Go to Learn – Part 1
Summer is a great time for field trips, and those field trips can be far or near. When our children were growing up, I was inspired by the places that my parents took my brother and me. Daddy loved to go, and Mother was happy to satisfy his wanderlust. My parents didn’t let the smallness of Daddy’s paycheck keep us at home.
Since Daddy worked until 9:00 p.m. on Saturday nights and went back to work on Monday morning at seven, weekend trips were pretty much out of the question. However, we took lots of a-few-hours-there and a-few-hours-back day trips. We took day trips to the Hermitage in Hermitage, Tennessee; to Lincoln’s Birthplace in rural Kentucky; to Rock City in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and to the Tennessee State Museum and the Tennessee State Fair in Nashville. One night Daddy took us to a live radio broadcast. On partial-day outings we went to Montgomery Bell State Park in the next county over to have a picnic and go swimming.
Once a year, we went on a short five-day vacation. Destinations I especially enjoyed were the Smoky Mountains; St. Augustine, Florida; Six Flags over Georgia in Atlanta; and Charleston, South Carolina, where we camped and visited Fort Sumter.
My parents at the Memphis Zoo
My brother Steve, myself, and my mother at Hillbilly Village in Pigeon Forge on one of our many jaunts to the Smoky Mountains.
Sometimes we just went for a fun time; and sometimes, as you can see by my list, Daddy included a place that had historic significance. Sometimes we stayed in inexpensive hotels. Once we rented a cabin at a state park. At other times we camped in a tent. Some of my favorite times were mornings when my parents put our Coleman stove on a picnic table and Mother cooked us a hot breakfast.
I don’t remember ever planning to follow in my parents’ footsteps and try to take my own children lots of places. However, early in our marriage, one of my cousins was living near Washington, D.C. Ray and I were hoping we would soon start having children, so I suggested, “Let’s go see Debbie and Chris and see Washington before we start having children.”
My thinking was: “We had better travel now while we can!” I had no idea then that by the time John our oldest was 21, we would have taken our children to all of the lower 48 states.
This is how that got started. We were living in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1984. John was five, Bethany two, and Mary Evelyn a little bitty thing. Friends asked us to go tent camping with them and we did. I hadn’t known you could camp with a baby, but that weekend I found out that you could.
We moved to Illinois the next year. The following spring or summer I told Ray, “We don’t know how long we will live up north. While we are up here, let’s go to Mount Rushmore.” He agreed, so we bought a tent and started our own make-it-work-somehow travel adventures. Mary Evelyn was so little, she called it “Mount Mushmore” (which is, of course, what we often call it still), and to her we came home through Misconsin.
John, Ray, Mary Evelyn, and Bethany are beside our tiny tent at our campsite near “Mount Mushmore.”
Yesterday Ray and I watched a short video about Comoros, a tiny island nation on the east coast of Africa. Neither of us knew much about Comoros before we watched that video. “It’s a great big world,” Ray said. That’s one thing children find out for themselves when they go to learn. They learn so much more, and some of those lessons are spiritual ones. When I was a child, we often sang “How Great Thou Art” at church. From childhood until today, the words “When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur” take me straight to the views of the “lofty mountain grandeur” of the Smoky Mountains I saw with my parents as a child and that I continue to see when Ray and I go there now.
Here is my Budget Travel 101 — Lesson 1: Be willing to do what it takes to make your family dreams come true. I’m thankful for a mama who was willing to do just that for my dad. I am thankful, too, for parents who took us along for the ride.
An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
And he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good and not evil
All the days of her life.
Proverbs 31:10-12
My favorite vacation as a teen was when my dad (pastor but also world history teacher) took us to each of the New England States. We saw so much history!
This fall, we will travel back to Iowa for a couple of weeks to help in our “home” church but then my two youngest daughters will go by train with me out west to visit my sister and my daughter and I can’t wait to show them the history in WY!
Your trip to New England as a teen and your trip to Iowa and Wyoming this year all sound fantastic. How blessed you are to have a dad who did that for you and how blessed your daughters are to have you take them on a train trip out west. Wow!
Dear Charlene, I thought I’d respond just for fun. My parents also took my sister, brother and myself on week long camping trips. We visited every state east of the Mississippi River and just a few beyond it. When my siblings became older teenagers and chose to stay home, I got to invite a friend as a travel companion. I have so many memories of those trips. I learned to swim in campground swimming pools. We visited historic sites and museums and theme parks and beaches. My favorite places were the most scenic locations. When I was about four years old we traveled through New York and into Canada near Montreal. We got so lost that a helpful (French speaking) man had his bilingual son tell us, “My father said to tell you that you are no longer on the map.” We camped in their yard that night though they had invited us to stay in their home. That was over 50 years ago. We still keep in contact with Joel (the bilingual son) and his wife Maxine. I also enjoyed those hot meals cooked on the Coleman stove on the edge of the picnic table in those parks and campgrounds.
In recent years, to celebrate our homeschool graduates, we took trips. Lydia planned her trip as a survey of New England. We visited many sites in MA including Plymouth, Martha’s Vineyard, the Cape Cod National sea coast, Boston, Concord and Lexington. In NH we visited Castle in the Clouds instead of spending a day at Lake Winnepesocky due to rain. We also visited a laundromat to dry our wet sleeping bags 😊. We hiked Cadillac Mountain at Acadia in ME in the wee hours so we could watch the sunrise and visited Bar Harbor. In Newport, RI we toured two mansions.
Jacob’s trip included the Flight 93 Memorial, the Heinz Museum in Pittsburgh, the NFL Hall of Fame, Presque Isle, Niagara Falls, a botanical garden and the alleged birthplace of the famous chicken wings in Buffalo, NY (there are two places and we ate at both).
Katie and I will embark on her trip in August. We’ll be visiting the Tetons and Yellowstone.
Very different trips for very different children. All wonderful blessings. God has given us a beautiful country and world. I’m excited to see what God has stored up for us in eternity!
I love your stories of your childhood camping adventures and of your children’s “senior trips!” How super cool that you still stay in touch with your friend near Montreal! Thank you so much for sharing these wonderful stories and adventures with me.