Did you have a favorite family vacation? Tell us something about it.

From: Connie Farrington

My favorite family vacation was a week at the Smithsonian in Washington DC. My kids were about 8, 9 and 10, and I was divorced. We drove down from CT in my old Vega, to spend 6 days visiting the Smithsonian, driving in to Washington each day from our cheap motel in Alexandria, VA. Every day we arrived at the door of one of the museums about half an hour before it opened so we could be first in line. Every day we were the last tourists to leave the building. Every day we made peanut butter sandwiches out on the green lawn, ate apples, and drank Tang from our big thermos. I have 2 clear recollections from that trip.

1. We had saved the best for our last day, and stood at the door of the Air and Space Museum before it opened, breathlessly awaiting our 8 hours looking at the exhibits. A hefty woman was holding her wiggly kid in tow behind us. He was also about 8, 9 or 10 years old. As the museum doors were being unlocked, the woman behind us hollered at her kid, "I'll wait out here. Ya got 5 minutes. Ya seen one plane, ya seen em all." The four of us looked at each other speechless, and then we burst out laughing.

2. While we were making our peanut butter sandwiches for one of our lunchbreaks, 8 year old daughter Kathy noticed an old woman going through the contents of a trash can looking for food. The woman had on a bedraggled purple skirt with no zipper, and a dirty old shirt. She was wrinkled and forlorn. Kathy said, "We've got plenty of bread and peanut butter and apples. Can we invite her over for lunch?" I said "Sure, all three of you go over and invite her." The old woman was amazed. We shared our park bench with her and Kathy served her lunch. The woman said she had lived on the street for years, and no one had ever done anything like that for her. And I think our lunch tasted much better for having shared it.

From: Connie Olson

While growing up the one family vacation that sticks in my mind is when we went to Nest lake fishing with my parents and some of their friends. I was about 9 my sister close to 7 years of age. The cabin was right on the lake. In fact if you stretched your legs from the steps of the porch you could just about touch the edge of the water with your toes. I remember the water being very warm for swimming. The further out we went the colder it got. I would give my sister rides in a wheel barrow that was there and then dump her in the shallow water. She loved it.
There was a stone cooking pit close by the cabin where we did lots of cooking in. It was way to hot to cook inside the cabin. My dad said the coffee made in that pit was the best he ever tasted. We also agreed the food was the best too. This place had a small family restaurant so we ate our evening meals there.

Morning we had bacon, ham, sausage, eggs and hot cocoa. My mom had a funny contraption that did toast in the fire. Also homemade jelly that my moms friend Ida had brought along. Food never tasted so good!

My dad and his friend went out early in the mornings fishing. We would go out later with our mother coming along. We used the cane poles. I could whip that line anywhere I wanted it to go. Must of been the fore runner to me casting. We caught lots of sunnies and crappies. My dad loved to fish for what I now call Northerns or what he called Northern pike back then. My mom said all she would get were little perch and misquote bites. I still love to fish, don't have the time like we use too, but it's still one of my favorite pastimes.

It was a hot summer when we went there to stay there for that memorable vacation. We were there for a week. When the week ended no one wanted to go home, but my dad had to get back to work. So it was back to the hot city.

From: Lois Rotella

Most of the time my Father couldn't go on vacation when we younger. When I was growing up we would visit and stay with my Grandmother(Lucinda Bentley Gagne) in Schuylerville, NY. We would see our Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. We had fun. The 2 most memorable vacations were when we older. One time my Father was able to go with us and we went to Washington, D.C.. We visited all the museums and also the White House. We really had a great time together. We were most impressed with the White House and Arlington Cemetery. The next vacation it was just my Mom, my younger brother and myself. We went to Hawaii for a week. My 2 nieces were born in Hawaii. We never got to visit them there when they lived there. We saw so much including a volcano. That trip was very memorable for sure.

From: Philip Harris

My all time favorite family vacation was when we went to Idaho and Utah and our family was sealed in the Temple. I had a spiritual experience in the spring that I should take my family to the Temple. The closest Temple was Salt Lake City . I was offered an opportunity with Grand Union to be Produce Mgr. in Bolton Landing for the summer. I would have a lot of overtime. Alice was offered a summer job as book keeper in the Lake George Grand Union. We saved enough money through the summer to upgrade our car and go on vacation. We camped every night in a campground or open field all the way to Blackfoot Idaho where we stayed with Gomer and Mary Williams who had been a missionary couple in Glens Falls.. The kids road horse back on their farm. We spent a night in Yellowstone park. The girls were scared on the path to the bathroom by a bear. We toured all the historic sights in Salt Lake City. We all had a spiritual experience in the Temple and at General Conference. We totaled the car on the way home in Nebraska . We bought another car for $200 and drove it for four years. No one was seriously hurt. We all got home with grateful hearts for the vacation of a lifetime.

From: Amy Freeman

Every year we did some of the same things. I always looked forward to going to Darien Lake (it's Six Flags Darien Lake now) as a family. We would also go out to Glens Falls to visit grandma and grandpa. That was my favorite part of the summer. One year just us girls stayed with them for a couple weeks. That was so much fun! It was sad when then drove us home. When Carrie and I were 12 and 14 we took a bus out to Glens Falls. It was a long bus ride, but worth the time it took. My favorite vacations are still every year when I get to go visit everyone in Lake George.

From: Renee Zamora

Our biggest family vacation was going to Salt Lake City, Utah to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple for Time and All Eternity. It was a wonderful vacation. I was seven years old and had my birthday on the road that year. Now that I live in Utah, every time I see the Salt Lake Temple I remember our family trip out to it. One interesting thing that happened going home from the temple was our car accident on the highway in Wyoming. Our brakes went out and we hit a car and ended up in the median strip of the highway, two buses followed us down there. Thank goodness no one was hurt badly. We went to the hospital and my father looked in the phone book for members of our church to give us a blessing. A local Bishop and his councilor came to give us all blessings. They then helped us get a hotel room and kept checking in to make sure we were ok.

The next morning in the hotel us kid were watching out the window. We were high up and watching the little people on the ground. We spotted a fire station and the fire engines coming out to go to a fire. We wondered were the fire was. We watched excitedly as the fire engine came to our hotel. Our hotel was on fire. My father went running looking for the stairway. Finally we learned it was only rags in the closet on fire, quickly put out. Later when we got home my parents wrote a note to thank the Bishop for his help. The letter was returned marked no such person. That was very curious.

From: Lucy Welden

My favorite family vacation was when I was a teenager and we went to visit our aunt and uncle and they took us to Atlantic City and we spent the day at the ocean and went on the Boardwalk with our cousins.

From: Joyce Eggleston

We went to Maine in 1971. Jerry and the kids and I. It was fun! Always spent time near Lake George and went camping when the kids were younger. Went camping on Lake Champlain...always liked to go fishing.

From: Heidi MacDuff

My favorite family vacation was in March 2001. We were able to take our kids to Disney in Florida. It was the first time in my life that I had been on a plane. It was exciting to be so far away from home and to see how much fun my kids had in Disney. I felt like a kid again!

From: Marie Zamora

My family never really went on vacations unless someone had died.

From: Jenny McMurray

It is very hard to tell about one of my favorite family vacations. The one that our family took last year was to Washington D.C. It was on Memorial Day Weekend. The way my husband had a going I think we walked over 30 miles during this vacation. It rained every day until the day we left. We saw all the sights and visited all the museums and on the last day before we left to visit Gettysburg on the way home we went to the White House to take some last minute pictures. While we were getting in our car we noticed police starting to block off streets and riding up and down the street we were parked on. Finally one came up to us and told us we needed to stay in our car or on the sidewalk, but not to turn on our car. We really had no idea what was going on, but then we was a motorcade coming, and as we were standing there President and First Lady Bush rode by and waved. We could see Laura Bush better then the President, but it was a great end to our rainy vacation.

From: Brenda Olszewski

I think my favorite vacation was when we went to the Salt Lake Temple.
I was about 9 or 10 then. We drove by car and had lots of adventure. I loved staying at the farm of the Williams in Idaho. I was happiest because I got to ride the horses.