One of the greatest gifts that my parents gave my siblings and me was being able to see the country by car in the 1960s. During a period from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, we camped all over the U. S. A. – from Bar Harbor, Maine to Deadwood,
South Dakota to
Cheyenne, Wyoming and all the way to Sausalito, California. We saw many of the best National Parks: Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Sequoia, Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain, Badlands and Wind Cave.
The memories of those vacations are priceless to me and I'm glad I saw America when we did, in a simpler, more innocent time.
But my parents' appetite for travel wasn't limited to traveling to other states. They enjoyed our home state of Ohio too. Besides camping all over the state, we also did a lot of day trips just for sightseeing. I used to wonder how my parents knew about the many attractions in the Buckeye State, since they didn't watch much TV or subscribe to very many magazines.
Many years later, I discovered that Mom used to keep a file of newspaper clippings of travel ideas. Perhaps she saw a series of stylish ads sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute that appeared in the Journal during the summer of 1963, each highlighting a sort of one-tank trip around part of Ohio. Two ads from the series are shown below. The first is from July 16, 1963; the second, from July 30, 1963.
Although the ads were basically encouraging travelers to drive and use more gas, they contained many excellent suggestions. We saw many of them, including
Thomas Edison's boyhood home in Milan,
Findley State Park (a favorite for camping and picnicking), the
Blue Hole, etc. Even Lorain and Vermilion are represented.
It's a pity that in today's hectic times, families have so many commitments, as well as entertainment choices (like Cedar Point passes), that it's easy to overlook the idea of seeing by car some of the wonderful sights that Ohio has to offer.
