Did you every take a summer road trip with friends or familly? Where did you go. Back in the mid 1970's, my friend and

[debm55]

Last edited Fri Jul 10, 2026, 11:56 AM - Edit history (1)

I traveled from Pittsburgh to parts of Texas. And you? 🚗

[surfered]

1. In the summer of 1968, a college buddy and I hitch hiked from Austin, TX to Florida and back.

I remember there were more George Wallace for President signs in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida than for anyone else.

[debm55]

7. Thank you very much, surfered, for sharing that time in our history.

[Haggard Celine]

2. We took lots of summer vacations when I was growing up.

The places we went the most were the Smoky Mountains and the panhandle of Florida. We also went to the Rockies and the Grand Canyon. I liked the beach as a kid, but not so much now. I've always loved the mountains, though, and the high desert areas out in the West. It's been so long since I went on a trip. Maybe I'll do it this year.

[debm55]

8. Thank you very much for sharing with us, Haggard Celine. I like the mountains too. Texas was too hot for us.

[Eugene]

3. 3 family trips - 1969 and 1970s.

From Boston, Massachusetts to relatives in the south.

First trip: Georgia and Florida. Had to flee Hurricane Camille.

Other 2 trips: Texas, Florida, Georgia.

My dad drove like a speed demon.

[debm55]

9. Thank you very much for sharing with us, Eugene. Glad you were able to avoid Hurricane Camille.

[hauckeye]

4. 2 long family trips in the 60s

Iowa to Washington DC in 66 and Iowa to California in 67. All 3 girls in the back seat. Dad made us leave at 3 AM. When we wanted to nap, little sister in the back window, big sister on the seat and me on the floor 😃

[debm55]

10. Thank you for sharing with us. haucheye.🚗

[MyOwnPeace]

5. Summer of '69.........

Just graduated from college and had a brand new GTO convertible. Drove from Pittsburgh to Cape Cod with 3 friends - the whole way with the top down!
The most memorable part was deciding to stop at a motel on the way home to watch Neil Armstrong take the first step on the moon - and it was a black and white TV!

[debm55]

11. Thank you very much for sharing your trip with us. Both trips were memorable.🚗

[flvegan]

16. I got my first real six string...

[MyOwnPeace]

22. 3 points to add:

1. Neil's departed our Earth
2. You can't find B&W TV's anymore
3. I STILL have that 1969 GTO!

[gay texan]

6. Oklahoma

To see the Grandparents! Very fun times!!!

[debm55]

12. Thank you gay texan. At the time of my trip, Texas was experiencing a job boom. It was so hot. Glad you had a great time

🚗

[wnylib]

13. Several times but 2 of them were/are my favorites

even though they might sound dull to others.

First one. I was 16. .My brother was in the Navy, stationed in Charleston, SC, with his wife and 2 sons. My parents drove, with my sister and me, from Erie, PA to Charleston. On the way we went onto the Skyline Drive in VA. Got a view of the Shenandoah Valley that made me realize literally the meaning of "breathtaking view." In SC, I saw the ocean for the first time.

I stayed for the rest of the summer to help my SIL with the kids bc my brother spent most of his time in Savannah for ship repairs. Had to take a Greyhound back to Erie bc there was an airline strike at the time. About 5:00 am I was dozing when murmurs on the bus and my seatmate woke me up. We had just reached DC and were able to get a glimpse of the White House.

Second time. My husband and I had planned a a 3 week cross country drive from Cleveland to LA to visit his aunt. But one of his key employees accepted another job with very short notice. So we cut our vacation time to one week and spent it driving around Ohio to indulge my interest in the preColumbian mound sites. I got a couple library books on the subject and we use a Rand NcNalley road map book (long before GPS). I was from PA and my husband was from NY.

We drove south from Cleveland to Columbus, then to Chillicothe and on to Portsmouth on the Ohio River border with KY. Crossed into KY for lunch, just so we could say that we had been there. On our southward drive, we veered off onto various side roads tracking down mound sites, some small, others large. Read historical markers, met other tourists, and found some good deals at farm auctions on collectible household items.

From Portsmouth, we headed west toward the Serpent Mound. It is so long that there is a lookout you can climb to see the entire snake effigy. From there we went to Cincinnati and then crossed the state again, back to Cleveland.

The Serpent Mound and Mound City were the most impressive looking of the sites we saw. At Mound City, excavators left a cross section of their dig visible for viewers, protected by glass.

The mostly rural drive was relaxing after the hectic lives we both had in Cleveland at that time. I have been interested in archeology and anthropology since childhood, so it was fun for me. My husband's interest in history kept his attention on how the first Europeans in the region regarded the mounds.

Today we know much more about the builders of those mounds, the Adena and Hopewell Cultures.

[True Dough]

14. My parents

would drop me off at the edge of the forest with a survival kit.

But they always came back for me two months later. So no hard feelings!

[TommieMommy]

15. We went to Florida, camped in Canada, went to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont

[flvegan]

17. Disney.

Florida from Massachusetts. That's a long ride. Great fun though!

[mtairyguy]

18. Every year from age two weeks until age 16,

…for me (and decades longer for my elders), we went from Philly to Mahtha’s Vinyud! Long before it became so popular, we visited family who were islanders. My great uncle was Wampanoag so we would go for two weeks every year.

The trip was part of the whole thing. We traveled with our dogs who were my responsibility (walking and monitoring during stops). Finally getting to woods hole gave relief and heightened anticipation as we waited for the ferry. And the ferry ride!

Rudy, our standard schnauzer who would just have gotten a cut and would be as vain as he could be, would strut around the deck getting attention. I would try to feed the seagulls that followed the boat and chicken out as they approached!

Then, touching ground, stopping at my aunt and uncle’s and getting to our place.

Waiting for the beach, the flying horses, getting a snack at giordanos and walking circuit ave.

Good stuff!

[OldBaldy1701E]

19. Every summer...

Off to the beach house from May until whenever we had to return home.

When I was younger, my mother did not have a 'job', so we could stay for a month or more. Once she started her nursing career, we could only go for a week at a time. Now, once I was old enough to drive, I went all the time. It was only one and a half hours away.

I consider it more home than the town where we lived most of the time. There is nothing like the Banks.

[sinkingfeeling]

20. We went to the UP of Michigan and Canada most summers, but also traveled to New England states and south

to Florida in the 50s and 60s.

[Jilly_in_VA]

21. We went on lots of them

Most generally to Colorado because my dad was an enthusiastic hiker. As a kid I enjoyed the climbs but as a teenager not so much, especially the summers we stayed in Georgetown (before the interstate came through and it was just this cool little town, not what it is now) and my uncle's family was there. I preferred to hang out with my cousin Judy and some of the local kids and other teenagers who were vacationing there. My parents were just sure I was getting into trouble but it was all very innocent.

Other trips were to New Mexico, Wyoming, and the Dakotas, but one memorable summer we diverge. We started out by taking the ferry across Lake Michigan from Milwaukee to Ludington, MI, then a leisurely trip back down along all the Great Lakes during which I think we kids got wet in every one of them. We ended up in Sault Ste. Marie for several days, which was fun; I loved watching the ships go through the locks there. Then we came back home to Madison down the rest of the UP and through parts of Wisconsin I was unfamiliar with.

Not to mention that every summer we visited our grandparents in Missouri. First we would go to my dad's parents in Columbia; their house was just a few blocks from the MU campus. That was a long day trip before the interstates were finished, so my dad would try to vary the routes to keep us all from being bored to death but it was often a long, hot, sticky ride. At some point during that visit, my mom and us kids would go on to Osceola to visit her parents. That was another long, dusty trip on local buses that they had in those days. Osceola is a tiny town in the Ozarks but is still the county seat of St. Clair County. Four some reason my dad never went with us and I never thought to ask Mom why. He did drive down to get us though. That part of the trip stopped when my grandmother Mills died when I was 15.

[jgo]

23. Ferries are fun in the summer

On one trip we headed up the east coast to Boston, then Maine, and then put the car on a ferry to Nova Scotia. Then toured Nova Scotia, and then headed back around the Bay of Fundy for variety, instead of taking the ferry back.

[ballardgirl]

24. In the early 1970's

My boyfriend at the time and I went on a road trip east across Washington and down into Southern Idaho, my birthplace, then visited Jackson, Wyoming and spent a couple nights in Yellowstone. Met my first jack Mormon in a bar there. It was October and there was some snowfall. We went from there through Utah - saw the Great Salt Lake. Spent the night in Brigham City and marveled at all the wild, drinking teenagers. From there we drove across Nevada. We had to spend the night at a funky motel in Winnemucca because there was a wild thunderstorm. These were drinking days for me. I had wine in a cooler and dipped into it during the scary wind/rainstorms. We agreed that he would drive and I would look out for danger. Ha! From there we drove through Reno - I did not like it, so we went over to Lake Tahoe where we spent a night or two. Across to Sacramento. We did some camping in California and saw part of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's running fence. Did the tourist thing in San Francisco and more camping on the Oregon Coast. Then, back home to Western Washington.

I'm sure there is more I am forgetting and too lazy to pull out the physical photos.

An earlier trip was with a boyfriend who was dodging the draft. We night drove the 101 and ended up in LA. He was a musician and got to spend time at places like The Troubadour. Lots of people like CSN. Joni Mitchell, etc hung out there but I was not yet 21 and had a job. I ended up flying home on my first ever plane trip.

[applegrove]

25. I went to Boston with my mom. My family went to Cape Cod,

Washington and Florida on separate trips. Florida especially was a long 3 day car ride from Ottawa. We had fun.

[IbogaProject]

26. Drove from NJ to Chicago & Wi

Twice in the 80s to catch Dead Shows at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin.

[Ocelot II]

27. Several family trips - us kids in the back of the station wagon,

reading comic books and watching for Burma Shave signs. We went to Florida to visit grandparents in about 1960; even as a kid I was shocked by the drinking fountains labeled White and Colored at stops along the way. Florida was miserably humid and buggy but we had fun at the beach. I remember another few years later, there was a trip out west to the Grand Tetons and Glacier Park, we stopped at the Black Hills and Devils Tower, went horseback riding. I think that was the trip where we rented a small travel trailer. In the '70s my ex and a friend and I drove out to Montana and back to Glacier Park and a bluegrass festival at Flathead Lake, and a bit of an adventure where we were stranded somewhere outside Missoula and had to adjust the points in the distributor with a Swiss army knife. Good times.

[NNadir]

28. As a boy, my parents always took me camping in the Adirondacks; we lived on Long Island.

When my life really began again, when I married my wife, we'd often, sometimes on a lark, go up and down the coast of California, often to Big Sur - we lived a while in the LA beach cities and then San Diego - occasionally to Oregon, Washington State, Utah a few times - the National Parks - once in a while Yosemite or Kings Canyon, and one very memorable time about which we still laugh, to Lassen Peak National Park.

It was most often nominally camping - but my wife called it "carring" - living out of a car but sleeping in a tent. With her, it was always wonderful, that magic time alone, just the two of us, together.

Sigh...

Hotels are never as magical as that was.

[OLDMDDEM]

29. Disneyland from Omaha in 1956.