When summer arrives, many people start thinking family vacation.

With school out, it seems like the logical time to pile the family in the car or an airplane and go somewhere.

I confess, though, that when our kids were young (fifth grade and below), we took our vacations about the second or third week after school started.

I know the schools didn’t like this — it meant unexcused absences and that meant the district didn’t get paid for those days my kids didn’t show. But this was my take: the first few weeks of school were spent reviewing last year’s lessons and that was pretty much a waste of time for my kids, who were decent students. Secondly, go anywhere just after Labor Day and the crowds are nearly nonexistent. And lastly, we always made travel educational. The kids had projects to do along the way and they learned a lot.

I began thinking about all the vacations we’ve taken with our kids — now parents themselves — because I’ve started a giant photo-scanning project. I’m trying to digitally save many of our vacation memories, and as I make my way through the thousands of prints in our albums (the slides are next and that is a frightening prospect), I’m reliving some of those extraordinary moments.

My son, David, made his first cross-country road trip at 2 months old. In 1970, we drove from St. Louis to Ohio and on to Washington, D.C. After we returned to St. Louis, we left for our new home, Sacramento. That trip took about three weeks, and our son slept in a box in the back seat of our Volkswagen Beetle. (I’d be arrested for that today, but back then — no car seats.) I’d warm his baby food by placing the jar on the floor next to the heater vent, spoon-feed him as he sat in my lap, and lean over the front seat to change his diapers.

My daughter, Katie, took her first plane ride in 1976 when she was 6 months old. We flew from San Diego to Cincinnati, and she made several cross-country flights on her own before she was 12.

Although we weren’t the prolific picture-takers we are today (I love digital cameras), we do have a few albums full of prints and a few boxes full of slides from our more than 30 years of travels with our kids. Destinations included Northern and Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Washington state, Idaho, Washington, D.C., New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky (OK, we just drove through this state on our way to Missouri), Florida, Hawaii, London, Prague and the Slovak Republic.

Some of my favorite memories include our drive up the Oregon coast; riding a boat through the locks in Seattle; hiking through Yosemite National Park with my son in my backpack; hiking in the Rocky Mountains; whitewater rafting down the Salmon River in Idaho; watching the sun go down on Key West; fly-fishing in Sun Valley, Idaho (my husband and son’s favorite memory); seeing the Rockettes Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall; driving up the California coast with my daughter when she 6; meeting our long-lost relatives in a beautiful village in the hills of eastern Slovakia; touring the Terezin Jewish concentration camp outside Prague; and watching my kids marvel at the cathedrals of London.

Overall, our vacations went well and we nearly always had a great time. There were a few mishaps, though; I’ll save those for another column.