As I was thinking about family this week, remembering that August 22 would have been my mother’s 83rd birthday, I decided to memorialize my parents by a trip through our travel memory lane. My father took all of the old slides with pictures of my brothers and me and converted them to photos. He gave us a photo scrapbook of all of these photos and they are a precious treasure trove that chronicles our growing up and our travels.
This is a personal journey that I’m making today, so if you’re not family or a really good friend, you may find you want to skip my grainy photolog. 🙂 Or maybe you have a similar set of photos in your closet that you’re willing to share …
Flower Garden at Mount Vernon
Although there are lots of photos of me as a baby, it appears that we mostly stayed home or visited family in my early years. My father annotated the backs of the photos and he thought this first one was taken in about 1957 at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home in Virginia. I turned five that summer and my brother was two. Since Dad was a teacher, we often took extended driving trips in the summer, dragging a variety of camping trailers behind us.
Here’s a more current version of the garden at Mount Vernon.
My dad’s side of the family was from Cincinnati and we used to go to visit relatives fairly frequently. A visit to the Cincinnati Zoo was a treat, and Dad could not resist taking a leggy photo of Mom. Since she’s not pregnant here, this is probably about 1957.
Next on the memory lane is me at John Bryan State Park in western Ohio. Dad says this photo was taken about 1958. We always used to go on a fall color trip every year.
We visited the Ross County Historical Society Museum, in Chillicothe, Ohio.
My grandparents lived near Kansas City, so we sometimes visited them there. We also must have made a visit to the Harry S. Truman Library in about 1958.These two photos appear to be taken from about the same spot, but the second (professional) one has a lot more polish and landscaping!
Every Easter Sunday, after church we would go to what we called Mrs. Aull’s Garden (apparently we weren’t the only people) and take photos in our fancy clothes. My youngest brother is about two here, so it’s probably 1961.
Those yellow blobs on the hill behind us are all daffodils!
The hillside of daffodils still exists, and can be seen here via these copyrighted photos. Aullwood Garden Metropark is still a beautiful place to visit in Englewood, Ohio.
With our little family of five complete and mobile, we began to travel further afield.
And I began to get into those awkward years.
Rocky Mountain High
Occasionally my mom took a picture, but she didn’t seem to get the knack of focusing either.
In 1964, we went to the World’s Fair in New York. My husband, who had a traveling childhood similar to mine, remembers that they served $2.00 hamburgers and everyone thought that was highway robbery!
We went back to Mount Vernon…
… and to Monticello.
I fell in love with the Appalachian Mountains all over again in 1967.
By the time I was sixteen, I had pretty much stopped traveling with my parents and was working during the summer to save money for college. The love of travel that they instilled in me never went away, however, and it’s a rare day that doesn’t find me dreaming about the next reservation to travel I’m going to make.
I’m linked up today to Wanderlust Wednesday at Time Travel Plans, The Tablescaper for “Oh, The Places I’ve Been”, Travel Photo Monday” at Travel Photo Discovery, and “Travel Photo Thursday” at Budget Travelers Sandbox, so stop by and get some more inspiration for your travel bucket list!
Got my bags, got my reservations,
Spent each dime I could afford.
Like a child in wild anticipation,
I long to hear that, “All aboard!”
Music and lyrics by Bud Green, Les Brown and Ben Homer (1944)
I love the shot of tulips in Mount Vernon and I remember a family tour there..we did a lot of family trips tlike yours with our dodge dart and camping KOAs..sweet – thanks for sharing!
We had a Dodge Coronet. I remember Dad choosing the car with the “big” engine that would pull the trailer — and it had a manual transmission. He wouldn’t let me get my drivers’ license until I could drive the stick shift car!
It was fun to watch you grow up in the photos. Isn’t walking down memory lane wonderful? However, my mom is quite upset with my father. He took a bunch of photos out of their photo albums stretching back to their honeymoon so that he could scan them, and then he never put them back. All the good pictures are missing. At least they now have a copy on the computer.
They are truly terrible photos, with such loss of clarity because of multiple re-photographings. I wish I had the original slides so that I could get them switched to digital. Thanks for visiting!
Such a great trip down memory lane! I really like the grainy pics. My dad has some slides from our childhood in Panama and I need to ask him to convert them into photos. It’s so great that your parents instilled in you a love of travel. My parents did the same for me, and I’m so thankful to them for that although now they wish the hubs and I would “settle down.” Thanks for linking up this week! I will be sure to tweet your post periodically. 😉
Dana, now that we are empty nesters we are amping up our travel plans again. I hope you don’t settle down; I love watching your exciting trips!
Hi Jennie, thank you for sharing your beautiful, sweet memory lane. You were lucky to have gone to many places starting at an early age. It was wonderful to see you grow up through the photos. Such a beauty. I like the “then and now” photos.
Thank you, Marisol, for your kind comments. I have to admit that when I see myself these days, all I can see is how much I look like my father. It was fun for me to look back at the old photos.
I love the old photos! Great trip down memory lane.
Geoff, thanks for visiting. There are so many photos in my house that I could share them for years. 🙂 I’m glad you enjoyed them.
I have a picture of my daughters in front of that same little building at Mt Vernon! It think it’s a dove cote? Great family photos, I love the one with the gorgeous amber autumn tree. Blessings – Dawn
Although these photos don’t show it, my father was actually a good photographer and had an artist’s eye for catching the light. Unfortunately these photos are photos of photos of slides and their clarity is very degraded. It was fun, anyway, and I appreciate your visiting and commenting, Dawn.