TOD:
I used to go on trips to my Nana's house all by my lonesome from the age of about 3 to about 28 (when she passed on)
I would go for about a week or two at a time. Up until I was 9 or 10 she lived in Fresh Meadows, here in Queens (which is about 35 miles from where I lived)
and Nana and I would take the bus or the subway into NYC and "do' the Herald Square Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue & walk through Rockerfeller Center . She would take me to her stockholder's meetings (I rememerb the Domino Sugar one best because they were giving a box of sugar cubes to each stockholder on as we left the meeting. The man gave one to my Nana and then one to the man behind me and I spoke up as only an indignant and overlooked 4 year old could and said "I think you forgot SOMEBODY!" I got my own box of sugar cubes and an apology.
Nana took me to Radio City Music Hall to see movies and Chinese acrobats and best of all the "Dancerinas" my term for the Rockettes.
The very first and only time I remember the whole family going away together for a vaction that wasn't a trip to a relatives house ,was in June 1974, just before my senior year of high school when we drove down to Florida .
We visited the battlefields in Gettysburg. We stopped in at Washington DC to see the Smithsonian, in Virginia where we toured some underground caverns, (is Howe Caverns right?)
I remember a wonderful restaurant in Charlotte SC it was pirate themed... a old tavern that had been expanded, they said it had underground passages out to the shore and that smugglers used to use them to get contraband by the British. They had these huge torches all around the outside of it. It was a very memeorable and enjoyable dinner, in fact so much so that when my Mom , the Vixter & I took out ladies only trip to Florida in 1995 we sidetracked off I-95 to go found the restaurant for lunch.
MattH, you could probably tell me the name of the place!
We finaly ended up at the newly opened Disney World in Florida, only the Magic Kingdom was completed back then, Epcot was still a couple of years from opening the whole MGM studio thing hadn't even been announced (or perhap thought of) yet.
While in Florida we also toured an aquarium (I'm not sure if it was Sea World or some other Aquarium) and an old Fort the name of which escapes me, and NASA.