The first childhood vacation I truly remember (partly because my younger brother watched the home video on repeat as a kid) was a trip to California in the 1980s. My memory may not be accurate but I remember my mother’s in depth planning for this trip took months. I remember her visiting AAA and gathering maps and information on hotels. I remember her telling us about the cool hotels we were going to stay in (why stay at a chain hotel when you could stay at the Madonna Inn?!) and the even cooler things we were going to do and see (a prison on an island, a castle high on a hill and wild prairie dogs you could try to feed along the coast). I remember extended family members asking us if we were ready and prepared like we were traveling to a foreign land. California sounded magical. Yeah, we were ready!
California dreaming
Photo Credit: iStock.com/oneinchpunch
Up until this point in my life vacations usually meant beaches or amusement parks, and while this vacation included both it also included some awesome landmarks that held stories that were more exciting than a roller coaster.
My family of four flew to San Francisco and drove from there to Los Angeles and San Diego, making numerous stops along the way. We visited Fisherman’s Wharf, Hearst Castle, Alcatraz, Universal Studios, the San Diego Zoo, stayed a few nights at Hotel del Coronado, and did things we had never done on a family vacation before.
But it was Hearst Castle and Alcatraz that stood out the most to me. We took the normal tourist tours through the California landmarks with the other hundreds of families vacationing that summer. But in my 8-year-old mind, I was getting an insiders peak inside a rich newspaperman’s castle (a castle existed in the United States!) and I was learning about the escape of prisons from an island that was said to be in escapable (a prison that’s an entire island!).
I made sure I was always at the front of the tour group and my attention stayed zeroed in on the tour guide’s words. The guides, in my mind, were the smartest people in California. They knew everything! The facts and stories that filled these structures were astonishing to me. And when we got to the “does anyone have any questions” part of the tour, my hand was always first in the air.
“Mom, do you see there is gold inside that pool!”
“Did you hear how many bedrooms are in this castle?!”
“Do you see how small this prison cell is? My arms can almost touch both sides!”
“Dad, who is Al Capone?”
“But how did the prisoners escape? Where did they go? Do you think they are still living in California?”
Traveling across the country for the first time showed me there is so much to see. I wanted to see every castle in the world after that trip. I wanted to hear about the families who lived in them and the mysteries that might have surrounded their fortunes. I didn’t know it at the time but I wanted to learn while on vacation. I wanted to learn about the place I was traveling to and what stories its landmarks and people had to tell. I wanted to be told a story when traveling. I wanted to travel more and then tell the stories I learned along the way. I wanted to go live my story around the world.
