In another thread, @Procrustus asked for more when I mentioned my vacation on an aircraft carrier, so…
A few years ago, mrs.gnu and I were invited by my brother-in-law in the navy to be his guests on a “Tiger Cruise.” Tiger is the term for a guest on a navy ship; a Tiger Cruise is when sailors can all bring on board guests for the final leg of a deployment.
Being part of the maintenance crew for a digger squadron, he was deployed on an aircraft carrier. One of the catches was we would be sleeping separately - the women’s bunks were at the bow while mine would be at the stern. We had been trying to conceive, and the trip was right when her cycle was going to hit. Still, we weren’t going to pass up such a unique opportunity.
We flew one-way to Honolulu, busy the Pearl Harbor memorial then board for an eight-day trip to San Diego. A surreal and fascinating experience. Carriers are just as enormous as advertised. We got tours of the bridge, the brig, the munitions bay, riding the gigantic elevator, etc. And lots of time waiting in lines. Toward the end, we all got to go up on the flight deck for a private airshow, including up-close catapult launched and tow-rope landings. I also won a really cool medalion for playing Ms. Pac-Man.
I was geeking out at the planes, being an aviation enthusiast in my youth. However, I almost grew to hate the F-18s. They kept moving them and parking them in random spots in the giant hangar bay, and somehow always in the way of the mess hall line. The nose and hardpoints (where missiles and such are attached) on a Super Hornet just happen to be at my eye level, and are very pointy.
Overall an amazing trip. Don’t turn it down if you ever get the chance.
What was your “vacation” that can’t just be duplicated with a call to a travel agent?
Oh, right. The previous thread topic was related to that. We had planned on just taking that month “off” and starting again after. The night before we left, we gave it a try anyway. Maybe being at sea helped, because we arrived home and got a positive test.
My sleep on board was aided by gentle rocking. Up at the bow, my wife reported jerking movements and loud waves crashing against the prow.
My best offer is that I got to go to Pompeii with only five other tourists on the site for the entire day. Pompeii is usually packed, and usually very busy even in February (especially since it was half term), and I’m told it can feel like a theme park, but it was just us, a woman and child that coincidentally we’d met on the plane out, also saw at Herculaneum a different day, and travelled with on the way back (we were all in special assistance, so it wasn’t just the dame plane, either), and three Koreans from a tour bus who were there for an hour.
It was magical, though that’s a little too light a term for a site where so many people died. And we even got to sit in an ancient Roman bath.
The reason was that there was a last-minute train strike in all directions, and that’s the main way everyone gets there, especially in February. But I wasn’t going to give up what might be my only chance to go there, so I paid a fortune for a taxi there and back from Sorrento, and have no regrets.
Not mine, but my cousins. The house in Pennsylvania where they grew up has a creek running through the back yard. Just a trickle, really: I could step across it from one side to the other. Well, one year for summer vacation, they decided to follow that little creek to where it joined successively larger rivers, all the way down to New Orleans.
If it helps, remember that even without the volcano, all of those people would still have died. And most of them probably still in the same city.
It’s still a little different to be where lots of people died horrifically all at the same time, many of whom could have lived decades longer otherwise.
A lot of the residents escaped - even though some escaped from Herculaneum and then came to Pompeii, there were a lot of survivors. I remember reading that there had been a study that suggested that many residents in the local area were still genetically connected to the few bodies that had enough DNA to extract information from, but I can’t find it online.
My most unique trip was six weeks as a crew trainee on a tall ship from Nova Scotia to Grenada. I started a thread on it at the time; it’s not an entirely happy story.
I don’t know if they still do it, but the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum used to give tours of their storage facility in the D.C. suburbs. I managed to get a reservation for it once. I think some people must not have shown up, because it was just me and a family of four. We were such a small group that they took us into a building that’s not usually on the tour. It was where they stored all the rubber items, cooled to about 50 degrees so they wouldn’t degrade in the heat. I got to see the original tires from the Spirit of St. Louis, just sitting on a pallet with a tag on them.
Also hiked across the Grand Canyon once.
I’ve been to Lake Itasca in Minnesota, which is considered the source of the Mississippi River. I walked across it on stepping stones.
Left Boston by train on a July 4th, traversed the Hoosac Tunnel, changed at Albany, then to Toronto, then across Canada by CN to Jasper, BC, with some nights in RR hotels and a side trip by taxi to ride the Greater Winnipeg Waterworks RR. (Traveling with a rail buffer, buffer than me, anyway.) Met, by pure chance, my friends, Massachusetts home town Selectman Chair (Mayor & wife, circling continent clockwise), four of us rented a car and drove to Banff & Lake Louise, stopping to ride a huge snow mobile onto the Columbia Icefield glacier, then return to Jasper, split from them, train to Prince George, BC, then down Fraser River valley on a Budd (RR) car to Vancouver. ROVN, met a pair of Danish gals, rented car, drove to Seattle, Space Needle, split from them, train to Portland, Oregon. Rented car, drove to San Francisco, stopping at Willits in Northern California to ride the Skunk Train 52 miles to Fort Bragg to dip my toe in the Pacific Ocean, then back to Willits, and on to SF, ROVN, then caught the California Zephyr to Chicago, ROVN, whence I flew to Boston. Travel companion took a train. 9,000 miles in 16 days.
Love the train trip! (What’s ROVN? Google doesn’t know it either…)
Here I was, thinking I’d only had conventional vacations. But I’d forgotten building a raft and spending nine days floating down the Mississippi.
It was less Huck Finn and more battle school from Ender’s Game. We were middle-schoolers, a Scout troop of a dozen kids and a handful of dads (tough hard-partyin’, hard-swearin’ WWII vets). Our raft was 16x32’, with a full kitchen, a roof, a card table… and a cannon.
We towed a boat down to Bahia de los Angeles before it got all touristy, and spent 10 days fishing, bbqing said fish on the beach, then sleeping on said beach. All the while consuming mass qualities of Pacifico. There is NOTHING like mahi-mahi a hour for the ocean, BBQ over real charcoal, with a bit of lemon juice is all. Mahi-mahi must be eaten very fresh.
I had always wanted to have a vacation in the Disneyland hotel, and we got some time off, a great cat sitter, and had enough spare cash to stay there for nearly a week, hitting DL in the offseason, with no lines. pre DCA, etc.
When I was 17, I went to rural northern China with my mom and two brothers, near the Mongolian border. Some people tried to hold us against our will (some rural hotel people trying to prevent us from leaving their facility so we’d be forced to “hire” their services - we hadn’t booked yet), driving several hours in the Gobi Desert, sand-sledding, camel-riding, and then climbing on a hill about 80 feet high that we really shouldn’t have - it was too sleep to safely descend and my brothers and I ended up grabbing plants as we came down and frantically finding other plants as the first plant’s roots started coming out.
And I thought the basement of The Legion of Honor was cool. Wow.
Ahhh… I remember when Disneyland had an offseason.
I also remember a very short-lived ride, the RocketRods -much maligned for: stealing the PeopleMover track, long lines, frequent breakdowns, awkward seating configuration, and disappearing after barely two years. My then-fiance and I took two or three trips during its short run, and had discovered it had a single-rider pass. We rode the hell out of that thing, it was awesome. I understand why the other 99% of visitors wouldn’t remember or want to forget it.
And since I have that file open in my memory banks… I’ve been scuba diving inside the giant tank in the Sea area of EPCOT. Interacting with the diners at the adjacent restaurant is pretty unique, even if you can always just buy your way into that.
Trip down the world’s deepest mine. A friend’s dad was the mine manager, and a bunch of us were staying at her parent’s place over a weekend (the weekend Princess Di died, as it happens) for a festival. He knew 2 of us were geologists, so he arranged for us to go down with him that morning on an inspection tour.
I went on holiday from the UK to Australia after I got a windfall.
Of course Australia is pretty interesting anyway, but three memories stand out:
my hotel in Sydney was very good value. Once I got there I realised it becasue it was right in the middle of the red light district
I popped over to Tasmania for a week and won the Tasmanian Chess Open
I took boomerang lessons (actually using a left-handed boomerang - yes they really are different!) and spent a wonderful afternoon successfully throwing and catching the boomerang whilst watching the start of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race
I climbed Mount Saint Helens sometime around 1990, only about nine years after it had obliterated the surrounding country side. We had lunch up on the south rim, and it was unnerving because the place was active: you could hear small rockslides inside the crater on a frequent basis. Was quite happy when we began our trip back down.
Skiing for a week in Hokkaido, Japan with a group of telemark skiers. We stayed in traditional Japanese hotels, everyone wore kimonos around the place and we took onsen baths every morning and evening. During the day we skied amazing powder on and off piste, and came back to 7 course gourmet meals every night. A magical trip.
