It was a quiet weekend. We had no Easter celebration, unless you could the chopped hard boiled eggs Ned added to our salad bar for dinner.
I've been thinking about vacations, having read a quesition about what people do on their annual vacations. We have taken the kids camping and on weekend excursions, but we've never had what I would call an "annual vacation," like I did with my parents.
When I was about 7, they found this vacation spot in Boyes Hot Sprints where we could rent a cabin for a week. We went there with our friends and neighbors from San Francisco (their oldest son, Stephen was my friend).
I remember that the cottage had an ice box -- literally an "ice box." they would bring a big block of ice once a week and you kept food cold in the box. I remember that I was 7 because that first year, I had my hair cut for the first time. I had naturally curly Shirley Temple curls but they were so tight that I was in tears every morning when my mother combed them out and I begged her to let me have it cut. She took me to a beautician, but couldn't stay to watch and came back after all the curls were cut off. I'm sure she cried, but I didn't see her.
That same year I remember my mother getting my sister all dressed up for Mass and letting her go outside to wait to get into the car and when my mother came out, Karen was sitting on the ground pouring dirt over her head.
I don't remember how many summers we spent time at the Boyes Hot Springs resort. I remember one year when my mother went berry picking with some friends. They were climbing down a hill and realized they were standing in a hornet's nest. There was a creek at the bottom of the hill and the other women rolled down the hill and into the creek. My mother climbed UP the hill so she didn't spill her berries. She was stung a lot, but she didn't lose any of her berries.
My father built a wading pool to take up there with us. He put the frame together and then hung waterproof canvas on it and we could sit in it and cool off. The depth of the water was about 1 foot.
I' not sure why they decided to try a different vacation place, but they found a place that was a bit more fancy and decided to try that (see photo of the day). My grandparents never went with us to Boyes Springs, but were able to come with us to this new place. I don't remember a lot about it except in reading the brochure, I noticed that they showed movies every night\. This was in the middle of my Judy Garland craze and I joked that they would show a Judy Garland movie. The day we got there I checked to see what the movie was that night-- Judy Garland's "The Pirate.".
I think we only went to this second resort for two years and after that I guess Karen and I were getting too old for vacation resorts.
I'm kind of sorry that we never had that experience with our own kids, but they did get a lot of vacationing in over their lives, whether checking ghost towns in the mining area with the Blackfords or spending time at "Eric's Property" in Mendocino where we camped and harvested huckleberries .with the Blackfords and the Havels.
I have nice memories of those trips. Mike Blackford is gone now and Michelle Havel's ashes are scattered at Eric's Property. I don't have a clue what happened to our family vacation properties when I was a kid.
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PHOTO OF THE DAY
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