By Sara Jane Roupe

Summer Vacation. Those two words evoke a wide array of emotions. With children, summer vacation means three months away from school, visits to grandparents’, trips to theme parks, days at the zoo or aquarium, homemade ice cream, swimming pools, playing outside and the occasional week at summer camp. To adults, the words summer vacation often strike fear and terror at their very mention. I never understood why my parents weren’t jumping out of their skin to go on trips and take time off of work until I reach adulthood. As an adult, orchestrating a vacation is oftentimes like herding cats (as my daddy would say). There are travel plans to make, budgets to mind, suitcases to pack, pets to feed, mail to pick up… the list goes on and on. With all of the preparations and worries, it’s very difficult to relax and have a good time.

Despite everything weighing down on their shoulders telling them not to have a good time, my parents and grandparents always managed to make even the smallest of trips fun. One of my favorite mini vacations was the time I went by myself with Grandmama and Papa Dan to the mountains in North Carolina. We didn’t visit any theme parks or stay in a five-star resort but the memories of Papa Dan mistaking it for garbage, trying to throw Grandmama’s crochet bag in the dumpster, traveling two hours to see the aqueducts (giant holes in the side of the mountain) and convincing Papa Dan that we weren’t headed for the poor house because we bought a three-dollar ice cream cone are far more treasured than the finest of luxury vacations.

If you’ve spent any time around the Roupes (Mama, Daddy, Me and Susie), you’re well aware that we can turn the most mundane things into hilarious (at least to us) jokes. In the summer of 1997, we piled into the family minivan and headed for Jamestown and Williamsburg, Virginia. What could have been a very educational but very boring, even disastrous vacation provided fodder for inside jokes for years to come. Our hotel was downwind from a field freshly smeared with natural fertilizer, our already crotchety grandfather, Opa, getting crotchetier by the minute and the tourists, oh the crowds of tourists. They flooded Jamestown by the busload and their shrill, bleating cries sounded like a herd of goats, hungry for cheeseburgers and two scoops of ice cream. We still laugh about that trip.

This year, our family is headed out West! Grandmama, Uncle Glenn, Aunt Amy, cousin Brittany, Mama, Daddy and I will have spent a week in Sedona and the Grand Canyon by the time you read this. (Pictures and full report to come.) I’m sure we’ll make memories to last me for the rest of my life.