Nature MadeSAM-e Complete™**

Hawaii!! You called me to your shores.
I was alone, you did not care.
You said "Come to my islands and explore."

You shared your beauty and showed me the secret places, the sacred spots.
I was alone yet not alone, a paradox.
The Spirit of Hawaii was with me.

You told me "Climb that Mountain"......
I ran 12 miles up to a Pine Forest....
You said "Now, go down that trail"
I walked a half mile down to a quiet spring.

You said "Do you want to experience Mars?"
I said "Yes! I always wanted to go to Mars."
You sent me into the dead side of a crater.
You walked with me 21 miles in, around and back out of the crater.
Now..........
I no longer want to go to Mars!
That is going to save me a ton of money.

What was this islands name?
"Aaaaweiiiooooha he"
Ok, that is a Hawaii joke!
Maui, was the name.

I did not look like a tourist......
I went to be among the people of the island too.
I stayed in the rental van and went to every small town.
I explored like I never explored before.
It was a magical time and one day I will share its secrets with many more!

Next time I return......
I will be staying.

I went to St. Louis for Memorial Day weekend and took my nephew Christian with me. Christian is at the age now where I can enjoy him as a friend (which is why my feelings are hurt that he booted me off his Facebook friends’ list!!!) Grrrr... LOL

While I was home, my mom gave me the original copy of my birth certificate. It even has my little feet prints on it. Of course my Mom couldn’t resist the opportunity to poke fun at the first mark I made upon this world, by noting that it looked like I was born with a bunion on my right foot…

During he weekend, it seemed like my Daddy’s spirit left a few Memorial Day treasures for me. I was looking through my Dad’s top drawer and found a bunch of papers from my childhood. These were papers that I personally have not seen since I was a child.

The best of the treasures I found in Daddy’s drawer were postcards he had sent in 1967, when he and Mom had taken a vacation to California.

The postcard Daddy sent to me was prophetic and apropos for Memorial Day because he wrote "we miss you girls, so build up a lot of sugar so when we get back, there will be plenty for us." I was only 9 years old then, and my Dad has passed away, but I am STILL building up a lot of sugar for when I see him again…

The rest of Memorial Day weekend was good food, good times with my Uncles and Aunts, good laughs with my sister Fay, and good company with my former Facebook “friend” Christian.

I hope every day is full of memorable events and experiences for us all.

What is the deadline for submission?

Hi Elizabeth!
You can enter this contest any time before midnight on Saturday, July 31st. Just leave your favorite vacation story as a comment and you'll automatically be entered!

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions. :)

-Lisa

My best friend from college and I went on vacation with my girls in the outer banks,NC. After spending the day at the beach watching my daughter chase sandfidlers(which I had never seen before). We took our sunbaked selves back to the beach house, watched her sister down the rest of the cake topper(it was the 1st anniversary) and then decided to play pictionary. We laughed at each other for the lack of artistic ability. After many rounds I drew my clue and my first thought was" this is an easy one". I proceeded to draw an awesome rendition of south America and then Chile. They all shouted CHILLE and that is when I realized my clue was for CUBA! EE LAUGHED UNTIL WE CRIED! I have yet to live this down.... silly but a great memory with awesome friends!

What started out as a whirlwind tour to show my stepdaughter East Coast colleges in the August between her Junior and Senior High school years ended up becoming one of the most memorable summer trips we have ever taken.

I refer to Tsoleene as my stepdaughter only in this story to illustrate the additional special nature of our trip. To me and my children from my first marriage, she is my daughter and their sister. But this was the first time she would be meeting many of my other relatives in NY and she was nervous.

The college tour took us as far south as Philadelphia, as far north as Rochester, as far west as Pittsburgh and as far east as Boston with all sort of stops in between. 10 universities in 9 days.

What was very cool for me too is though that even though I grew up in NYC I had never driven upstate as a child. So a great deal of the trip was new horizons for me and I was amazed at the beauty of my home state, especially at that summer time of year.

We visited some great schools but we also made sure to see my family which included my mother and all aunts and cousins that were around.

It was a beautiful welcoming to our full family for Tsoleene and everyone went out of their way to make her feel special. She was also the first teenage girl "new cousin" to a family that has girls aged 13, 10 and 9 so she was instantly cool as the "big cousin".

But the truly special part for me personally, and us as a family, was when we went to Princeton. My father is buried outside of Princeton and we took my mom to pay our respects and also see the beautiful campus that she had not been to in quite a while (my brother worked there for many years).

If you want to talk about a moment in life that cements the inauguration of someone in to a family, is to be standing grave side with the the family matriarch, my mom, who was married to my dad for 43 years when he passed, and having her share some of her remembrances of him with Tsoleene, with the same warmth, comfort and love she gave to her three grandchildren from my first marriage. My mother saw no difference.

It was a summer trip we still talk about and will remember the rest of our lives.

Footnote: Tsoleene ended up going to a UC school in California even though she was accepted into 3 of the East Coast schools we visited, but we will never regret taking that trip.

One of my most memorable vacations was to Hershey Park, when I was a child.

Looking back, there was nothing really special about the park itself, but simply staying in a hotel, using the swimming pool, and taking a ride inside a giant 'oven' (how they make chocolate!), seems a lot more special than it would if experiencing it all as an adult now.

And we got those cool hershey kiss hats to wear too.

Last year, my husband and I celebrated our 20th Anniversary by taking our very first road trip by ourselves. (No kids or relatives). We left at three am to beat traffic. We had coffee and great conversation along the way. We drove from Northern California to Los Angeles, then to Las Vegas,Nevada. (What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.)Then we drove to Arizona and New Mexico. We walked along the rim of the Grand Canyon and enjoyed the local nightlife! The two of us against the world! It was the best vacation we have ever had!

My boyfriend and I are foodies. We joke that the only reason we travel is to find new places to eat.Chicago was absolutely the best city both of us have ever visited. We had chocolate bacon cupcakes, lobster mashed potatoes, and crab stuffed mushrooms. But perhaps the most amazing thing we had was the deep dish pizza. It was like a savory baked good, an art piece of pastry crust & marinara.

Oh yeah, we didn't just eat. We went to a Cubs game, toured the city on foot, and chatted with many friendly locals who were only too happy to point us towards another place to chow down! Oh there I am, back to food again, right?If you have a little bit of foodie in you- treat yourself to the Windy City someday.

On a vacation to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, my wife and I stayed at an eco-friendly resort which had mostly open air common areas. One such area was the buffet/dining area. One morning upon getting our breakfast, we returned to our table, which has a table cloth nearly to the floor. After sitting down, I noticed a "tickle" on my left leg (I was wearing shorts and sandals). Thinking it was the table cloth blowing in the breeze, I thought nothing of it. After a few more tickles, I decided to look down. As soon as I pulled the table cloth back, a snake immediately wrapped around my calf. I jumped up and the snake quickly let go and made a mad dash out of there. I was scared to death, but tried to remain calm and not say anything to keep my wife calm. Several people came to our table and said they would have died if that happened to them. My wife got upset but I thought it was kind of neat, being so close with nature in a tropical paradise. Needless to say, I became known as the "snakeman" to guests and I became quite the celebrity:)

When I was 21 I decided to spend the summer really getting out to see the world. I was a fairly sheltered Minnesotan and hadn't undertaken anything quite so adventurous before. So I sold my Toyota Camry, picked up a green Volkswagen Camper Van and loaded up what I'd need for the road.

I first traveled from the North to the South, visiting state parks, scenic areas, communes, and meeting all sorts of interesting people. I hiked in the Ozarks and counted 121 ticks crawling on me after the hike - YIKES! I saw so much scenery that was unfamiliar to me living up in the plains - lush plantations, white sand beaches, thick forests.

After I hit the Gulf of Mexico, I headed back up north a ways and then began working my way West. I picked up backcountry passes and spent a week hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park and another week hiking in Yosemite. I chased bears out of a campground, and climbed up Half Dome. I had already seen the sun rise on the East Coast, and now I was able to watch the sun set on the West Coast as well.

Thanks to the cantankerousness of Volkswagens, I also got the opportunity to meet a few great mechanics along the way, some of which hardly charged anything for the minor adjustments necessary to keeping a Volks moving reliably along.

Since it was such a long drive, I checked out ride boards at colleges and had some very unique individuals join me for parts of my voyage. One of them was a Hari Krishna, and we had some very interesting discussions along the way.

I learned that painting flowers on the side of a Volkswagon is a very good way to make law enforcement officials follow you attentively. Not a problem for a straight-laced Midwesterner, but not something to suggest the more nefarious folks try!

I met amazingly sweet and caring people everywhere, and by the end of the summer I really felt like I grew so much as a person. It was an amazing trip!