How much did you travel as a kid? (trips, summer, drive)
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Only to Texas. This motivated me to want to travel beyond Oklahoma. Once married, me and my husband took out to kids to all but 4 states. Our next goal is overseas.
As a little kid in the 1960's when you used to dress to fly in a jet:
Kitzbuhel at age 7 on a Christmas ski trip
England at age 8 for a couple of week summer trip
Innsbruck ski trip in middle school
Tignes/Val d'Isere ski trip as a Freshman in High School
St Thomas at maybe age 9
Puerto Rico in 6th grade
Snowbird ski trip as a Sophomore in High School
Lots of Florida trips. My dad had a condo on Longboat Key
New York Worlds Fair as a really little kid
Montreal Expo 67
I always skied. From 5th grade onwards, every weekend
A Cooperstown / Niagra Falls camping trip
DC in middle school
Aunt in Red Bank, NJ. Lots of Jersey Shore trips and day trips into Manhattan
Mother from Pennsylvania Dutch country. Several trips there.
My parents both went to Penn. I was dragged to Philly a few times for football games.
2 week canoe trip on the Rangely Lakes in Maine as a young teen
Sailing, tons of cruises to Marthas Vineyard, Nantucket, Block Island, Newport. Cuttyhunk was the standard Saturday night overnight on a weekend.
I didn't go anywhere in college. I didn't have the time. Texas Instruments flew me to Dallas for an interview. A childhood friend of mine took me to a Cowboys/Redskins game. Montreal was the booze cruise from Burlington VT.
I traveled way more as an adult. I usually had jobs with a ton of business travel around the world. I'd do a ski trip or two every winter. A bunch of South America summer ski trips and a 3 week ski trip in New Zealand.
How much did you travel as a kid or teen (that is, under the age of 19)? What destination(s) did your family go to, if any? Any memories of travel as a child you'd like to share?
My family was not the traveling type. We owned a small business, and my dad preferred to spend his money on things that could be enjoyed at our home in the country, like snowmobiles, four-wheelers, dirt bikes, TVs, etc. My mom was an absolute homebody who was probably scarred for life from a few early traumatic experiences with going out-of-state. As a result, our vacations were limited to camping in Breezy Point (a small town in central Minnesota) about a week or two out of the summer when my mom stayed at home, an approximately annual trip to Minneapolis, and two trips to Wisconsin Dells (the ultimate Upper Midwestern prole destination), taken at the age of 7 (the first trip I planned) and 14.
The first time when I went to a place in other than Minnesota or Wisconsin was when I was 14, when my dad and I drove up to Fort Frances, Ontario. I went with about half of my eighth grade class to Washington D.C. (we stayed in Virginia) a month later. This was also my first time on a plane.
My first trip abroad was also a school trip, this time with my Spanish class to Costa Rica when I was 18. It was also the first time I saw and swam in the ocean (the Pacific).
First time I traveled internationally (I'm from the US) was when I was 3. We went to London, Paris, Italy and Switzerland. Don't remember it, though. The trips I remember were when we went to Philadelphia when I was 6 to visit my aunt and cousins (and we stopped in New York, which I remember better) and then to Walt Disney World and drove around Florida and then went to Paris when I was about 10. And then we went on plenty of trips to Europe (mainly France and England) between then and when I was 19. I guess we went to four countries total before I was 19 (France, Italy, UK and Switzerland).
I've been to 8 countries total in my life (I've also been to Monaco, Netherlands, Belgium and Fiji), but they were all after I turned 19 (except perhaps for Monaco, but fairly sure I went there for the first time afterward as well). So altogether, I've visited 8 countries outside the US and have visited or lived in 19 US states and Washington, D.C.
We went camping a lot at the same place just an hour or so away from home. We had a camper. It was fun. We also went to Florida every year about seven years and did the whole Disney thing, beaches, etc. Again it was fun.
I just wish we had a little more variety. But I'm more than making up for that now. My husband and I don't do anything fancy. Just a nice variety.
We either went camping, went to the beach, or went to visit our relatives in L.A. It was all in state and 4 hours away from home at the most. My parents were not adventurous, granted California is a big state, but still we could have at least gone to Nevada or something.
In those days, a car trip was fun. Two-lane roads, no AC, bias-ply tubed tires, concrete slab hiways going badip badip badip. It's Sunday, lets go see if we can find a store that's open, or just get an ice cream cone. Couple nights a month, we'd drive to another town 30-40 miles away to see a movie, topped off with a slice of apple pie in a nearby cafe with a juke box.
As kids, our ears were finely tuned to the sound of car keys jingling, wanted to go along everywhere.
We used to travel all over the US when I was growing up in our RV. Aunt/Uncle and Grandparents had RVs as well so we would caravan around the US staying at KOAs. It was a fun time. It wasn't until I was 18 that I got on an airplane.
Our oldest kid started flying internationally at 18 months, the youngest was 9 months. No RV, but we try to take them to places in the US as well. Just did Yosemite a couple of weeks ago.
I had lived in 7 different cities in 3 different countries by the time I was 13. On vacations I had gone to an additional 8 countries, flown across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans. In the countries that I lived, I had gone on numerous smaller trips.
That travel stopped pretty abruptly once I hit 13, and the next time I set foot on an airplane I was 18 or 19 and traveling on my own.
Very little. My dad was self-employed and rarely took time off. My parents were not interested in going to the beach or camping. We kids did both with Scouts and youth group, but only in the local area. We had exactly three family vacations that I remember; the first was a road trip to Santa Barbara, San Simeon, and Yosemite when I was about 8.
We visited my older siblings and nieces/nephews in Washington when I was in 6th grade, so about 12, and drove all the way across the state from Seattle to Spokane.
A couple of years later, we went to Guatemala for ten days to visit another sister. That was a very BIG DEAL and the first time I had been out of the country.
After that, I started traveling on my own. My first flight to Japan was solo at age 15.
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