Family Vacations

When I was growing up my parents took my sister and me on some pretty memorable family vacations. They weren't always memorable in a GOOD way, like the time we hit a deer in Spanish Fork canyon while traveling home from a vacation at night, but I am grateful my parents took the time to help us explore the world.

When I was quite young my parents bought a timeshare condominium in Park City, and I have so many great memories there. The first time we went they had a microwave, and we were pretty excited because we didn't have one at home. So we bought a bag of large colored marshmallows and microwaved them. One year when we went there was so much snow that we opened our back door and there was snow piled almost to the very top of it.

We had two weeks in Park City, one was in August and the other was the last week of the year (between Christmas and New Year's). So a lot of my childhood New Year's celebrations were spent in Park City. I liked it there for a lot of reasons, but in particular I think I liked the fact that we weren't always rushing about trying to get as many things done as possible while we were traveling. Park City was relaxing (they even had a hot tub and sauna) and we spent a lot of our time just playing card games or monopoly or shopping on main street or skiing or wandering around the miniature mall they had there or going on the alpine slide.

By contrast, our traveling family vacations could sometimes be pretty frenzied. My mom was from Virginia, and we went there several times for Thanksgiving and at least once for Christmas. I remember staying up late one night while in Virginia to finish the 6th "Work and the Glory" book, which ended with the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. When I was 18 I went to Virginia and we visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's house. It was being remodeled at the time and all of the furniture was covered in sheets. There was also no heat in the building, and I wasn't prepared for such cold weather. There is something about East Coast cold that makes Utah winters seem like spring by comparison, even when there is snow on the ground in Utah and no snow in Virginia. I think it's the humidity. I had a similar experience while trying to visit the Smithsonian one time. We took the Subway into Washington D.C. only to discover that the museums were all closed. I still remember huddling on one of the porches trying to get warm while we figured out what to do.

One time while visiting Virginia we decided to take a trip to Williamsburg. My dad wrecked our rental car, so we decided to save a little money and rented a used car from a place called "Fancy Flivvers." It was a really old Plymouth and we all wondered if it would be reliable, but we wanted to see Williamsburg so we took the risk. Unfortunately the engine caught on fire while we were driving back. We pulled over to the side of the road and some friendly people were kind enough to offer us a ride to the Richmond airport so we could rent another car. As we were driving my parents saw a hitchhiker and decided to give him a ride. They were feeling generous because of the help they had received, but picking up a random hitchhiker outside Richmond Virginia at 2 in the morning is a little different than helping a family whose car is broken down on the side of the freeway. My sister immediately crawled into the front seat, and I stayed in the back with our new "friend" while he went on and on about how his boss howled at the moon and other completely nonsensical things. Looking back, I suspect he was high. Or crazy. Or both. But fortunately not homicidal :)

One time we took a trip to New York, and I remember the sky in New York city being red and it really scared me. I liked upstate New York, though. We visited Palmyra and the sacred grove and stayed at my aunt and uncle's house. In the middle of the night I wet the bed, and was so embarrassed about it (I was like 8 years old) that I didn't tell anyone. I just wadded up my underwear and threw it under the bathroom sink, hoping no one would ever find it. About a month later, at Christmas time, we received a package from my aunt and uncle that included several wrapped gifts and my underwear that I had hoped to never see again. My aunt had even washed it for me :) I still haven't recovered from that embarrassment.

One time we visited New England. I remember going to the world's oldest candy store in Salem, Massachusetts and visiting Bunker Hill and Paul Revere's house. We also went to Boston and my one goal was to try a bowl of New England clam chowder in the place that made it famous. On another trip we stayed with my uncle in Connecticut over Thanksgiving. It was on that trip that I discovered the artist Enya, and also got in a huge fight with my mom's overly competitive family while playing the game "Encore." The same thing happened when I tried to play that game 20 years later, and I have avoided it ever since. Some games just aren't worth the contention :)

When I was in 4th grade we drove to Denver and caught a train to Burlington, Iowa for a family reunion in Nauvoo. I loved being on the train, watching the sunrise over the corn field of Nebraska and stealing half and half from the dining car :) It was really fun to be able to move around a bit instead of just sitting in a seat in a car or airplane. We also went to St. Louis on the trip, where I threw a tantrum because I didn't want to go to an art museum. But I did enjoying seeing the gateway arch and taking a 3 hour ride on a Mississippi riverboat called "The Presidential."

Another time we went to Maine for Thanksgiving and I got into a fight with my cousin, a seventh day adventist, about which day the Sabbath should be observed on. We also took shorter trips, such as to Mesa Verde in Colorado or Moab, Utah, or Blanding to visit my cousins. We went to Bryce National Park several times and Yellowstone once. We went camping at Craters of the Moon in Idaho when I was 18, and I felt pretty cool on that trip because we took my truck and I got to drive.

When I was about 7 I spent 3 weeks in St. George visiting my cousins and had quite an adventure. I got strep, walked across a hot road in bare feet on what was at the time a record-breaking temperature for the state of Utah (117 degrees), took a mud bath, hiked to the top of a hill, got head lice, and was attacked by a cactus. That last one was one of the best lessons in physics I have ever learned. I was in the front yard with my cousins and my oldest cousin Nathan challenged me to a foot race. He said to me, pointing across the yard, "the first one to touch the flower on that cactus wins." Never one to refuse a challenge, I gave it everything I had and was the first one to touch the flower. It would have been a glorious moment if my momentum hadn't then carried me into the cactus itself, resulting in several hours of painful cactus needle extraction from just about every part of my body. But it was, without question, a memorable moment in my life :)