Throwback Thursday: childhood summer vacations or camps? #TBT

[#1]

It's Thursday!

I think Erling, my friend, and I were 9 or 10 years old when our parents sent us to YMCA summer camp. It was supposed to be a week (or 5 days). The first day wasn't even over when I become super homesick. Suffered through the night but the next day after breakfast, I wanted to see the camp director. Went into his office and asked if I could go home. He said something like well, have you tried checking out a knife from the library and whittled some wood? Have you tried that other thing? Reluctantly, I said I had not and promised to try it out. Honestly, I can't remember if I stayed or was picked up early, hahahaha. I think I and we ended up staying and liking it.

Sooo, what memories do you have from childhood summer vacations or camps?

Let’s make it a great Thursday!
KGM

[Irena Śliwa]

When I was a kid, I used to go to camp every year, or visit family, or go to the lake. I'd love to go to a camp like that for adults (one that isn't called a vacation from work haha) 😄

[Dan Breyen]

Our family friends bought an older fishing shack up north and renovated it into a summer home.  We would always be invited to it in the summer.  

There weren't bedrooms for everyone, so my brother and I plopped down in sleeping bags on top of a mattress in the same room as the adults while they were playing cards and talking.  Some how we were able to get to sleep.  

During the day, we'd get some bread and toss it into the lake and watch the sunfish gobble it up.  

[Rinjini Poddar]

Summer vacations always take me back to the days spent with both sets of my grandparents—enjoying every variety of Bengali sweet and making endless memories while playing with my cousins all day ❤️😊

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

How lovely.

Every summer, I used to spend some time at the Baltic Sea and then visit my grandparents. There was always so much food, so many conversations, and lots of time spent together.

I still remember those times very well. 🙂

[Amanda Barber]

Most of my summers as a child were spent at my grandparents' house during the day with my cousin and siblings. Lots of good memories (and some annoying sibling memories, haha!) 

[zoltanersek _outpostlabs_dev_]

mostly at my grandparents, it was great because it was the only time in the year when I could see some of my friends, they only visited their grandparent during the summer break 

[Barbara Szczesniak]

The town where I lived ran a day camp in the park across the road from my elementary school. My mom would send the older ones of us most days to get a break from 6 kids at home all day long in the summer. 

It was basically like they hired about 10 teenagers to babysit the kids on our side of town. There was a playground, fields to run around on and play ball (kids in upstate New York in 1971 did not know what soccer was), and a shallow pool that we could go in to cool off. 

It was a 6-hour drive to our grandparents, so we would make 1 trip at Christmas and 1 in the summer. We would play with our cousins, help my grandma out with her business, and my aunt and uncle who didn't have kids would take us to an amusement park. 

[Carsten Severin _KUMAVISION AG_]

I was lucky enough that my grandparents moved out to the countryside, which meant that during school vacations I got to escape the city on a regular basis and experience rural life firsthand. It was there that I learned an important truth: you can take the boy out of the city, but good luck taking the city out of the boy. Apparently, there's even a fairly recent song that uses a very similar line—so if that sounds familiar, let's just say my life story may have borrowed from the lyrics... or maybe the songwriter borrowed from me.

As the years went by, things evolved a bit. Instead of spending my summers chasing cows and figuring out which end of a tractor was the front, I often traveled to Scandinavia with church youth groups. So my vacation adventures shifted from country roads to Nordic fjords—but somehow I still managed to remain very much a city kid at heart.

[Martin Runge]

Like @Amanda Barber, I often spent the summer vacations with my grandparents (fishing, working, and playing in the garden/farm) or went to museums with my parents. Guess what I liked more!

[Brita Moorus]

Most of my childhood summers were spent visiting relatives in the countryside in South Estonia. We would spend our days swimming in lakes, going on long bike rides and picking honey straight from the beehives 🐝🍯

Looking back, those simple summer days are some of my happiest childhood memories 🧡

[Anne Saunders]

I was a typical Girl Scout - I did at least a couple weeks of day camp and sleepaway camp every summer, canoeing and riding horses. 

The rest of my summers were spent with my grandparents in rural southwestern Kentucky, on the Kentucky Lake. We fished, swam, ran around in the woods catching toads and fireflies, and ate our weight in junk food - not *so* different from scout camp, except my sister and I were the only kids and we were less supervised freer with Grandma and Grandpa.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

I used to play badminton when I was younger, so a lot of my summer memories involve travelling to tournaments with my team.

One of the highlights was going to Sportske igre mladih (Youth Sports Games), where, one year, we had two “stops”: first the regional tournament, and then the national finals once we qualified.

The national event was also a proper camping experience - we slept in military tents and bunk beds, which I assume was the most affordable option since the trip was covered for us. 😄 Still, it was really cool seeing 200+ kids all sleeping in the same huge tent! ⛺ Definitely one of those childhood experiences you don’t forget. 

[Natalie Beiler]

Summer church camp, spending time at my cousins' farm and my grandparents' house were definitely favorites from my childhood.

One summer I participated in a cheerleading camp at University of Pittsburgh which was a real treat for a country gal from a small town in southwest Pennsylvania.

When we were old enough to walk through the fields by ourselves, we would take a shortcut to our grandparents which we loved to do. 

My cousins who lived 30 minutes away by car had a dairy farm as well as horses. We loved playing in the hay loft, riding horses, swimming in the pond and having free range to run around the farm. Did I mention there were 15 of us between our two families? There was a significant age range so we got into all kinds of mischief. I know the guardian angels were watching over us!