Norris Family Blog

Our Vacation In 1978

Not much going on at the farm with it raining and being cold, so I decided to post some old photos from our vacation in 1978. You might not recognize us, but remember we were young once too!

We left Indiana the day after Memorial Day and drove the van to Arkansas and visited Hot Springs Arkansas.
 
We stayed in the van the first night parked in a rest area along the interstate somewhere near the Arkansas / Texas state line. The next day we drove to Dallas/Fort Worth. As luck would have it, we reached the city right at morning rush hour. To this day, I've never been in worse traffic than on the interstate between those two cities. It was 30 mph, bumper to bumper for an hour and a half at least. Traffic on the access roads alongside the interstate was moving faster. We eventually made it and drove and drove across the biggest state I've ever been in and finally stopped for the night near Corpus Christi. The next day, we decided to take a break from driving and go to the beach. It was nice and really hot, just what we had came for, so it was a relaxing day at the beach.
 
We were ready to leave so I started driving down the beach but the beach ended in a rock wall with sea water on the other side, so I turned around. That was a mistake. The van sunk and I had to pay to get it pulled out. It's been so long I can't remember exactly where we stayed, but I do remember it was too hot to stay in the van again, so we found a motel room and stayed the night. The next morning we began our drive to Brownsville and over the bridge to Padre Island. We checked into a modern place and were on about the 8th floor with a nice view of both sides of the island.
  
We dinned out on shrimp and the best fish for three nights. The beaches were white sand and the water was really cleaner. I could have lived there for a long time if we would have had tons of money. All too soon, it was time to move on. We crossed the border at Brownsville by walking and took one of the strangest bus rides of my life through Mexico to what they called the 'mall'.
 
It was a group of 'buildings' made of chicken wire and tin roofing with several shops inside. Linda bought some jewelry made of onyx and nickel and I bought a chess set made of onyx. I paid $20 for it, but at the time, they were selling for $60 in the USA. I'll never forget the meat lying out on carts for sale with flies all over it. We never ate or drank anything the time we were in Mexico. We paid our nickel to cross back into the USA and returned to the van and headed towards San Antonio. We stayed in a hotel and took off early the next morning and drove into the town and went to the Alamo.
 
I was impressed with how small of an area it was and how big of an image it had been in my mind. There was no comparison to the importance it had played in our battle with Mexico over Texas. We briefly crossed into Mexico again, but didn't think much of it, so back across the border. We left the border area and headed towards Houston. We went through there, stayed the night, and then crossed along the gulf coast to Galveston. We had planned another day at the beach, but things didn't work out real well.
 
We had been at the beach about a half hour when I was standing in the water and was stung by a jellyfish. It stung me on both arms, through my swim trunks and I went running from the water. I was told 'it won't kill you!', how comforting. That ended our day at the beach and we drove towards Alabama. We stopped and toured the USS Alabama and a WWII submarine.
  
It was very dark in Alabama and we had trouble finding a place to stay, seems there was a lot of poverty too. We finally found a place and then next day we went to the Alabama Space Museum.
  
After that we headed on towards Nashville and stayed a night. The next day we went to Opryland Park and to the Grand Ole Opry.
  
That is the nicest theme park I've ever been to because there were plenty of shade, lots of rides, and music shows to entertain people while resting. I was so disappointed many years later when they tore it down. We stayed two nights in the Nashville area and then drove back to Indiana.

It had been almost two weeks since we had left and we had one heck of a time.