Trips, travel, secrets, love, discovery, beauty, disaster. What’s your family outing story?
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Most of us have childhood memories of trips with our family. Whether it was just you and a parent on an afternoon excursion, your first outing with your new child, or a multi-family, multi-day trip somewhere. These trips seem to never be boring: they are stressful, weird, interesting, or exhausting, but never boring.
Do you have a story of a family outing?
Perhaps the first time you went to that place you longed to visit as a child? A place that held mythical proportions of promise? What happened when you finally got there?
Did you have any secret trips with one parent telling not to tell the other?
Do the days of picking blackberries, strawberries, or apples fill you with nostalgia and love? Does seeing pictures of the county fair send you back to days fill with hope and laughter?
Did you ever take a trip that fueled your imagination or brought something new in life to the surface? A new discovery, a new love? Did you get to spend time with a family member you previously wrote off, but this particular moment changed how you viewed them forever?
Or a trip for a funeral, a loss, of chaos? A trip where grandpa said something strange, your cousin hurt your feelings, or there was a scandal? A family secret unearthed?
Did you take your kids to your favorite place to go as a child? Were the places in your memory different when you saw them again as an adult? Or did they still hold the same magic?
Were your giant family trips ever like the family vacation movies? Or were they peaceful times of gathering? Do different sides of your family differ in tension or definition of “vacation”?
Did you take your first crush on a family trip or take friends and end up in some innocent trouble? A first kiss? A prank?
A beach, a cabin, camping, the zoo, the coast, the mountains, overseas?
The question: where did you go and what happened there?
The Good Life wants your articles and stories about family outings. We are looking for written submissions that are roughly 700-2,000 words in length. Send your ideas and drafts to Deanna Ogle at [email protected]. Final submissions must be received by Wednesday, July 24 to be considered for inclusion in the upcoming series. For questions and further guidelines, email Deanna.
Read more Calls For Submissions on The Good Life.
Photo credit: Flickr / anja_johnson