22 Vacations
I remember the first time I stayed in a hotel, or more precisely, the moment I first became aware that hotels existed. I was very young, probably less than five years old, and we were somewhere in the Blue Hills of northern Wisconsin, the place where my parents had spent their honeymoon. I don’t remember why we were there, but it must have had something to do with my father’s family, because his parents (my grandparents) were there and they were staying in what to me seemed like a luxurious cabin, with a front porch and many conveniences. My family, on the other hand, was loaded into bunk beds on a concrete floor. I don’t know why I remember this, but it was an early memory of thinking how poor we were relative to my rich grandparents.
Hotels and motels remained a luxury to my family throughout my childhood. We stayed in one again at my uncle’s wedding, held in far-off Madison Wisconsin. Later I was told that, due to a terrible sickness of one of my siblings, the time in that hotel was no happy memory for my mother, but for me it represented something exciting and new, helped considerably no doubt by the TV set in the room and the appearance of the cartoon show Underdog, which we enjoyed immensely.
Mostly when we traveled far from home, we stayed with relatives. On the rare occasions we traveled through areas without people we knew, we camped in a big family-size tent.
We knew tent camping well. During the summers, we usually attended a weeklong family Bible camp, held at Spencer Lake, near the small town of Waupaca, a few hours drive East of Neillsville. Our tent was surrounded by other families in tents and RVs, our days spent enjoying swimming at the beach, grilling food on our Coleman stove, and attending religious meetings late into the evening.
22.1 Going West
But our first big vacation happened when I was seven or eight and my father decided to take the family to a religious meeting in the Shiloh Valley of Montana. The drive would take twenty or more hours, which we split into three or four days along a route that took us first through the familiar geography of Minnesota, then along to North Dakota and the plains, ultimately rising to the mountains and “big sky country” of Montana.
To seven-year-old eyes, the wide open spaces of the American West seemed like a magical, foreign land. Traveling in a station wagon, the iconic family vehicle of the 1970s, everything seemed spacious and free. With a “top” on the car roof that contained our tent and a week’s supply of provisions, we stayed each night at (cheap) family campgrounds along the way. My mother prepared sandwiches for lunch, and heated canned soup and vegetables for dinner. The better campgrounds boasted hot water for showers and occasionally a swimming pool for recreation. What more, I wondered, could life offer?!
At Shiloh itself was another campground pierced by a cold, mountain stream and fishing, which my father enjoyed and which produced more food for dinner. I don’t know what sort of budget my parents planned for this trip, but in today’s money I’m sure it would seem trivial. As a child, it never occurred to me that, instead of the homemade sandwiches, we might have eaten at fast food restaurants or stayed at cheap motels – those were luxuries beyond contemplation. Stopping in the beautiful natural places along the way – Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, the Rocky Mountains – it’s not clear to me now that we would have known more fun at the far more exotic places like Disneyland that many other children associate with vacations.
Our trip to Montana was the first of many summers we spent traversing the West. My father seemed unaware of other compass points, because whenever we thought about family vacations, it was always to the Great Plains and beyond, to the Rocky Mountains. Sometimes we started on a southerly route, to Iowa so we could stay with my parents’ lifelong friends, Arnie and Joyce Cox and their children. In sleeping bags on the floor of their living room, it never occurred to us – in fact, it would have seemed cold and almost rude – to stay anywhere else. Obviously if we come all this way to see somebody, we’re going to stay at their house; otherwise what’s the point?
One year we travelled to Colorado, at first to Denver where we saw the childhood friend of my mother, who now lived there as a suburban housewife. We weren’t invited to stay with them, and in fact the whole visit seemed more stiff and formal than I was used to, not nearly as fun and interesting as the visits to our relatives when we stayed overnight.
After Denver, we traversed the state to spend several days in Grand Junction to visit my great-grandmother and father. They lived with my father’s aunt Avenel and her husband Howard, who was a real estate developer. He bought large tracts of land outside the city, which he divided into subdivisions traversed with roads and single family homes. Along one of those roads, at the end of a cul de sac, he built a large compound for himself and his sons, who followed him in his business, and an adjoining house where my great-grandparents lived.
Vacations to me were always like this: a destination, visiting people along the way, learning new things about family and friends as we went. The stories I heard from my great-grandfather cemented my interest in this kind of travel and in maintaining an eternal optimism, a lust for the wonders that await every new adventure away from home.
22.2 Canada
Growing up in rural Wisconsin, it was only natural to spend summers outdoors. Although my family wasn’t nearly as hard-core about it as others, who lived for hunting and fishing, we did our share of camping.
To us, an ambitious camping trip involved a lengthy drive north into Ontario Canada, known for its plentiful and under-fished lakes. On at least two summers, my grandparents brought Gary and me along with them.
We stayed for about a week in a backwoods location, carrying all of our food and supplies, including a canoe strapped to the top of Grandpa’s car. Rowing out onto the endless lake, we eventually docked at a small island where we set up camp for several nights. Although we carried plenty of backup food, our intent was to live on the fish we caught.
I remember being disappointed at the poor catch and mostly eating the ham and turkey slices in our cooler.