MEMORY MONDAY

 

My mother has written her memoirs and has been after me to write mine. I have been resisting for a while however I am creating Memory Monday to help me along. Come join me with your own memories. Each week will be a different prompt to encourage the writing of your memories. Link your memories and share them with everyone.

Our prompt is: More Vacation Memories

I am writing this post as my Mother lays in the hospital. She has suffered a massive stroke. I had this post in mind last week when i thought of this memory. I am going back to when I was 15 years old and my mother, sisters and I headed out on an all –girls holiday. My mother wrote about it in her memoirs and called it “A Shoestring Excursion”.

We started out by dropping my brother off at Scout camp and then headed East. We had never been to the East Coast before but we ventured off with a Coleman stove, some canned goods and a road map. I was the navigator and my sister B was in charge of my baby sister B who was 7 years old.

Mom was recovering from another operation so after 200 miles she pulled over to the side of the road and took a nap. Our first stop was in Montreal where my uncle B lived. Even though we had taken french in school we could not make ourselves understood. We left Canada and travelled through Vermont where spent our first night. Through New Hampshire towards Bangor Maine where we hoped to catch the ferry to Yarmouth Nova Scotia.

We arrived at noon and it was so hot I truly believe we could have fried an egg on the sidewalk. Unfortunately if you hadn’t made reservations you weren’t getting on the ferry. It was suggested we try St John, New Brunswick as they have a ferry to Digby Nova Scotia. Mom made a telephone call and was told they would hold a ticket for us if we could get there before 8 pm. I found a shortcut on the map and we arrived at 7:50 pm, got our tickets, found a motel. I didn’t sleep very well but the rest did.

We caught the ferry and if that experience wasn’t enough to keep off boats I don’t know what could. Needless to say it was a terrible crossing and I was terribly sick. We were now in Nova Scotia. As we drove along the beautiful coast and found a motel with an efficiency apartment. Mom thought this was terrific and went to the local grocery store to buy us dinner while us girls watched television. Mom came back without any groceries because the local fire department was having a summer festival. We enjoyed the wonderful food and had a great time meeting the great people of Nova Scotia. Definitely a highlight of our trip.

We had a tour of the Highliner Fish factory, saw Peggy’s Cove and the headed for the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island. I don’t care how many times I have been there since I still get goose bumps from the awesome scenery. We travelled through Baddeck, where Alexander Graham Bell did a lot of inventing. A museum has since been established there. Another place along the trail which had not yet been developed was the Louisburg Fort. It had been uncovered but was not open to the public.

Our journey then proceeded to Prince Edward island where we visited Charlottetown, the birth place of Canada. Our love of “Anne of Green Gables” lead us to Cavendish where we had lunch. Unfortunately it was not the best lunch we ate especially after my sister B found a hair in her sandwich. We took the ferry across to New Brunswick and visited the Magnetic Hill.

It was time to head home along the Transcanada highway which took us through Quebec City. We did all this in 5 days. We never traced a step and never spent more than $100 a day. It is an excursion we will never forget. We could never repeat this trip however we did get in a few spa weekends when we were older.

Next Week’s Prompt: Family Life

My daughter made us a Memory Monday button that you can grab from my sidebar if you want.

Please link up your posts to this continuing linky so we can watch each other’s memoirs develop over this year.  Please use the format of “PROMPT – BLOG NAME” so we can follow each week’s writing.