The best part of family vacations is the memories they generate.

This past week, I listened as my son Luke shared highlights of our family's biennial vacation to Rice Lake in Ontario, Canada, with his girlfriend, who will be accompanying us there this year.

Looking through pictures of previous Rice Lake trips, Luke told her about our early morning fishing trips; "diaper swimming," where we suit up with life jackets over our bums and float in the lake, sometimes dangling a makeshift fishing pole or, more often, sipping a gin and tonic; and the late-night poker games in the "kids' cabin."

Our family has been vacationing at Rice Lake for many years — my husband first went there with his family 50 summers ago, and my first trip was as a girlfriend many years ago. And although the planning and preparation for these getaways is, at times, overwhelming, they have generated lifelong memories for our family.

Listening to Luke talk, I was reminded of how, as a child, I loved my own family's annual getaway, although it barely qualifies as a "vacation," at least not by today's more lavish vacation standards.

Back then, my dad had one week off from his job as a baker, and most of his time was spent doing household repairs he didn't have time for the rest of the year. He would mend broken screens, paint the house, tend his garden, or, perhaps less enthusiastically, help my mother with some inside remodeling project.

He was busy every day except Thursday, the day our family "vacationed" at Lake Loramie, a small recreational lake 20 minutes from our home.

Vacation day always started early, with mom waking before 3 a.m. to fry chicken and pack coolers with potato salad, pickled beets, baked beans and lemonade. We kids would wake to the smell of fried chicken wafting upward into the bedrooms, and kids and all would be loaded into our '56 Ford wagon just as the sky lightened in the east.

The drive to Lake Loramie was short, although it seemed interminable to us children, who waited all year for this outing. Usually arriving in time to watch the sun rise over placid Lake Loramie, we set out to enjoy our day. Dad fried bacon and eggs for breakfast over a charcoal fire, then sat at the picnic table and read the newspaper. My older brothers went fishing, and us younger kids searched for unclaimed treasures on the empty beach — broken shells, a lost beach towel, maybe even a shiny coin.

What I enjoyed most, though, was being outdoors as the rest of the world awoke to a new day. Birds chirped, fish jumped, and shortly after sunrise, you could hear the sound of a car making its way along State Route 362, which borders the park.

In the morning, we usually played baseball and built roadways and castles in the sand. After lunch (we called it dinner then), we swam.

But by 4 o'clock in the afternoon, we were packed and ready to head home; several of my brothers had paper routes, and even on vacation day, there was work to be done.

My family's vacations began and ended in the span of a half-day, a far cry from the planning and preparation that goes into our weeklong stay at Rice Lake. The memories they created, though, have lasted a lifetime.

Linda K. Schmitmeyer is a freelance writer living Middlesex Township. Her e-mail address is lks260@zoominternet.net.