday afternoon drives listening to the Cleveland Indians on the radio for hours on end. Need I say more?

I was 15 with 5 siblings down to the age of 7. My mother -- a very frazzled, very young and recent widow with 6 kids and no idea how to deal with life -- had driven us 700 miles to take us to visit my father's elderly parents after he died. On the way back, she was flying down the NY Thruway at something like 90 MPH with a cigarette in her mouth, with the younger kids squabbling in the back of the station wagon. I understood that she was overwhelmed but I was absolutely terrified. <BR><BR>Eventually, a man in an unmarked car pulled up alongside her and motioned her to the side. She finally pulled over, and this guy read her the riot act for driving like a maniac with "6 beautiful kids" in the car (no seatbelts back then, either). He left, and she deduced he was not a state cop (no ticket offered, no ID), and she fumed all the way home about having him arrested for impersonating a police officer. But I was SOOO grateful to him, because she stayed close to the speedlimit after that.

I have horrid memories of being dragged on several vacations to Nashville because my parents liked country music. They actually took me to the Grand Ole Opry. To this day they keep telling my how lucky I was, that not many kids have that opportunity. Ok, mom and dad.

My damn ignorant parents never took us a damn place. No money for shoes or a toothbrush, but money for beer and cigarettes. The only time I went someplace is when I turned 16 and was able to drive myself.

EVERY summer weekend, whether we wanted to go or not, we were dragged to my grandparent's summer home. I hated Friday afternoons when my dad came home from work, because it meant a two hour car ride on the sideroads because my mom hated the interstate. The first month the cottage smelled like the 4 million moth balls my grandmother put out for the winter. Every morning for breakfast we ate the fried fish that my dad and grandpa caught or went hungry until dinner. And we weren't allowed to read the Sunday newspaper because my grandfather was saving it for his neighbor at home.

Ahh Sally, I sympathize. Every year my parents would drag myself and younger brother to Florida from Michigan. Everything had to be done cheap, cheap, cheap. Couldn't spend too much of mom's cigarette money.<BR><BR>We had to drive and then listen to mom bitch about her back hurting the whole way down. We had to eat at the nastiest dirtiest truck stops because it was cheap. Slept at rest areas in the car - no expensive motels for us! The few times we would get a motel it was the cheapest, they would lie about how many of us there were (must have had to pay for kids back then, dunno), and then spend the evenings watching them drink beer out of their styrofoam collers - THAT was always full!<BR><BR>We did get to do Disney(only one park at the time) but could have no snacks, food, souvenirs NOTHING because mom didn't want to spend her bingo money. The rest of the time we stayed with relatives and mooched off of them.<BR><BR>All in all I hated it. Now I have some messed up psychology thing going on that we have to take our kids to Florida every year and "do it right". Twenty years from now my kids will be on here complaining about how they couldn't go to college because mom had to spend $$$$ on vacation each year - lol!

Some of these are so sad and and others really heartwarming.<BR>For the most part, our family vacations were really wonderful EXCEPT the time my parents went to Hawaii and left my brother and me at relatives we really did not know and clearly did not want us there! I was 16 at the time and left a boyfriend at home so I was doubly miserable. The daughter in "European Vacation" is an exact replica of how I felt and its amusing now but it sure wasn't then!<BR>Its also interesting that so many of us that had parents that just couldn't get a crowbar in the wallet are now putting aside significant money specifically for vacations so we don't have to cut every corner.

This thread is great!<BR><BR>OK - trips from NY to Deerfield Beach FL, sometimes twice a year. My dad would tow a housetrailer down for the winter, rent it to snowbirds, then tow it back north for our use as summer camp.<BR><BR>We rode in the back of a "utility" truck - one of those trucks with all sorts of compartments on the side, and a sliding cover over the top & rear.<BR><BR>When not towing the trailer we also held up signs, "Help", etc, but also, since we could not be seen from the cab of the truck, would smile and wave at other travelers, then give them the bird when they returned the gesture. Then laugh hilariously. Over time we got braver and more vulgar, mooning and flashing as well. <BR><BR>We also seldom stopped at restaurants, and if we did it would be a truck stop. At age 11, I finally bought one of those 25 cent products, "sold for prevention of disease only" ... and could not for the life of me figure how that balloon was gonna prevent any sickness! Showed it to parents: "Where'd you get that? Throw that nasty thing away!" By the next year, I'd figured a few things out.<BR><BR>Years later we found that one of our "flashing victims" had told my parents at a truckstop about our antics, but our dad was just going to let us continue until the police stopped and scared the crap out of us ... but that part never did materialize.<BR>

Wow. Some of these replies really sound like they are straight out of the Dysfunctional Family Handbook!<BR><BR>My parents weren't wealthy, but we always took vacations (road trips really). I can honestly say I loved every minute of them. We went all over New England, to Florida, Disney. I still remember helping to look for the 2 key words on signs, "vacancy" and "pool". My parents always got a motel with a pool.<BR><BR>I now do remember the bad part. My siblings and I were dispatched to run into the motel offices to find out the rate. Sometimes we would stop at 5 or 6 places before deciding on one. Does anybody remember the Waffle house? It was such a treat to have breakfast there. <BR><BR>Now my kids complain if we don't have a suite on the club level. Ingrates. Times sure have changed.<BR><BR>

Every summer we had really nice vacations for two weeks, we lived in Los Angeles so we would drive usually to Yosemite or the Redwoods on the coast.<BR>One trip was trumatic because we were taking a walk in the redwoods at dusk and I was playing my tiny harmonica and having a great time. We turned a corner in the path and looked face to face with a giant bear! We turned and walked away very fast and I dropped my hormonica! No one would return to pick it up for me, so to this day if you see a tiny harmonica in the Redwoods it is mine!