Definitely the kindergarten class trip to the fire station for me. I got to wear the big hat and coat, they rang the siren on the truck, and I’ll never forget it.
The planetarium was always good. And I also remember going to an old folks’ home where a guy read to us from a Braille book.
Amazing how this stuff has stayed with me for decades. Makes me wonder why we ever bothered with the normal school stuff. We should have just had field trips.
I only remember two – one to the local dairy where we got free ice cream samples, and one to Des Moines to see a circus.
I remember a Sunday School field trip too. We went to a farm, where we were shown the remains of a stillborn calf. “This is what happens when you have sex when you’re too young.” :eek: (Slutty heifer.)
Grad Nite my senior year in high school…we all went to Disney World. They opened it up after dark just for us (and seven other schools) and we had a blast!
My best field trip as a parent with a grade school group was caving in Missouri. We had to put on hard hats and slither into a cave thru the mud on our stomachs. Inside the cave we couldn’t stand up and in several places had to crawl thru very small places by pulling ourselves thru. My contribution was wintogreen lifesavers that sparked when you bit them: a tribo-lume effect.
My best field trip was in high school. We just finished reading The Jungle, and Lookingglass Theater was doing a production of it in Chicago. It was the first avant garde-ish play I’d ever seen, and I was just fascinated at the concept. In particular, I remember a scene where an actor, playing a steer, leapt around the stage before being “caught” and hung on a meathook. Another actor took a paintbrush dipped in red paint and painted a stripe across his belly, signifying a slaughter. It was so different from TV and movies, where the special effects tried so hard to make everything naturalistic.
Afterwards, we got to stay for a Q&A with some of the cast and the director. Unfortunately, it went long, and we were late for our busses. The only place we had time to stop for lunch was the hot dog cart on the corner.
A nearby nuclear power station. The whole ‘educational tour’ was clearly aimed at impressionable eleven-year-olds, not smart-arse 18-year-olds who’d been studying physics. In the question sessions we ripped some satisfying holes in their thin veneer of anti-renewables propaganda.
My junior year in high school, I went with part of the drama club an on ‘unofficial’ trip to England. We spent about half the time in London and half in Stratford, with trips almost every day and shows six out of the 10 nights.
I got to go to the Orange Bowl and march through Disneyland while in marching band in HS.
My best trips were with the Boy Scouts though. I got to shoot a rifle, board an aircraft carrier, use a military flight simulator, and light fireworks in mexico.
In my “gifted” class of 6th grade we went camping for a week at Audubon Canyon Ranch. It was soooo cool. The other classes were so jealous and it gave a great opportunity for all of those 12 year-old raging hormones to play. That musta cost $$$, now I seriously wonder where we got the money for it.
This teacher also took us to see Faust. After seeing it, we held a paper drive for I don’t know what reason. We were to get prizes for the most paper collected. I think I was like third highest and I got some Faust cassette tapes. Imagine the disappointment of a 12 year old receiving opera cassette tapes. Major downer.
We also did the exploratorium, saw a ballet and a bunch of other things that year. School district must have had money, then.
We took a HS band trip to NYC in May of '01. It was a really nice visit. We got to visit Radio City, which was probably one of the coolest things I’ve seen in recent years. We also got to see Les Miserables in Broadway and it was the only time I’ve cried at its performance.
There was a sort of ‘unofficial’ school trip to Europe. One teacher and his wife took a group of about 12 or 15 of us to Greece and Italy for nine days. That was a helluva trip. I got lost in Rome and by pure chance managed to find my friends. Good times.
After studying ancient Egypt all semester we got to see the King Tut exhibit when it first came out in L.A (I think I was in 6th grade).
My worst (not that you asked) was when I was a Brownie and we went to the Japanese Deer Park. I was playing in the petting zoo, brown bag lunch in hand, when a goat accosted me and at my lunch, tinfoil, bag and all. Man, was I bummed.
I’m from St. Louis, and when I was in junior high, all the Mark McGwire home run stuff was going on. We went on a field trip to Busch Stadium on a non game day.
It was neat to sit in the dugout (omg sit where McGwire does!), walk on the field, see all the behind the scenes parts, etc.
You could never go wrong with the Zoo or Science Center. At the gifted program I went to in elementary school, I took a class about the 1904 World’s Fair, so we went to Forest Park and the teachers showed us where everything was. That was pretty neat.
Sixth grade CLUE class. We were studying oceanography all year to prepare for our big trip to Gulf Shore. It was my first overnght stay away from parents out of town. We got to stay in a hotel room and traipsed around the beach all day.
Not that I remember a thing about it, because on the bus trip home I got my First Kiss and held hands with the cutest boy ever.
Sadly I never saw him again, but oh what a great memory!
Worst field trip was to the Peabody hotel. Ducks were cool; getting stuck in the elevator with nine other scared kids for almost an hour was not.
My all time favorite was to the Franklin Institute and the US Mint in Philadelphia. I think I was in 3rd or 4th grade.
Most of our school trips were either to Philadelphia or NYC, although we did hit a few misc. spots in NJ now that I think about it. Turtle Back Zoo, Waterloo Village, Monmouth Battlfield State Park.
Others were Independence Hall/Liberty Bell/etc. in Philly, Statue of Liberty, and to see a couple of plays on Broadway (Annie and Peter Pan.)
It was definitely one of the five years in a row we went to Niagara Falls. It was the only place I’d ever gone in a school bus. Everybody had already been there with their families, some more than once, so it wasn’t exciting or anything. Once you’ve seen the Falls, well, you’ve seen them. And they didn’t even take us on the tour behind the falls or on the Maid Of The Mist! Just go there, get off, look at the Falls, buy some tourist garbage, go home.