This is my post for #memoirmonday week 10 What's your favorite way to travel and your most memorable trip? hosted by @ericvancewalton
My favorite way to travel is by car, but I have many memorable trips.
My first trip anywhere was when I went by car with my Mom and Dad, we visited family in Georgia, that is where my Dad's Dad was from. He moved to Florida in the 1890s. I remember visiting family who grew peanuts we helped dig them and they dumped a bunch of them in a huge wash tub and cooked them on an open fire in their yard. I also remember visiting my grandfather's grave. He passed away in the 1940s and they shipped his body back to Georgia after he passed away, I never knew him. The graveyard was very old with concrete graves above the ground and the tops were broken, I remember wondering if the bodies could be seen but I was too scared to look in them.
Dad had something to do with politics where he met with Governors and other important people. My first plane ride was scary but I remember looking down at the clouds and thinking if the plane ran out of gas would the clouds hold us up, I think I was 10 or 11 years old.
We drove to Alabama, I remember going through a tunnel that went under the water, that was scary.
We had free run of the inside of the Capital building in Alabama and met Governor George Wallace and his wife. We ran up spiraling staircases to the top and looked down at each floor filled with seats. That is the memory that sticks out to me. Also when they were having a meeting with Dad I was behind a curtain with a record player and played Dixie before the meeting started.
This is the same place Gov Wallace is standing by.
I also remember being in Hot Springs Arkansas, we stayed at the Arlington Hotel. It was the fanciest place I have ever been, Dad had a suite there. We kids got to know the elevator operator very well.
I went on a cruise with my daughter and 3 of my grandkids, it was not my favorite way to travel but I am glad I did it. There are too many people on the ship and it was too expensive to do anything other than get in a pool with lots of other people, which I did not like.
But I did like going to this Mayan city in Tulum Mexico. The way they lived and the things they built were amazing.
This building warned them that a tropical storm was coming, when the wind got over 40mph it would make a sound that alerted the villagers who in turn would blow a shell horn on the other side of the village that would alert villages that were too far away to hear the sound from the building, they would alert other villages by blowing their shell horn.
Born and raised here in Florida and I was 61 before I ever went to the Keys, my daughter rented a house down there and we drove to it. She also rented a boat and I took us to the Sombrero lighthouse and the kids scuba-dived around it.
One of them dropped a cracker overboard and the yellow tail snapper came from nowhere to eat it, so of course more crackers went in the water than was eaten, I wished I had a fishing pole but no fishing was allowed.
My trip to Vermont with my sisters was very nice, we flew to Pennsylvania and the rest was driving which was nice, we did a lot of hiking that was the best part.
Even though I love a road trip, I have to say my favorite way to travel is to climb in my boat loaded with camping gear like in the first picture, and camp on an island not 5 miles from my home. I can not pick one because I have loved them all.