There are certain markers in our lives that remind us of who we were at various stages of growing into who we will be– markers like the different homes we have lived in, the cars we rode in, the teachers or coaches we had, the schools we attended, and the jobs we have held.
With each one of these reoccurring markers we find ourselves to be different people, having a different experience.
Family vacations are one of these family life markers.
I did not go on regular vacations when I was growing up. With a large family of nine sisters and brothers, it was too expensive and too complicated to do regularly. So, when we did, it was always memorable.
My most memorable vacations as a child were on Lake Okoboji in upper Northwest Iowa. Okoboji was derived from the Dakota name for “The lake”, and that is how my family referred to it.
At 136 ft deep, it is the deepest lake in Iowa, and the second largest, making it a popular regional destination in the region.
At the North Shore of the lake is Arnolds Park, a historic amusement park. Arnolds Park features Legend, a Roller Coaster which carried its first riders in 1927. It is believed to be the 13th oldest wooden roller coaster in the U.S. The old Roof Garden Ballroom in Arnolds Park, once attracted the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, the Guess Who, BJ Thomas, and Johnny Cash.
By the time I was thirteen, my dad would allow me to take my friends on a small powered boat over to Arnolds Park and spend the day riding rides, playing games, eating junk food, and watching music acts. It was my first real time to venture out into the adult world without my parents. Setting off in the boat across the lake to the park, the world seemed so big and beautiful and full of a new kind of wonder–absent the watchful eyes of my parents.
The Lake was so big, that when the Iowa mid-summer thunderstorms rolled in over the lake, they would generate three to four foot white-capped waves. I was caught out in the boat several times in these storms, and each time I thought we would capsize before we made it back to our dock.
That was about it as far as my own family’s vacations go. I got older, went to college, married my wife, we started having a family of our own, and together we began to plot out our own ways of making family markers in the form of vacations and holidays.
Very similar to the family I grew up in, we had a large family, not much money, and so our vacations were also few and far in between. But they were all memorable and remarkable just the same.
Like our annual Christmas Holiday trips to Decatur and Madison, AL, our few summer vacations were modest but always had the element of adventure. How could they not, with a family of young children, where anything outside of their home was some sort of adventure— an evening ride around town, with a “Wrong turn” into the local dairy queen, or made-up adventures as we walked through the Bowers park trails in Tuscaloosa, Aabama where lions and bears and tigers lurked behind every tree, with only Dad standing between them and certain tragedy.
Oh, but those longer trips, when they happened, filled our memory bank up with warm images of family adventure and fun. Even the problems and unwelcomed surprises along the way added to the memory bank, and with time are also thought of with warmth and tenderness.
For instance, one year I borrowed a pop-up camper from a family friend. We drove to Cheaha State Park, about an hour East of Birmingham. When unpacked, it was the size of a four or five-person tent. There were six of us.
We hiked, chased butterflies, and otherwise just enjoyed the Talladega National forest. What I remember most, though, is at night, after crawling into our cramped quarters, the kids sprawled out on the camper floor, legs intertwined, the only light emanating from a small battery operated lantern, listening silently in rapt attention to E.G. Marshall narrate this weeks mystery on “Radio Mystery Theatre”. Here we were, in the middle of the dark forest in a tiny camper, listening to doors creaking, a woman screaming, gunfire, feet running down a dark alley—perfect stories for young children to fall asleep to.
Then there was the road trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee, a wonderful surprise of a vacation. I had no idea Chattanooga was such an interesting and fun city until we went. Being on a tight budget, we stayed at KOA’s along the way, occasionally sharing the tiny cabins with some of the local critters—something the two youngest were not very keen with.
Nevertheless, the Chattanooga area was fascinating. We visited Ruby Falls, home to the tallest and deepest underground waterfall open to the public in the United States.
We also went to Rock City, featuring massive ancient rock formations, and breathtaking “7 States” panoramic views. We walked along the Enchanted Trail into the magic of Fairyland Caverns and Mother Goose Village.
The highlight was our visit to the oldest and largest of America’s Civil War parks, Chickamauga National Military Park (NMP), commemorating the 1863 battles for Chattanooga that marked a major turning point in the war. The park is headquartered at Chickamauga Battlefield, where the fields and woods of northwest Georgia witnessed the last major Confederate victory of the Civil War. It was the most significant Union defeat in the Western Theater and involved the second-highest number of casualties after the Battle of Gettysburg. We were both mesmerized as we looked at the battlefield markers, indicating 50% casualty rates of tens of thousands in just hours. The kids were a little bored.
There were other memorable vacations as well: The beach house on stilts at Gulf Shores that shook and rocked during the night as a Category 3 hurricane approached, cutting our vacation short. The Gulf Shores camping trip, where your mom swung Abby in a swing at the edge of the lake, in front of a sign saying “Warning: Do not feed the alligators!”. The trip to Gatlinburg where I ate two days’ worth of calories at one breakfast, and where we attended the fabulous “Dixie Stampede”. And the unplanned road trip where we just grabbed our stuff, got in the car, and got out of town, only to discover we picked the weekend of the Talladega 500, where traffic was terrible and all the hotels were booked.
The vacation that gets the most votes from the kids was also the biggest in scale: The week long family reunion in Estes Park, Colorado. Again, so much of the fun was getting there in the rented minivan, with the kids drawing straws over who would have to sit next to Abigail, who at that time was relentless in asking questions. Since I drove, I was exempt from answering her. I pitied everyone else.
We stopped to sleep wherever we had enough driving–looking for inviting signs, like the on that said “Free Continental Breakfast”–which consisted of bad coffee and dime store wrapped donut sticks. But it was worth it to watch my son Micheal chase armadillos across the parking lot.
As we drove through the desolate stretch of Interstate in New Mexico, we gasped at the mountain formations and the lightning that seemed to come up from the ground and meet in the sky. That is also where all the girls in the van had a desperate need to go to the bathroom, and bathrooms came by about every hour. with no other choice, they held it until we came to one, pleading me not to hit any bumps. They piled out, ran into the rest room, and just as fast ran back out, screaming, “I can’t go there, it’s nasty!”. So, we started down the road. Another hour of driving and hearing the groans and the pleading from the back-seat, we came across one, one that looked exactly like the last. But this time, no one came out until they had finished their business.
At Estes Park, we drove the Continental Divide, saw for the first time herds of Elk, rode horses in the mountains, had an old fashioned chuck wagon dinner, competed in the family “talent show contest”, celebrated my parents 45th wedding anniversary, rafted a white- water river and with my son Michael climbed the 13,000 ft Mt. Hillett. It was a 5000 ft elevation gain, with no snow. We did it in tennis shoes and shorts. At about 11000 ft I found I had to catch my breath every 20 or 30 ft, and wondered what was going on—then realized that even though it was warm and no snow, we were at an extremely high elevation. At the top, we watched ice climbers climb a wall of ice under the cliff of the summit.
Yes, there were not a lot of vacations growing up in Iowa, nor while we raised our family in Alabama. But the vacations we had found their rightful place in our memory banks as those special times when we ventured out as a family into the larger world–tasting and feeling and seeing its largeness and its beauty, and knowing that within the family, we will always have a rightful place in this large and beautiful world.
Kind Regards,
Bob
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