Memories of Family Vacations and Other Reasons Why I've Visited Every State in the Southeast
Snagged from calantha 's journal... :)
visited 10 states (20%)
Create your own visited map of The United States
They say you get your mental diseases from your father's side of the family, and I've heard that most people when manic have a sudden urge to travel, which might explain why my dad decided to just pack us all in the car and drive to North Carolina. I barely remember it, except the bit where I suddenly woke up and we were actually on the east coast, but that's responsible for a few of the states on the map.
I went on a school trip to Chicago (the only time I've ever been there and I dislike this fact) during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. I wasn't sure if I could count the states we went through, since I didn't actually visit, so I just counted Illinois.
Louisiana was my mother's idea. I don't know why we ended up on that trip - maybe she's bipolar, too, and doesn't want to admit it, which would make sense - but we drove to New Orleans and hung out there for a few days. I pissed her off by storming out of The Cheesecake Bistro during dinner and hoping on a trolley, which I rode until it reached the end of its stop, then rode back to our hotel. It was a fun ride.
I visit Tennessee quite often, I live in Alabama, and I've been to Florida at least four times... none of which have been a good trip. I've either been sick, robbed, trapped with people I'd slowly begun to hate, and really do not care to go back.
Kentucky is another trip I don't really remember, but I know I've been there for some reason.
I've visited Atlanta once, and we always went through the corner of it on our family trips to Chattanooga so we could play the lottery. Dad used to buy scratch-off tickets, secretly let us scratch them, then return it and let us keep the money to do whatever we wanted to with it. I want to say the most we ever won was five or ten dollars, but it's possible we were lucky enough to win twenty once.
To be honest, of all the trips I've taken, the family trips to Chattanooga, Gatlinburg, Rock City, and Ruby Falls were my favourite. This was back when my parents were married, so it really was a family trip, and it really was a vacation from the fighting and such that went on at home. I remember staying in a hotel that had a little bridge leading to the entrance with a river-ish thing running under it that had goldfish, and there was an arcade, but we weren't allowed to play in it, and the swimming pool was huge. One end was an indoor pool with a waterfall, and there was a hot tub that we also weren't allowed to be in, but the best part of the regular pool was that in the middle, there was a little wall that you could swim under to be on the side of the pool that was outdoors.
And I absolutely loved going to Rock City and Ruby Falls. I remember visiting Mother Goose, which Audra was scared to death of, and seeing cave shapes that looked like bacon and eggs and the little tunnel that the guy who discovered Ruby Falls crawled through and the actual Ruby Falls, which is really gorgeous and definitely worth checking out. And there was all the little trails and stuff to walk through in Rock City, and I remember being on one of those rickety old wooden bridges that connected two cliffs and had a long way to fall if it broke, which obviously didn't bother my dad, since he loved to wait until we were halfway across to make the bridge rock and us scream and scold him in fear.
But overall, we had a ton of fun and I miss it. When my dad passed, we thought about going back in his memory, and maybe even seeing if we could scatter his ashes at Lookout Point or something, but we couldn't afford the trip and it was cheaper just to bury him next to Memaw, which is what he said he wanted. Still, I haven't been back to Chattanooga and all of that in over a decade, and I look forward to someday making the trip.
visited 10 states (20%)
Create your own visited map of The United States
They say you get your mental diseases from your father's side of the family, and I've heard that most people when manic have a sudden urge to travel, which might explain why my dad decided to just pack us all in the car and drive to North Carolina. I barely remember it, except the bit where I suddenly woke up and we were actually on the east coast, but that's responsible for a few of the states on the map.
I went on a school trip to Chicago (the only time I've ever been there and I dislike this fact) during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. I wasn't sure if I could count the states we went through, since I didn't actually visit, so I just counted Illinois.
Louisiana was my mother's idea. I don't know why we ended up on that trip - maybe she's bipolar, too, and doesn't want to admit it, which would make sense - but we drove to New Orleans and hung out there for a few days. I pissed her off by storming out of The Cheesecake Bistro during dinner and hoping on a trolley, which I rode until it reached the end of its stop, then rode back to our hotel. It was a fun ride.
I visit Tennessee quite often, I live in Alabama, and I've been to Florida at least four times... none of which have been a good trip. I've either been sick, robbed, trapped with people I'd slowly begun to hate, and really do not care to go back.
Kentucky is another trip I don't really remember, but I know I've been there for some reason.
I've visited Atlanta once, and we always went through the corner of it on our family trips to Chattanooga so we could play the lottery. Dad used to buy scratch-off tickets, secretly let us scratch them, then return it and let us keep the money to do whatever we wanted to with it. I want to say the most we ever won was five or ten dollars, but it's possible we were lucky enough to win twenty once.
To be honest, of all the trips I've taken, the family trips to Chattanooga, Gatlinburg, Rock City, and Ruby Falls were my favourite. This was back when my parents were married, so it really was a family trip, and it really was a vacation from the fighting and such that went on at home. I remember staying in a hotel that had a little bridge leading to the entrance with a river-ish thing running under it that had goldfish, and there was an arcade, but we weren't allowed to play in it, and the swimming pool was huge. One end was an indoor pool with a waterfall, and there was a hot tub that we also weren't allowed to be in, but the best part of the regular pool was that in the middle, there was a little wall that you could swim under to be on the side of the pool that was outdoors.
And I absolutely loved going to Rock City and Ruby Falls. I remember visiting Mother Goose, which Audra was scared to death of, and seeing cave shapes that looked like bacon and eggs and the little tunnel that the guy who discovered Ruby Falls crawled through and the actual Ruby Falls, which is really gorgeous and definitely worth checking out. And there was all the little trails and stuff to walk through in Rock City, and I remember being on one of those rickety old wooden bridges that connected two cliffs and had a long way to fall if it broke, which obviously didn't bother my dad, since he loved to wait until we were halfway across to make the bridge rock and us scream and scold him in fear.
But overall, we had a ton of fun and I miss it. When my dad passed, we thought about going back in his memory, and maybe even seeing if we could scatter his ashes at Lookout Point or something, but we couldn't afford the trip and it was cheaper just to bury him next to Memaw, which is what he said he wanted. Still, I haven't been back to Chattanooga and all of that in over a decade, and I look forward to someday making the trip.