No reason, I thought it might be amusing to compare our field trip destinations.
I grew up in Sonoma County, California, so I went on at least two field trips to wineries. They showed us how they make the wine, and we got grape juice.
We also visited the Sonoma Mission, General Vallejo’s ranch and his house, which is in Santa Rosa, IIRC. We were freaking down with California’s Mexican history.
We went to the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, and the Oakland Art Museum.
In high school, I was in marching band, so I went to Disneyland a couple times, and as punishment for my sins, the East-West Game at Stanford a couple times, too. (Horrendous trip both times, and the music was really boring.) I took marine biology in eleventh grade and we went on some cool field trips, to the Monterey Bay Aquarium once, and on one tragic day, we had to leave school at 5 am to check out the ocean at low tide so we could analyze the ecology of tide pools. We also checked out an oyster farm and then some mud flats. We saw many nudibranchs.
I was a MGM as a child, so we got to go all sorts of places, back when special programs actually had money. Lots of museums and such. But the ones I remember most were a trip to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to see Sleeping Beauty, and to the Cinerama Dome to see Battle of the Bulge.
I grew up in Indiana and was in school in the late sixties and all through the seventies.
In grade school, we took trips to Franke Park Children’s Zoo, the Shrine Circus and the county historical museum.
In high school, I was a choir, band and theatre nerd, so we performed at parades, football and basketball games and a couple of local venues. Going to contest in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis was probably the only ones that could actually be considered field trips though.
I grew up in eastern Washington. Far less exciting places to go to, but we did get to visit a soda bottler in Yakima and Northwest Trek. Plus our gifted class got to see “Les Miserables” at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre.
Bakersfield and the Central Coast of CA, so I went to pretty much every mission within a 150-mile radius, and for years I didn’t want to see a mission ever again, ever.*
I also have fun memories of the Lori Brock children’s museum and CALM (sort of a local wildlife zoo) in Bakersfield.
*IMO one of the great perks of homeschooling is that I don’t have to build a dang mission in 4th grade if I don’t want to. Of course, since we live in rural Northern CA, my 9yo daughter is tired of the dang Gold Rush and begged to visit a mission when we were in Carmel a couple of weeks ago! The Carmel Mission BTW is very lovely and very much worth a visit.
I don’t remember many field trips. I remember taking a train to Bath, England when I was in 5th Grade. I think I went to a Planetarium in 6th Grade. I never took any field trips in jr. high or high school.
I think my class was the only 4th grade class in California history to not build missions. I don’t know why, but EVERYONE ELSE I KNOW had to build missions in 4th grade. My sister did too (she built a ridiculously elaborate reconstruction of the San Diego mission that required my dad stay up until 3 am helping her finish it) and she went to the same school I did. I’m not sure what happened there.
I too grew up in Sonoma County, California, and remember trips to Sonoma Mission and Vallejo’s Ranch House. We also did a couple of overnight field trips to Yosemite, Tomales Bay, and the Marin Headlands.
I remember trips to the tide pools near Bodega Bay and tide pools near Point Reyes. We also went to Armstrong Redwoods more times than I can remember, at least once a year, I swear. However, even though I grew up in the heart of wine country, I can’t remember going to a single vineyard. Jelly Belly factory, yes. Vineyard, no.
On a side note, I made a bitchin’ mission out of sugar cubes in the fourth grade. Good times.
Mostly places that had things to sell to my parents; the local dairy, newspaper and the local brewery stand out in my mind. Yes - brewery. For 5th graders. They gave us these cool paper hats to wear where the dairy just hopped us up on chocolate milk. I always had this sneaking suspicion that the businesses we visited helped underwrite the costs of the trips.
Mostly I remember visiting farms… one time we went to a reserve (I think) as part of our Native studies. We also went to the Ukrainian Village. That’s about it that I can remember.
Most of the field trips I’ve been on were with Guides. Historical houses and such.
OH in 8th grade we went to Yosemite! How could I have forgotten that?
Armstrong Grove! I never went on a field trip there, but I have been there many times with my mom when she needed to commune with nature, or something. I spent a couple weeks with my family a few years ago, for one of those weeks, a good friend of mine from the Midwest came to visit. She wanted to see some big trees, so I took her up there. She was delighted.
In elementary school in upstate New York, every fall we went to the apple farm in September, the pumpkin farm in October, and the turkey farm in November.
Growing up in Southeast Nowhere, Georgia, we visited:
Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
Fort Pulaski National Park (near Savannah)
Tybee Island
Cumberland Island
Jekyll & St. Simons Islands
Various historic places in Savannah
In seventh grade, the gifted class went on an extended trip to Colonial Williamsburg and Washington, D.C.
And as a bandmember and member of several academic teams, we visited lots of really exciting places, like Americus, Valdosta, and Springfield (Georgia)… Good times, good times!
No doubt the principal was out-standing in his field. :0
It must have been kindergarten, because I know it was in Fort Smith, Arkansas, where we lived before moving to West Texas. But we went to some sort of train depot. The engineer even rode us out a ways and back, and we thought that was beyond cool.
Otherwise just the standard places. A bread factory. Museum. Except we did walk down half a long block from my elementary school to this lady’s house once. She was the neighbor of one of the students in class. Her home was filled with Africa memorabilia; she’d obviously spent years there. But I don’t remember anything about who she was or what she told us.