As a young family, our vacations were usually made in the family car which was a station wagon for many years. Though I also remember a camper that we used one summer on a trip through New Mexico and Arizona. It was only as we got older that money was spent on airfares.
Trips with Mom. I always found it fun to do things with my Mom. And I think that it gave both her and me a reprieve from the chaos of so much activity in our large family. The first trips that I remember were at a time when Granny (Mom’s mother) was in the hospital in Roswell one summer. She had several surgeries and Mom & Dad were there along with my Granddaddy for those, but towards the end of the summer Mom and I started driving to Roswell (2 hours each way) every Wednesday to spend time with Granny recovering in the hospital. We had great talks on the drive and often ate or picked up sweet & sour pork at Chew Den our favorite restaurant in Roswell to bring home for dinner.
One memorable trip was east to Virginia and North Carolina. Mom decided we would fly to visit some of her aunts, uncles and cousins that she hadn’t seen for quite some time. In addition to seeing her relatives, she also saw the trip as an opportunity for me to meet some of my relatives that I had never met. It was a time after my first husband, Marc, had died and I had the time to make the trip with her – so off we went. It also became a trip that further sparked my early interest in our family genealogy. I remember it fondly.
One summer when I was a young adult, my mother and I decided to have a girls’ trip to New Orleans. My younger sister, Mary Ann, was in college there and we could visit with her over a weekend. We could also have a fun time in the French Quarter where we got a room at the Royal Sonesta hotel. In addition to a visit with my sister, we had was tons of fun walking the streets and riding the cable car to see all the beautiful buildings and homes, eating good food, browsing the antiques on Royal Street, shopping some of the boutiques, eating beignets at CafĂ© Du Monde, and checking out the street artists at Jackson Square.
And more trips. Not all of my trips were with Mom. There were a few trips just with Dad, and several with both Mom & Dad. Jeff, Bob and I flew with our parents to Long Island, New York for the funeral of our grandmother, Gram, in 1970 when I was in high school.
After Marc’s death in the late 70’s, Dad also drove with me from New Mexico to Seattle when I thought that I wanted to settle there. That didn’t work for me as I got too homesick, and Dad flew out and drove with me back home. And at one time, I flew with my Dad in 1980 on a trip to New York to see his sister who was dealing with a fatal brain tumor. After I settled in Texas, I also joined my parents on a couple of vacation trips to Zihuatanejo on the west coast of Mexico where they purchased a condo in the mid-1980’s.
Family trips. Over the years, we had occasional family trips back east to see grandparents. I loved the trips to Virginia to see Granny and Granddaddy while they still lived there. They lived in a 2-story house which I thought was wonderful. And they had a huge garden, a big barn, and a dock on the river. Catching crabs and putting them in water on the back porch for Granny to cook was fun. I saw my first fireflies in Virginia, and remembered evenings with my cousins trying to catch them.
Car trips through the southwest in a camper to see the Painted Desert, Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon, and road trips to Gallup, Santa Fe and Taos were all memorable. Trips to Santa Fe were always a treat to see all of the art galleries and merchants on the town square, and eat wonderful food including blue corn tortillas at The Shed.
We went to Gallup, New Mexico one year for the Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial and saw lots of Indian dancing, and ate Indian flat bread. And I remember that we also went to an Indian pueblo, Zuni I believe, at a time when they were having a ceremonial celebration that was amazing to see. Dad had a friend, Tom, who invited us to his home in the pueblo for dinner before the ceremonies began. Tom had a daughter that was my age and I remember that she was sweet and very shy. We were the only non-Indians there that night.
I remember one cold winter trip to New Mexico (while we were living in Arizona) where an unexpected snow storm held us up in Taos and we could only find one hotel room. But it was an adventure as there was a fireplace in the corner of the room and we children slept curled up in blankets on the floor in front of the fire for a toasty night of sleep. That night I fell in love with wood burning fireplaces.
Of course, our biggest trip was to Japan, Hong Kong and Hawaii that was the subject of my blog, Scribner Family in Japan, published on January 14, 2023.
In our later years, it was decided that we would take a big family vacation before Bob graduated and left for college. Mom & Dad gave us the choice of Disney World in Florida or Mexico – and we all voted. Mexico won, and the whole family went to Yucatan visiting Merida, Chichen Itza, Cancun and Cozumel.
We climbed the pyramids in Chichen Itza and the ruins there were amazing. And we stayed in a hotel that seemed to be in the middle of a jungle with open walls, beautiful plants and flowers, colorful birds and wild iguanas – it all seemed so magical. We took a boat trip from Cancun to Cozumel, spent hours on the beaches and all got sunburned. Dad even sunburned the tops of his feet and couldn’t wear shoes or even his flip flops! There were divers that went down and collected conchs and we ate them in a salad (raw with lime on them, I think), and had a fish cookout on the beach.
One night Mom & Dad took Bob, Jeff and I into town to a disco dance place. It was great fun, and we all danced with locals as well as each other. We had so much fun that I think we even went back again on our last night.
I’ve been back to Cancun as an adult, and it has changed so much from those early days when our family went in the late 1960’s. And I’m sure that Cozumel today is much changed as well.
In addition to our family vacations, as a military family we actually moved every two years while Dad was in service, and that also added a lot of travel and experiences during our early years.
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Key Individuals:
Robert Gordon
Scribner (1923 – 2006)
Ann Hart Hughes
Scribner (1921 – 2006)
Jane Hughes Scribner Simonitsch McCrary
(1953 – and more)
and my four siblings: Bob, Jeff, David and Mary Ann
- Jane
Scribner McCrary
