Road Trips: The South 1969

 When Richard passed away last September, Laura and I discovered a box of old scrapbooks.    I knew that my mom would make scrapbooks after some of our trips, but hadn't seen this collection of scrapbooks in many years- if not decades.

My heart did a little flip flop of joy- imagining the stories contained within these weathered pages.  

That is until I started to look through them.   

Confession time- Audrey was not an accomplished scrapbooker.   For in these pages were postcards, glued to the pages, an occasional ticket stub but next to nothing was written next to the photos.   Next to no photos of people and no reflections on the trip itself.  

But rather than dwell on what wasn't included, I shall look at what was included.

In the Spring of 1969 our family would take a vacation- as noted on this very detailed title page

The South, eh?   That's pretty broad description.

Upon further reading...it seemed to have been a pretty epic road trip..

for there are postcards from 

And from a Stone Mountain in Georgia...

where the inscription on the back of this post card reads

 "Confederate Flags waving gloriously above the beautiful reflecting pool".

Curiosity led me to see if they still fly given all the changes within our culture of celebrating the confederacy- and they were relocated to less controversial location within the park earlier this year (2023)

Charleston was also part of the adventure..

as was a trip to 

Notice the cost of admission- these days they range from $85-105 for a one day ticket...even adjusting for inflation ($3 then is about $25 today)...that's a significant jump.  

The album had few if any photos of us-

Except for these gems...

Sister and I at Rock City...

And this one of Audrey and her girls...where yep...I packed my scowl!

Maybe there were more photos in the boxes of slides we jointly agreed to discard without first sifting through.   But, some 54 years later...would it really be worth the trouble to sift through even more memorabilia than we already decided to keep?  

Yep- no regrets on passing on saving the slide boxes.

And instead- after just a few minutes with the scanner, some time on this keyboard- I am reminded of the gift held within the pages of these weary scrapbooks.

Our parents took us on trips- from a very early age (I wasn't even 4 years old on this trip).   Clearly they were epic in scope- for a quick google map itinerary tells me this trip would have involved over 2k miles, all done over probably just a week.  

And from this early exposure to travel- my sister and I were gifted with a curiosity and desire to travel.  We were shown through example- don't wait until some-day,  start with where you are and go from there.

And for that I say THANK YOU Mom and Dad...