We were flying home from Florida during the holidays and our connecting flight in Atlanta got cancelled. (Shocker) They couldn’t get all three of us on a flight together until 3 days later. So we made the most of it and had an awesome mini second vacation in Atlanta, eating delicious food, visiting the aquarium and the children’s museum. We still talk about our Accidental Atlanta Vacation and it’s been 7+ years
I once listened to a program about how to make your family grow closer and the basic idea was you have to suffer together. The speaker said go on a camping trip and if it doesn't rain and everything goes perfectly, try again later.😊 He said while you're camping out in the rain and mud and lose your food and get lost on the trail, etc. You aren't drawing closer together, but 3 weeks later you start to talk about it. And it is a memory forever that you have in common and binds you together.
I went to Mexico with a boyfriend for an alternative holiday. He got turista, so I decided to have a solo adventure for the day. My destination? An off the beaten path swimming hole. When I asked at the bus station, they were like, idk what you are talking about but here’s a ticket. I got on the bus and told the driver where I was going. He dropped me about 30 mins later at a federal police station. They very nicely decided to drive me the rest of the way, sandwiched between two guys one with an ak47(? Idk guns but it was big). When I arrived it was like a record scratch. This was not a tourist destination. A woman came up to me and told me not to approach any young men, and also asked about my chauffeurs. She told me not to be there when they came back to pick me up. I hightailed it out of there. As I was walking a random backcountry road I saw a beacon of hope: a Corona delivery truck. I hitched a ride back toward where we were staying. At one point the federales passed us, going to pick me up. I ducked down in the truck. The drivers were like, “what did you do?” I explained and they nodded and then said they’d take me straight to where I was staying. I think they are the reason I am here today! Thanks, Corona guys!
Warning: kind of gross story, and definitely the worst. One Thanksgiving when my son was 3, we were driving from my in-laws' house to dinner at my aunt's house. Close to our destination, we passed an open KMart off the highway and righteously thought to ourselves, what losers go to Kmart on Thanksgiving? Horrible consumerism. (You can guess where this is headed). We had a nice dinner but my son didn't eat much...after dinner, out of nowhere, he suddenly starts throwing up in the living room (I never serve that red jello salad anymore)...my intrepid uncle started cleaning up and we made a hasty retreat as we still had to drive 2 hours back to the in-laws'. Guess who stopped at KMart on Thanksgiving to get new pajamas for a vomit-covered preschooler? Lesson learned.
When I was 10 we drove from New York to Iowa for Christmas to surprise my grandparents. When we arrived at the farm we sent my 5 year old brother to the door. My grandma at first mistook him for the little brother of one of her piano students and started explaining that she wasn't giving lessons that week. Then I walked up and she started saying, " Oh! Oh! Oh! You could have given me a heart attack!" We had a great white Christmas on the farm with cousins and an aunt and uncle there, too.
Okay, I realize this isn't exactly a travel story, but it involves Christmas and travel. 😊
Trapped on a night bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai blasting local music videos for many, many (many) hours. It was the worst but also kind of secretly the best 🙈 A true contender for “best” though was probably hiking the Ring of Fire in Guatemala over Christmas.
Worst: We were visiting my in-laws for the holidays and there was a winter storm forecasted to enter the area overnight. The forecast was for 3-6 inches of snow. We had planned to stay through dinner and then return home, which typically was a 3.5 hour drive. Watching the radar, it became clear that the storm was going to arrive early. We left around 4pm, reached the beginning of the storm about an hour up the road, and spent another 6 hours driving in an all-out blizzard of snow and wind. It was white-knuckle driving, but we made it home safely. That 3-6 inch forecast missed by a LOT. We received about 20 inches by the time the storm finished.
Best: Took a Christmas trip to New England, primarily spending about 5 days in the downeast Maine. The day before our arrival, a winter storm passed through the area dropping about 6 inches of snow, allowing the entirety of our visit to be adorned with an idyllic blanket of snow. We also fit in a brief stop in NYC on the return journey to soak up the Christmas vibes. Still one of our favorite Christmas trips, by far!
100% agree! Once we made it home, we were all-in on the snow continuing to pile up! The blizzard drive was about a week before Christmas, but thanks to the enormity of the storm, that snow was still around for us to have a white Christmas. We don't get many of those here in Virginia, so it was VERY welcome. :-)
I don't usually travel for the holidays, so the best I can come up with is from when I was little. My mom and I lived with my grandparents and my uncle before fourth grade and had our own apartment after that. My grandparents usually didn't host. When we lived there, we went to my aunt's (mom's sister's) and one year the ancient heater wasn't working and it was brutally cold (Boston). My uncle had to stay home to wait for the heating company. Then after we moved out it happened AGAIN, and again my uncle had to stay home. He's not the most social sort so he probably didn't mind.
Here's an alternative, non-travel-related funny story. I always gave my mom a linen calendar. One year I decided to get it monogrammed with our last name: Drummey. Only on Christmas morning when she opened it, she realized it said, The Dummeys. In some families this would have been terrible. In ours, this was HILARIOUS. My mom showed it off proudly all year long!
Worst: My grandmother's birthday is in mid-December. When she turned 95, my siblings and I traveled to Monterey, California, shortly before Christmas and spent a few days with her. They left right after Christmas, but I stayed through New Years and expected to fly home on the red-eye out of SFO New Years night. Right after I turned in my keys to the little box at the rental car counter, I learned my flight to SFO had been cancelled due to weather. Of the limited, bad options offered to me, I decided to stay overnight and fly home to a different airport out of LAX the next day. I took a cab (because no more rental car) to a dingy little motel and came back in the morning for my flight. There were multiple delays getting the flight from Monterey to LAX off the ground, that could only be described as "farting around." One delay involved a family trying to bring their cat onboard in a carrier, and the poor creature was taken off and put back on the plane multiple times. Finally we got to LAX, and eventually I made it home. My husband drove the 35 miles to the other airport instead of the 9.5 miles to the original airport. My luggage did not make it home until the next day, delivered in the back of a pickup truck where it got soaked with rain. It was a long trip and very frustrating, but I really couldn't complain. On the same long-delayed flight from Monterey to LAX was a soldier embarking on the first of FIVE flights so that he could go back to the war in Afghanistan after spending the holidays with his family.
Best: Five years after that, for my grandmother's 100th (!) birthday, we all made the same trip. We did all the tourist stuff we could, spent a lot of time with her and her friends, and had a wonderful Christmas dinner at one of the fancy hotels in Monterey. The flight home was also cursed with delays, but the rest of the trip was so pleasant and memorable that it didn't matter.
I was in my 20s and flying from Sacramento to Aspen where I was working and living at the time. I got off the plane in Denver in a raging snowstorm and tried to figure out how to get home. It was then I discovered that my wallet was gone. So no money, no id and no way to get home. I was in the airport for hours. The gate agent felt sorry for me and gave me half her sandwich. Finally, two of my fellow waiters drove all the way to the airport (at least 5 hours in a storm, maybe more) and took me home. I will always remember that snowy ride home and be grateful for crazy ski bums. P.S. Months later my wallet turned up in an unmarked envelope in the mail. The money was gone but my license and other stuff was there.
The first Christmas after I graduated from college, I was woorking at a small rural hospital up in the mountains of CO. This was 1982. So no cell phones, etc. I had never not been home for Christmas and my grandparents were going to be there as well! It started snowing but many times, the weather would improve as you moved down the mountain, not this time!
I was 22 years old, what did I know?! The first leg of the journey, normally about 45 minutes took over 2 hours...yes most people wouldv'e turned back but did I mention that I was 22? :-) When I got to the highway on ramp (I70 east)...the highway was closed. What did I do? Yes, I went around the closure and set out down the highway. The 90 minute drive into Denver was 6 hours! And have I mentioned yet, that I was driving an OG Bug...yep-lightweight, like a roller skate and the heat was forced air that was really only hot when the car was moving (and hot is probably overstating it). As you can imagine, the defroster was not great. I was scared, I think, but knew that if I could just keep moving, I'd probably be okay and I was. Was snowed in down in Denver for 5 days! What was one of my greatest memories, would never have happened today because you know that I would've known that blizzard was coming and never started out!
Worst: during our first Christmas together my husband and I dutifully agreed to visit each of our parents/family. We lived in Philly; his were 120 miles north in New York, mine were 150 miles south in Washington DC. So, a drive up to NY on Dec 23 for the night, back to Philly on Dec 24 for the night, then to DC on the 25th for the night. This would have been a dumb idea on any random 3 days; over Christmas the traffic made it colossally STUPID: all of the trips took 3X longer than normal & we probably spent more time on I-95 than we did with family. At the end of the whole thing we had to pry my husband's hands off the steering wheel. From that point on we resolved to never travel during Christmas. Anyone/everyone was welcome to visit, but we were staying HOME.
Best: Several family members were heading to my sister's in Boston for Thanksgiving. Because of flights & various scheduling conflicts we postponed Thanksgiving dinner to Friday. Much like Mel's Christmas flight, we flew up on Thanksgiving day--avoiding the worst travel day of the year. The airport was empty, the flight was empty, the flight crew was in a good mood . . . all in all a totally relaxing experience. And the turkey, stuffing and apple pie tasted just as delicious one day later!
Early in our relationship, we had a few Christmas trips like the one you described in your worst... and that's how we ended up never traveling to PA or OH for Christmas again. Cozy home Christmas always!
My husband and I were traveling to Newark from Seattle a week before Thanksgiving, with a plan to pick up a rental car at the airport, drive to Upstate New York and then on to Western Massachusetts to see friends and family, and then drive back down to New Jersey to spend Thanksgiving with my husband‘s mother, siblings and family. The flight was uneventful until 30 minutes before landing, when the pilot announced that due to weather, we would have to circle for a while until getting permission to land. “A while” turned out to be an hour-and-a-half. We eventually landed at Newark in the midst of a freak snowstorm, more than two hours late. It was obvious that driving to Upstate New York wasn’t possible. I called several airport area hotels and all were full, so we decided to take the train to the station closest to my mother-in-law’s house, and walk the half-mile there if we had to. We got on the crowded airport Sky Train to get to the New Jersey Transit station at the edge of the airport, and the train went about 30 feet out of the station and stopped due to ice on the tracks. We sat there for about an hour waiting for the ice to be cleared off and then finally the train moved and we eventually got to the station, where we waited another hour for a train that stopped in New Brunswick. The train journey was slow, but uneventful. When we got to New Brunswick it was snowing heavily, and there were about 6 or 7 inches on the ground. We went down the stairs from the platform to the street, resigned to walking with no boots and with a suitcase and a carry-on. There was a cab sitting at the curb and the driver lowered his window and called, “anyone going to Highland Park?” We were, and he took us and another passenger all the way to our destinations. It was 2 a.m. when we finally got to sleep, 10 hours after our original arrival time.
Mel, I know that feeling of being on the last plane. I was once on the last flight out of Dulles before it closed down for a bad, icy snowstorm. I am normally a good flyer (I actually love to fly!),but after walking through an eerily quiet terminal and watching them de-ice the wings a second time before take-off, I was VERY nervous. Luckily, the flight was fine.
My story is a bit of both. When I was a teen, we lived in Indiana, which made visiting my mom's side of the family in KCMO much easier. We went there for Thanksgiving one year. I was about 14. My 4 siblings and I, both parents, and our dog all piled into the station wagon to drive about 8 hours across some of the most boring landscape I've ever seen. Not even any trees. Just....corn. But we really enjoyed seeing that side of the family because they are all really fun. We stayed with Cousin D and her family. D forced her oldest daughter, who was about 17, to show me around and let me hang out with her friends. It was awkward for me, because she clearly didn't want some younger 2nd cousin trailing along behind her. (And as the oldest of 5, I didn't blame her!) I tried to make myself as quiet and agreeable as possible. She took me to a rooftop for the downtown KCMO Christmas lighting, where ALL the buildings light up at the same moment on the same night. It was spectacular. It was also so cold, I could actually feel my bones getting colder. My core body temperature was dropping in that prairie wind! To this day, I have not experienced cold like that since that night. In general, we all had a blast. We would have come back the next year, too, but our dog basically ate their basement door, so we were never invited back again. Sorry about the door, Cousin D.
Funny moment on this trip I forgot to include: the grumpy 17 year old second cousin tasked with sheparding me around was also indignant with her mom at the time, because I remember her venting to her friends about her mom. Apparently, in the middle of the huge family dinner we had just had, her mom (Cousin D) wordlessly whipped out a beer and drank it with her meal for all to see. Turns out, this beer was from her daughter's secret underage beer stash, and so she drank it right in front of her to let her know she was busted! (Passive aggressive behavior is a hallmark of this side of the family!)
Nothing noteworthy have been on the trip but the best travel story I do have is when I was a freshman in college and my parents paid for us to fly to Missouri to spend time with cousins for Christmas and then onto my sisters in Phoenix. From there we went to Disneyland And it was fabulous with all of us being together. That was in 1972. Again in 1978 we all got together at my parents house. I was living in the finger lakes region of New York and we drove a blizzard up to Northern New York with a 2 1/2 year-old and five-year-old and a trunk full of presents and Christmas cookies. that would have to have been the worst. I remember hearing too many times I have to go to the bathroom and when are we going to get there.
We were flying home from Florida during the holidays and our connecting flight in Atlanta got cancelled. (Shocker) They couldn’t get all three of us on a flight together until 3 days later. So we made the most of it and had an awesome mini second vacation in Atlanta, eating delicious food, visiting the aquarium and the children’s museum. We still talk about our Accidental Atlanta Vacation and it’s been 7+ years
I once listened to a program about how to make your family grow closer and the basic idea was you have to suffer together. The speaker said go on a camping trip and if it doesn't rain and everything goes perfectly, try again later.😊 He said while you're camping out in the rain and mud and lose your food and get lost on the trail, etc. You aren't drawing closer together, but 3 weeks later you start to talk about it. And it is a memory forever that you have in common and binds you together.
I went to Mexico with a boyfriend for an alternative holiday. He got turista, so I decided to have a solo adventure for the day. My destination? An off the beaten path swimming hole. When I asked at the bus station, they were like, idk what you are talking about but here’s a ticket. I got on the bus and told the driver where I was going. He dropped me about 30 mins later at a federal police station. They very nicely decided to drive me the rest of the way, sandwiched between two guys one with an ak47(? Idk guns but it was big). When I arrived it was like a record scratch. This was not a tourist destination. A woman came up to me and told me not to approach any young men, and also asked about my chauffeurs. She told me not to be there when they came back to pick me up. I hightailed it out of there. As I was walking a random backcountry road I saw a beacon of hope: a Corona delivery truck. I hitched a ride back toward where we were staying. At one point the federales passed us, going to pick me up. I ducked down in the truck. The drivers were like, “what did you do?” I explained and they nodded and then said they’d take me straight to where I was staying. I think they are the reason I am here today! Thanks, Corona guys!
And you win today's contest!!! OMG!
I was about 24 years old and hoo boy did I do some dumb stuff!
OMG. WHUT?! Girl.
Warning: kind of gross story, and definitely the worst. One Thanksgiving when my son was 3, we were driving from my in-laws' house to dinner at my aunt's house. Close to our destination, we passed an open KMart off the highway and righteously thought to ourselves, what losers go to Kmart on Thanksgiving? Horrible consumerism. (You can guess where this is headed). We had a nice dinner but my son didn't eat much...after dinner, out of nowhere, he suddenly starts throwing up in the living room (I never serve that red jello salad anymore)...my intrepid uncle started cleaning up and we made a hasty retreat as we still had to drive 2 hours back to the in-laws'. Guess who stopped at KMart on Thanksgiving to get new pajamas for a vomit-covered preschooler? Lesson learned.
:-(
When I was 10 we drove from New York to Iowa for Christmas to surprise my grandparents. When we arrived at the farm we sent my 5 year old brother to the door. My grandma at first mistook him for the little brother of one of her piano students and started explaining that she wasn't giving lessons that week. Then I walked up and she started saying, " Oh! Oh! Oh! You could have given me a heart attack!" We had a great white Christmas on the farm with cousins and an aunt and uncle there, too.
Okay, I realize this isn't exactly a travel story, but it involves Christmas and travel. 😊
Trapped on a night bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai blasting local music videos for many, many (many) hours. It was the worst but also kind of secretly the best 🙈 A true contender for “best” though was probably hiking the Ring of Fire in Guatemala over Christmas.
Worst: We were visiting my in-laws for the holidays and there was a winter storm forecasted to enter the area overnight. The forecast was for 3-6 inches of snow. We had planned to stay through dinner and then return home, which typically was a 3.5 hour drive. Watching the radar, it became clear that the storm was going to arrive early. We left around 4pm, reached the beginning of the storm about an hour up the road, and spent another 6 hours driving in an all-out blizzard of snow and wind. It was white-knuckle driving, but we made it home safely. That 3-6 inch forecast missed by a LOT. We received about 20 inches by the time the storm finished.
Best: Took a Christmas trip to New England, primarily spending about 5 days in the downeast Maine. The day before our arrival, a winter storm passed through the area dropping about 6 inches of snow, allowing the entirety of our visit to be adorned with an idyllic blanket of snow. We also fit in a brief stop in NYC on the return journey to soak up the Christmas vibes. Still one of our favorite Christmas trips, by far!
Except for driving in a blizzard, these both sound awesome. I miss a white Christmas!
100% agree! Once we made it home, we were all-in on the snow continuing to pile up! The blizzard drive was about a week before Christmas, but thanks to the enormity of the storm, that snow was still around for us to have a white Christmas. We don't get many of those here in Virginia, so it was VERY welcome. :-)
I don't usually travel for the holidays, so the best I can come up with is from when I was little. My mom and I lived with my grandparents and my uncle before fourth grade and had our own apartment after that. My grandparents usually didn't host. When we lived there, we went to my aunt's (mom's sister's) and one year the ancient heater wasn't working and it was brutally cold (Boston). My uncle had to stay home to wait for the heating company. Then after we moved out it happened AGAIN, and again my uncle had to stay home. He's not the most social sort so he probably didn't mind.
Here's an alternative, non-travel-related funny story. I always gave my mom a linen calendar. One year I decided to get it monogrammed with our last name: Drummey. Only on Christmas morning when she opened it, she realized it said, The Dummeys. In some families this would have been terrible. In ours, this was HILARIOUS. My mom showed it off proudly all year long!
THE DUMMEYS. This is the best.
Worst: My grandmother's birthday is in mid-December. When she turned 95, my siblings and I traveled to Monterey, California, shortly before Christmas and spent a few days with her. They left right after Christmas, but I stayed through New Years and expected to fly home on the red-eye out of SFO New Years night. Right after I turned in my keys to the little box at the rental car counter, I learned my flight to SFO had been cancelled due to weather. Of the limited, bad options offered to me, I decided to stay overnight and fly home to a different airport out of LAX the next day. I took a cab (because no more rental car) to a dingy little motel and came back in the morning for my flight. There were multiple delays getting the flight from Monterey to LAX off the ground, that could only be described as "farting around." One delay involved a family trying to bring their cat onboard in a carrier, and the poor creature was taken off and put back on the plane multiple times. Finally we got to LAX, and eventually I made it home. My husband drove the 35 miles to the other airport instead of the 9.5 miles to the original airport. My luggage did not make it home until the next day, delivered in the back of a pickup truck where it got soaked with rain. It was a long trip and very frustrating, but I really couldn't complain. On the same long-delayed flight from Monterey to LAX was a soldier embarking on the first of FIVE flights so that he could go back to the war in Afghanistan after spending the holidays with his family.
Best: Five years after that, for my grandmother's 100th (!) birthday, we all made the same trip. We did all the tourist stuff we could, spent a lot of time with her and her friends, and had a wonderful Christmas dinner at one of the fancy hotels in Monterey. The flight home was also cursed with delays, but the rest of the trip was so pleasant and memorable that it didn't matter.
Your 'worst' story is like a less happy 'Planes, Trains, and Automobiles!'
100th birthday!
I was in my 20s and flying from Sacramento to Aspen where I was working and living at the time. I got off the plane in Denver in a raging snowstorm and tried to figure out how to get home. It was then I discovered that my wallet was gone. So no money, no id and no way to get home. I was in the airport for hours. The gate agent felt sorry for me and gave me half her sandwich. Finally, two of my fellow waiters drove all the way to the airport (at least 5 hours in a storm, maybe more) and took me home. I will always remember that snowy ride home and be grateful for crazy ski bums. P.S. Months later my wallet turned up in an unmarked envelope in the mail. The money was gone but my license and other stuff was there.
The first Christmas after I graduated from college, I was woorking at a small rural hospital up in the mountains of CO. This was 1982. So no cell phones, etc. I had never not been home for Christmas and my grandparents were going to be there as well! It started snowing but many times, the weather would improve as you moved down the mountain, not this time!
I was 22 years old, what did I know?! The first leg of the journey, normally about 45 minutes took over 2 hours...yes most people wouldv'e turned back but did I mention that I was 22? :-) When I got to the highway on ramp (I70 east)...the highway was closed. What did I do? Yes, I went around the closure and set out down the highway. The 90 minute drive into Denver was 6 hours! And have I mentioned yet, that I was driving an OG Bug...yep-lightweight, like a roller skate and the heat was forced air that was really only hot when the car was moving (and hot is probably overstating it). As you can imagine, the defroster was not great. I was scared, I think, but knew that if I could just keep moving, I'd probably be okay and I was. Was snowed in down in Denver for 5 days! What was one of my greatest memories, would never have happened today because you know that I would've known that blizzard was coming and never started out!
https://www.9news.com/article/weather/where-were-you-during-the-christmas-eve-blizzard-of-1982/73-5ac73bd8-45ba-4e79-83d9-0fff7812ee5d
Um, this is a wild story.
Worst: during our first Christmas together my husband and I dutifully agreed to visit each of our parents/family. We lived in Philly; his were 120 miles north in New York, mine were 150 miles south in Washington DC. So, a drive up to NY on Dec 23 for the night, back to Philly on Dec 24 for the night, then to DC on the 25th for the night. This would have been a dumb idea on any random 3 days; over Christmas the traffic made it colossally STUPID: all of the trips took 3X longer than normal & we probably spent more time on I-95 than we did with family. At the end of the whole thing we had to pry my husband's hands off the steering wheel. From that point on we resolved to never travel during Christmas. Anyone/everyone was welcome to visit, but we were staying HOME.
Best: Several family members were heading to my sister's in Boston for Thanksgiving. Because of flights & various scheduling conflicts we postponed Thanksgiving dinner to Friday. Much like Mel's Christmas flight, we flew up on Thanksgiving day--avoiding the worst travel day of the year. The airport was empty, the flight was empty, the flight crew was in a good mood . . . all in all a totally relaxing experience. And the turkey, stuffing and apple pie tasted just as delicious one day later!
Early in our relationship, we had a few Christmas trips like the one you described in your worst... and that's how we ended up never traveling to PA or OH for Christmas again. Cozy home Christmas always!
My husband and I were traveling to Newark from Seattle a week before Thanksgiving, with a plan to pick up a rental car at the airport, drive to Upstate New York and then on to Western Massachusetts to see friends and family, and then drive back down to New Jersey to spend Thanksgiving with my husband‘s mother, siblings and family. The flight was uneventful until 30 minutes before landing, when the pilot announced that due to weather, we would have to circle for a while until getting permission to land. “A while” turned out to be an hour-and-a-half. We eventually landed at Newark in the midst of a freak snowstorm, more than two hours late. It was obvious that driving to Upstate New York wasn’t possible. I called several airport area hotels and all were full, so we decided to take the train to the station closest to my mother-in-law’s house, and walk the half-mile there if we had to. We got on the crowded airport Sky Train to get to the New Jersey Transit station at the edge of the airport, and the train went about 30 feet out of the station and stopped due to ice on the tracks. We sat there for about an hour waiting for the ice to be cleared off and then finally the train moved and we eventually got to the station, where we waited another hour for a train that stopped in New Brunswick. The train journey was slow, but uneventful. When we got to New Brunswick it was snowing heavily, and there were about 6 or 7 inches on the ground. We went down the stairs from the platform to the street, resigned to walking with no boots and with a suitcase and a carry-on. There was a cab sitting at the curb and the driver lowered his window and called, “anyone going to Highland Park?” We were, and he took us and another passenger all the way to our destinations. It was 2 a.m. when we finally got to sleep, 10 hours after our original arrival time.
MAGICAL CAB! I love it.
Mel, I know that feeling of being on the last plane. I was once on the last flight out of Dulles before it closed down for a bad, icy snowstorm. I am normally a good flyer (I actually love to fly!),but after walking through an eerily quiet terminal and watching them de-ice the wings a second time before take-off, I was VERY nervous. Luckily, the flight was fine.
There's nothing like that feeling of spooky+relieved associated with 'last flight in a storm' experiences.
My story is a bit of both. When I was a teen, we lived in Indiana, which made visiting my mom's side of the family in KCMO much easier. We went there for Thanksgiving one year. I was about 14. My 4 siblings and I, both parents, and our dog all piled into the station wagon to drive about 8 hours across some of the most boring landscape I've ever seen. Not even any trees. Just....corn. But we really enjoyed seeing that side of the family because they are all really fun. We stayed with Cousin D and her family. D forced her oldest daughter, who was about 17, to show me around and let me hang out with her friends. It was awkward for me, because she clearly didn't want some younger 2nd cousin trailing along behind her. (And as the oldest of 5, I didn't blame her!) I tried to make myself as quiet and agreeable as possible. She took me to a rooftop for the downtown KCMO Christmas lighting, where ALL the buildings light up at the same moment on the same night. It was spectacular. It was also so cold, I could actually feel my bones getting colder. My core body temperature was dropping in that prairie wind! To this day, I have not experienced cold like that since that night. In general, we all had a blast. We would have come back the next year, too, but our dog basically ate their basement door, so we were never invited back again. Sorry about the door, Cousin D.
HA, this sounds a little bit like the Vacation movies. I'm here for it.
Funny moment on this trip I forgot to include: the grumpy 17 year old second cousin tasked with sheparding me around was also indignant with her mom at the time, because I remember her venting to her friends about her mom. Apparently, in the middle of the huge family dinner we had just had, her mom (Cousin D) wordlessly whipped out a beer and drank it with her meal for all to see. Turns out, this beer was from her daughter's secret underage beer stash, and so she drank it right in front of her to let her know she was busted! (Passive aggressive behavior is a hallmark of this side of the family!)
Oh too many to tell!
Nothing noteworthy have been on the trip but the best travel story I do have is when I was a freshman in college and my parents paid for us to fly to Missouri to spend time with cousins for Christmas and then onto my sisters in Phoenix. From there we went to Disneyland And it was fabulous with all of us being together. That was in 1972. Again in 1978 we all got together at my parents house. I was living in the finger lakes region of New York and we drove a blizzard up to Northern New York with a 2 1/2 year-old and five-year-old and a trunk full of presents and Christmas cookies. that would have to have been the worst. I remember hearing too many times I have to go to the bathroom and when are we going to get there.