My summers were spent playing and playing hard. There was so much to be done in the woods; forts to build, paths to be made, ponds and creeks to play in, fish to try to catch with our bare hands, plants to look at and find, and skunks to avoid. LOL

In the "hood" there was so many fun games to be played, traditional ones as well as made up ones, and all the neighborhood kids would be out playing. We rode our bikes, walked, or ran all over the place.

It was very rare that we ever went on a "vacation" away from home. But I will say that my parents amaze me. One summer, 1969????, my ambitious parents decided to take a camping trip from NY to NM with 9 kids (the youngest wasn't born yet) all of us under the age of 10. My dad modified our VW microbus and put in a storage bench. They loaded up all the equipment, tents, sleeping bags, cooking utensils, etc., playpen in the back for the wee little ones, loaded up us kids, and off to NM we went.

To this day, they laugh about the adventures and thing that happened along the way including one campground flooding during the middle of the night and my mom and dad getting all us kids in the microbus and taking down the tent and loading everything up. I remember waking up in the microbus and my dad in a bad mood. LOL

Of course, on the way home, the microbus broke down outside of Des Moines, Iowa. In my 4-year old mind, I thought we were just going to die in the middle of nowhere and was worried about my dad as he and one of my brothers went with a STRANGER to get help. We somehow got towed in to Des Moines, the microbus got fixed, and my frustrated dad drove straight through the day and night home to NY.