Vacationing in the ’80s With My Parents
By Destro Designs and Viper Den Studios
I am currently in Cape May with my wife, twin daughters, and my wife’s entire side of the family. It is an amazing trip that we take every year, and her family has been coming to this same place and staying in the same house for almost 40 years.
The house is owned by a former teacher from my high school who also knows my father-in-law. It is a wild, small-world story for sure.
Being surrounded by all the luxuries of modern life, and seeing how much easier they make both the vacation and the travel, has put a few things into perspective that I may not have thought about before—especially when it comes to the vacations I took with my parents when I was young.
My parents were practically kids themselves when I was born, and I have always admired so much of what they did to raise me and my two sisters. By the time I was five years old, my parents were still only 23.
That is wild to me because I was an uncaged animal at 23, completely unfit for parental duty. To some extent, my dad was too, but that is another story.
Our family vacation every year was a trip to Lake George, a resort area in the Adirondacks that I absolutely loved as a kid. I loved the main strip with all the stores, the Frankenstein Wax Museum, the shops selling fake guns and real handcuffs, the crowds walking around, and, of course, the biggest arcade I had ever seen.
Honestly, it may still be the biggest arcade I have ever seen.
Most of the time, my parents could not afford a hotel along with our Saturday trip to the Great Escape theme park and our Sunday trip to Water Slide World. Instead, we would stay at an amazing place called the Adirondack Camping Village.
It was awesome.
It was a great family campground with a giant in-ground pool, hayrides, a big arcade, a barn where they showed movies every night, a general store, and absolutely immaculate vibes.
I am currently trying to convince my daughters to go there with me, but we will see. My daughters want to go camping about as much as I want a hole in my head. They do have small cabins now, though, so maybe there is still hope.
Looking back, I had an absolute blast every Memorial Day weekend with my family. It was amazing. I looked forward to it all year long, and I can still remember the landmarks along the highway that let me know we were getting close.
My dad did not play that “Are we there yet?” bullshit.
Or any bullshit, for that matter.
As I sit here in this beautiful Victorian house in Cape May for a week, surrounded by modern amenities, I keep thinking about the life-altering sacrifices my parents made to create memories for me and my sister.
My youngest sister was not born until I was 15, and these vacations were mostly over by then.
I have it on Easy Street here with my own kids.
My in-laws help with the girls. My daughters get to use their tablets, which is something they are allowed to do during this one week more than at any other time of the year. My in-laws make about 75 percent of the meals, and I am blessed to be able to take everyone out for the rest.
The ocean is only a block away, and the bed I sleep in is more comfortable than my own bed at home. There is a massive deck where we all hang out, which is especially amazing on bad-weather days. The inside of the house is cooled by about seven top-of-the-line Daikin mini-split air-conditioning units that keep my bedroom and the common areas at a brisk 62 degrees at all times.
It is truly an amazing vacation.
Shout-out to my in-laws for giving me and my family a stress-free and incredible week of family time. Ken and Susan, you both rock the motherfucking house. Truly.
All of these amazing comforts make me appreciate even more what my parents did when they were basically poor kids in their early 20s.
First, my parents worked their asses off all year and made countless sacrifices that I will never fully understand because, like good parents, they never mentioned them.
There was zero guilt-tripping.
Not even accidentally.
It all started with an entire year of sacrifice and hard work, which is already a lot.
Then, during the week leading up to our Friday afternoon departure, my parents would work double duty and squeeze in every extra hour they could.
After an entire week of barely sleeping and working their asses off, they would still work on Friday. Then we would head out, and once we arrived, they had to put up the tent and get the entire campsite ready while they were exhausted and completely spent.
Meanwhile, my sister and I would stand there bickering and asking what was taking so long because we wanted to go into the village and spend money.
By around 6:00, we would head into the village and have a blast walking around. My sister Amanda and I would overwhelm our parents with our childish excitement and endless fighting. We were always at each other’s throats.
Then it was back to the campsite, where my parents, after all that work, finally got to fall asleep on the ground with a thin sleeping bag as their only comfort.
Sometimes the tent was hot. Sometimes it was cold.
Memorial Day weekend was at least a blessing because it was not fully summer yet, although we definitely had one or two hot years.
By Friday night, after being in Lake George for only about five hours, my parents had already done more than most people would do in an entire weekend just to make sure we were having fun.
Then came Saturday morning.
After a terrible night of sleep on the ground, my dad would fire up the Coleman camping stove and battle his way through making eggs and toast while my mom packed our bags for the day at the Great Escape.
We would hit the park and have an absolute blast.
The food my parents packed would feed us all day, and walking around in the sun would completely wear them out after everything they had already done during the week and the night before.
After walking around all day and catering to two kids, we would go back to the campsite and do it all over again.
We would eat dinner cooked on the Coleman stove, take showers in the cold campground locker room, and then head back into the village for more walking and more spending.
After that, we would return to the campground, hit the arcade, and watch a movie in the barn. We would finally go to sleep on the ground again at around 11:00 p.m.
It was a freaking 17-hour day.
After yet another night in the tent, we would wake up and repeat the process. This time, we would go to the now-defunct Water Slide World.
We would spend the entire day in the sun.
There were wave pools, sandwiches, water slides, more sun, and more exhaustion.
Then we would repeat the nighttime routine: showers, more walking through the village, more time in the campground arcade, another movie in the barn, and another 17-hour day.
On Monday morning, we would pack everything up and head back into the village one final time.
If there was any money left, we would go to the Log Jam for breakfast and walk through the village once more before heading home.
I want you to imagine how excited and crazy I am now at almost 50 years old.
Then imagine what I must have been like as a single-digit terror, so full of energy and excitement that I could not allow my parents even one second to themselves.
Now multiply that by 10 because we were on vacation.
Yet I do not remember my parents complaining even once.
I do not remember them saying they were tired.
I do not remember them telling me no.
Even when my parents were divorced, we still took this trip every year.
For those who do not know, my parents were divorced for six years and eventually got back together after my dad straightened himself out and stopped drinking.
So, shout-out to my parents.
They sacrificed all year, slept on the ground, barely rested, and pushed themselves to their limits so they could give me some of the most memorable experiences of my life.
They never complained, even though there was certainly plenty to complain about.
As I sit here typing this in Cape May, I am doing my best to give my own children the same kind of memories.
What were your childhood vacations like?
