Firday Five: Vacations

Mary Beth from revgals is dreaming of her vacation. It has obviously gotten warm and sunny where she is! She has come up with come up with questions on vacations for our Friday Five.

1) What did your family do for vacations when you were a child? Or did you have stay-cations at home?

My vacation from the time I was a Brownie through high school was Girl Scout camp. Mom and I usually went up north to visit grandmothers. But Dad never went on those trips. There were a couple of camping trips that I remember to Estes Park in CO and to Padre Island in TX. My folks didn’t really start traveling together until after I left home. Then they got a camper/trailer and took off. Dad traveled for a living so traveling was not what he wanted to do for vacation. He spent his vacation working on the house.


2) Tell us about your favorite vacation ever:

I have had a couple of really neat vacations. Just after I was ordained and had a full-time salary, J and I went to the UK for a month. We went under the auspices of the Movement for the Ordination of Women since they weren’t ordaining women in the UK yet. It was my first trip abroad and since both J and I come from Celtic or Brit backgrounds we did some family hunting. It rained 3 of the 4 weeks there, but that didn’t dampen the trip. The other trip was the vacation we took to Anaheim for the 1985 General Convention. We borrowed my brother’s camper van and saw much of the Southwest that I had never seen.

3) What do you do for a one-day or afternoon getaway...is there a place nearby that you escape to on a Saturday afternoon/other day off?

During the spring and summer my favorite place is our front porch. I am pretty good about distancing myself from stuff when I need to just hang out. But our porch is on the second floor so there is a bit of “tree house” effect about it. Inthe early mornings the screens hold some of the river insect life that I love watching. (They are on the OUTSIDE) There is usually a breeze and presently the lilacs have been awesome this year and their smell wafts over me while I sit and read or doze.


4) What's your best recommendation for a full-on vacation near you...what would you suggest to someone coming to your area? (Near - may be defined any way you wish!)

I am not far from the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Soccer Hall of Fame for those who are into that. We have rivers that have been some of the oldest blue ribbon trout and small mouth bass fishing in the country. The Erie Canal System goes throughout our area and there are some nice campgrounds for campers. The middle part of NY state is beautiful, full of lakes, wineries, and historical sites. The Senaca Falls Women’s Museum shares the history of women’s suffrage. There are interesting traces of the Underground Railroad to Canada. I love upstate NY. There is so much history and just plain beauty here.

5) What's your DREAM VACATION?

I had one of my dream vacations last summer when we took the Canadian Railway across country. But I would love to go to Spain and rent an apartment or a small pension in a small town. We have friends that really want to do that on the coast of Italy. We need to save our $$ to do that. And I still want to go to the Holy Land. But at the moment I don’t want to support the Israeli regime. If there was a way I could make contact with the Palestinian Christian community, or go to the College of St. George, I would love to go. I also would love to go to New Zealand.

Bonus: Any particularly awful (edited to add: or hilarious) vacation stories that you just have to tell? ("We'll laugh about this later..." maybe that time is now!)

Our first trip to the UK was when the worst hurricane since the Spanish Armada hit London our first night there. It literally shut down the city for several days. It uprooted huge oak forests all throughout the southern part of the country. We were staying with a group of Anglican monastics. When we came down for breakfast we found the whole community huddled on the steps in the stairwell. “Did you have a bit of wind last night?” I asked. They were incredulous that we had slept through the whole thing. J and I come from TX and OK. High winds were part of life there.