Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Describe a Family Vacation

  From Randy (my cousin) over at Genea-Musings:

it's Saturday Night - 

time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1)  Did your family go on vacation? Describe one or more of your vacations with your birth family or with your partner/spouse and children.

2) Please share!

(Thank you to Lisa S. Gorrell for this SNGF idea.)

Here's mine:

    My mother, father, and I went on vacation every year.  That is something I am grateful for to my parents.  It instilled a love of traveling in me that has served me well over my lifetime.  I haven't been all around the world by any stretch, and there are many more places that I wish I could visit that I probably never will, but I have seen enough to have bragging rights.  The difference between mom and me and my dad is that my dad was happy going to the same place year after year.  Mom and I never want want to go to the same place twice. 

    My father loved the mountains. So every year, during the week of mine and my father's birthday (mid June), we went to Lake Lure, North Carolina.  We stayed at the Frank's Motor Inn which was directly across the street from the lake.  We would also visit Chimney Rock which is close by.  

Lake Lure, North Carolina

        Lake Lure's claim to fame is that is is where the movie Dirty Dancing was filmed. It's also in the mountains and has very beautiful scenery. 

 

  

    Yes, these are postcards I purchased there when I was a child and have kept all these years.  I mean, I am a genealogist and a scrapbooker.  

    I spent several birthdays at that Frank's Motor Inn.  My mother always made it special by having a cake and presents in the motel room.  Probably why I love birthdays so much.

    We took others with us some years.  Our friends, Colene and Robert, their niece and grandchildren; my niece and nephew, Missi and Harry, Jr.  My dad loved kids and thought the more, the merrier.  

    Now we did go other places occasionally... Six Flags in Atlanta, Looking Glass Falls, Rock City, and Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina, and Florida to visit family (not to go to the beaches!) though we did visit Keystone Heights where my dad used to water ski on the lake.  These excursions were usually just on weekends, I believe.  The week-long vacations were always at Lake Lure. 

    Those annual vacations are some of the few good memories I have of my childhood.  

    Here are some photographs we took way back then:

      

My father, my grand aunt Alice with her back turned, me, and Colene's niece, Angela,
by a mountain stream in the area.

  

Me at Chimney Rock (probably about 9 or 10)

      

Angela and me on the beach at Lake Lure