Spring breaks past

I was thinking of the different places my family traveled on Spring Break. I remember a few. I also remember a few years when we didn't do Spring Break trips; either the University schedule (where my dad taught) was off from the school-schedule (where my brother and I attended), or we were all getting over being sick (all of us are fairly  prone to respiratory stuff, especially in the winter), or, some years, my dad did not complete the income taxes, which meant my brother and I had to be quiet while we were in the house, and my dad used to mutter imprecations about the tax code.

But some years we did travel. The first trip I remember was a trip to the Everglades; we stayed in Homestead. (I wonder if the motel we stayed in was one of the ones wiped out years later in Hurricane Andrew). I liked that trip - though the one bad spot was that my brother's allergies got very bad and one morning when he woke up he had so much trouble my parents wound up taking him to the ER there. Much more fun was getting to walk on a boardwalk through a swamp where there were alligators, or (the thing I remember best), stand on the big covered walkway between two of the buildings in the park and look through those binocular telescope things at the waterfowl out on the water - roseate spoonbills and anhingas and those kinds of things.

The year after that we went to Atlanta and then on to Disneyworld. I wasn't the ideal age for Disneyworld; I never liked "scary" rollercoasters but at that point I was a little too old (11) to really be able to enjoy the fantasy of the costumed characters walking around. (Still, my parents have a photo of me taken next to the person dressed as Miss Bianca from "The Rescuers"). In Atlanta we did some historical stuff; I remember going on a Grey Line tour and going to the Coca-Cola museum (I think that was before they had the "sample Coke products from around the world" display, or else I'd remember that, because that's the kind of thing that would really have captured my imagination as a child: what kind of soda do they like in Thailand?)

The year after (? I think) that, we went to Cape Cod and Boston. Cape Cod is awfully cold in mid-March, but it was still interesting, and there were almost no crowds, so we had the full attention of the park ranger on duty. I didn't know of Henri Beston's "Outermost House" in those days or I would have asked if it was possible to go and see the site where it stood. In Boston, I remember we did a walking tour around the historic parts of the city - I remember a tiny cemetery with what seemed like impossibly small burial plots, crammed in between two buildings. We also went  shopping at the Women's Exchange (there's a whole network of these; they are shops whose income goes to charitable causes). I bought a stuffed toy cat that I actually still have.

Still later - when I was in high school - we went to Harper's Ferry and Williamsburg. (Perhaps I see now where some of my interest in history comes from...). Harper's Ferry was particularly interesting to me at that point because it was where John Brown (the abolitionist)  made his stand....and John Brown grew up in Hudson, Ohio, the same town I was growing up in. (Well, not the SAME town; I was growing up over 100 years later...) He was, as far as I knew, the only "famous" person to come out of Hudson, and at the time it seemed really amazing and impressive that my tiny town would produce someone as well known (even Victor Hugo commented on him, warning that if he were executed, it would "shake the whole American democracy"). Williamsburg, even though some have derided it as a "historical theme park," was a lot of fun and really interesting (particularly, for me, the people plying their craft). I'd like to go back some time - I'd especially like to go back and spring for a meal in one of the historic restaurants (We didn't do that; I think part of it was concern about expense, part of it was at that time my brother was having a lot of food-allergy issues and we had to be careful)...I suppose it wouldn't be so out of the question, now - I could go visit my brother, sister-in-law, and niece and then make a side trip over to Williamsburg. (And I'd want to make one back to Harper's Ferry; I'd like to see that again, too).

I think the last Spring Break trip we took as a family was to Canada. Montreal, mostly. My dad kept pushing me to show off my French but I was embarrassed to because I felt like I'd pronounce stuff wrong and people would laugh at me. (Also, French Canadian is considerably different from French French.) I think my dad had meetings (lots of the family trips were offshoots of meetings my dad was going to) because I remember taking another Grey Line type tour with my mom and my brother. And I remember buying some French language books. And being intrigued by the fact that all the groceries had to have labels in both French and English. (Or, wait - maybe that was a summertime trip? I remember going to the Botanical Gardens and surely they would not have been open for visitors in March? Oh well).