Family Vacation

Many of my most cherished childhood memories come from our family vacations. Most every year, for a couple weeks, Mom and Dad would load all four of us into the station wagon with our Coleman pop-up camper in tow and take us on an adventure. Well, for us they were all adventures.

Sometimes the trip was simply an opportunity for us to spend time with far-flung members of our extended family and we’d park the camper in their driveway. (Or, in one case along the street out front of the house at such a cattywampus angle that the sink wouldn’t drain completely.) On these trips the camper provided our lodging, making it easier on our host to find a place for all 6 of my family to sleep. It also kept us from having to tote around and live out of our suitcases. We spent a lot of time with family, and I learned all sorts of valuable lessons thereby, not the least of which was how important family is.

Other trips were genuine, get-away vacations, and these latter are some of the trips that stand out in my memory. They took us to historic locations like Strawberry Banke, the Freedom Trail, or our Nation’s Capital. My young imagination was enflamed by walking in the footsteps and learning the stories of the Minute Men and the Patriots of the Revolution.

Some trips took us to tourist destinations—like our much-anticipated (and long-time paying off) trip to Walt Disney World, my first trip to Florida—a strange land of many wonders. It was the first trip for which I earned and saved my own money to spend on my own activities at Uncle Walt’s amazing land of imagination and adventure. The trip there was its own adventure of seeing living citrus trees and purchasing fresh-squeezed orange juice from roadside rest areas. Camping at the Ft Wilderness campground and visiting Frontierland engaged my adolescent fascination with pioneer life in early America. Disney’s Davy Crockett series and Mark Twain’s novels fed my fascination for years.

I am forever grateful for the effort my parents made to do these kinds of things for us. Having my own family now, I understand much better the magnitude of the required effort. I am also much more aware of the magnitude of expenses and sacrifices that are also required both before and after such adventures. Thus, I was excited to have an opportunity this past summer to repay my folks a little for the gifts of the experiences and memories they purchased by those efforts.

Mom and Dad flew into Naples at the end of July, and we took them on a whirlwind tour of Italy. We showed them some of what we’ve already seen and explored new places with them, packing a lot into the three weeks they stayed with us. So much, in fact, that I couldn’t possibly share it all in one travelog post. Therefore, the story of The Parental Units in Italy will be told over several subsequent posts. I’ll do one for each for our trips to Florence, Venice, Rome, Capri, the Amalfi coast, and Modena. I’m not sure yet how I’ll capture the trips to various spots around Napoli, but I likely won’t cover all our trips in chronological order. So, stay tuned: my new adventure has only just begun.