"The Family Vacation"

For some reason, when I was a kid, I assumed that everyone went on a family vacation every summer. I don't know why, because none of my friends ever went on a trip with their families. My family, however, did travel somewhere every summer. These family trips were never anything spectacular, no vacations in the south of France, or even south of the Border.
It was a simpler time. People didn't have to jump in a plane and travel half-way around the world to see new and different things. Growing up in the sixties in the rural upper Midwest, it took very little actually to be new and different for me and my sister Pat. Everything was an adventure for us. And everywhere we went, our eyes bugged out in wonder and awe.
I could never imagine having had a childhood like the kids today. Where it is go, go, go, all the time, none stop. A barrage of internet images, high speed everything, information overload, no down time, not even on vacation.
Perhaps mine is the last generation to live through that simpler, idealistic time. We didn't know anything. And that was totally acceptable.
So I have written down the stories of all those family vacations. All those memories from an idealistic youth, a simpler time. A time when it was all right to spend time with just Mom, Dad and your sister.
As if I had a choice.