Well, it was some of the most difficult fun I’ve ever had, judging the winners of the Worst Vacation Ever contest – in conjunction with my novel, Still Summer.
And we’re going to quote just a bit of just a few of the doozies that will someday be wonderful fireside tales, but, which in the moment, were probably nightmarish in the extreme.
In fact, there’s one (the one involving the death of the pet alligator) that I suspect was cooked up for the purpose! If the writer can prove otherwise, however, he or she will get a prize!
There’s no grand prize because of the several hundred entries, at least fifty were almost equally horrible, in a dark-comic way.
But I’m going to quote from some of the winning entries, some in their entirety, some excerpts and name names.
It’s the responsibility of the winner to contact ME with an address, in order to claim a pair of Message in a Bottle earrings or a bottle of Still Summer men’s cologne (I’ve been informed that Still Summer cologne is really a lovely, spicy unisex fragrance; so female winners can choose that for themselves, or for their mates, if the earrings don’t appeal).

Here’s a rather generous sampling of the winning entries.
Read them and weep. This is entertainment.

1. As was predicted in a newspaper story about the contest when it began last fall, one of the top entries came from Chari L. Madrigal, a farm girl who went to Louisiana with her husband on a vacation. Some days earlier, she’d given herself a scrape doing some chores; and when she stopped at a store, just 24 hours after she arrived, a clerk asked her how she got her scratch. Oh, Madrigal answered, a bit of barbed wire. Within instants, innocent Chari was surrounded by plainclothes police officers with drawn guns – all of whom had responded to an alert from the store clerk that the escaped convicted murderer Lawrencia Bembenek was cornered in the store!
2. Although she violated the length limit, Christine Lidbury’s Russian adventure must be repeated. In the early 1990s, Lidbury and some friends took a trip to Russia – with hope. One day, early on, they arrived to learn that the package deal, with meals included and lovely two-star accommodations, had some hidden clauses. To quote Christine, at dinner one night, the surly host announced, with an economy of words, “No food.” When her party objected, the staff assembled a meal by collecting leftovers from other diners’ plates!
So accused, he said, “No, we didn’t!”
The Lidbury party objected, “Yes, you did!”
“No, we didn’t!” he replied.
This Russian equivalent of a Monty Python exchange ended with realization of where the previous day’s lunches had originated.
On the Aeroflot flight home, the 747-sized jet had no assigned seating, so the French passengers shoved stadium-style to get the best seats, literally trampling people in their wake, prompting Christine and company to form a human barrier to protect an old woman who had begun to cry. The plane rattle and clanked so loudly, and periodically would drop in altitude so quickly that one woman literally finally fainted with fear. The whole plane cheered spontaneously at touchdown.
And so, we cheer for you, Christine.
3. Christy Hawkes’ family stayed in a Bates-type motel because it was late and there was nowhere else with a vacancy. As her parents rushed to get everything ready to leave in the morning, she and her three sisters played chase outside through some “muddy water.” Dad had a few choice words when the muddy water turned out to be sewage.
4. Joanne Johnson set the indoor record for lost luggage on a 15-day trip to South Africa that included 13 flights. Her luggage was lost four times, including the day she returned home.
5. Kim Miller and her husband, Michael, took a Premier Christian Cruise on Carnival. On the day they were to leave Philadelphia, they learned that a blizzard was due to hit. The snow came first, the passengers second, the fuel third. On the last flight out of Philly, they got an extra bag of pretzels and all the alcohol they wanted to buy. “Ah sunny Orlando!” Kim wrote. “The land of blue tarps and empty cement trailer pads. We waited three hours for our luggage…lost one garment bag with all Michael’s pants, shoes, suit and Kim’s dress. Another bag was ripped…” Rushed to the JC Penney to buy Michael more clothes and luggage….but at the cruise ship, another Michael Miller got THAT luggage. Phone calls, conferences, paperwork., and Kim’s Michael found the other Michael’s luggage and sent it to the rightful owner. Thoughtfully, U.S. Air had flown the Millers’ lost luggage to Newport… after they had left. They still don’t have it, and are convinced that everyone in Newport has worn it by now. Throughout the trip, she kept smiling and thanking God for getting them through it all.
6. Lisa Neilsen Agnew traveled up the mountains of Jacaltenengo, Guatemala, in a chicken-delivery bus waiting for her luggage, lost somewhere between Orland and Guatemala City, to catch up. Four days later, the bags arrived missing ALL her film and other little incidentals looted by the helpful and friendly staff at Aviateca Air.
7. Jeff Adams’ worst memory is of a Christmas vacation to Los Angeles where Dad drove the wrong way down one of the freeways – which, even in 1968, wasn’t good news. But “Dad acted very calm …as though we’d just made a wrong turn on a rural road.”
8. Katie Shaw’s friends were always telling her to get out and get a life – preferably with a boyfriend. So the single mom spent her life savings on a Caribbean cruise for herself and her teenage daughter. They even got a 50% off coupon, having mentioned they’d love to meet “ a few nice guys.” The guys were all nice; but all five hundred or so of them were gay…
9. Tammy Hosch and her husband ended a trip to San Diego with a drive over to Tijuana, Mexico. Two days later, at home, violently ill, sweating and hallucinating, she revealed to doctors and nurses what she’d eaten in Mexico, and was immediately put on IVs, potassium and fluids. Shigella and another parasite would have caused permanent heart damage in another few hours.
10. During the first night of a scheduled week of resort fun, a storm caused water to leak all over the food in the kitchen and into the bed in one of the three bedrooms. The owner later explained to Jim Draper, “You need not worry. The roof only leaks when it rains.”
11. A Chicago to San Diego round trip Amtrak vacation for Jean Mitchell included overflowing toilets, vomiting children (her own, all over her) a delay in the desert in a non air-conditioned train and a “viewing” car so polluted with smoke it was impossible to see out the window.
12. Patricia Munier’s then-husband won a trip to New Orleans. On the bus to the airport, she learned about his affair with a co-worker. She then spent five fun-filled nights in the French Quarter, turning in every night at 8 p.m. in a hotel on Bourbon Street – while her soon-to-be-ex partied!
13. Paula Dent was attending a family reunion when she approached the kitchen table when “what to her wondering eyes should appear but a cooked and chopped cow’s head, decked out in aluminum foil. The scary thing was, she wrote, was, “they were serious, and … the airlines thwarted her initial escape attempt.”
14. When Darla Nielsen checked into Marco Polo International Airport for her return flight to Minneapolis, she was informed that her flight out of Amsterdam later that week had been cancelled – two weeks before. Northwest Airlines transported her to “a hotel in the middle of nowhere” where her only option for dinner was that continental favorite, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
15. Lynn Lemanski was driving home from Maine with a pal, and the only motel in Pennsylvania they could find was called the ‘Three Hours Motel.’ They found out why the next morning, but they couldn’t flee because their car, stuffed with souvenirs from Maine, was stuck at the eight-hour gas station for a $500 transmission repair.
16. Rick Gundermann and his best friend were driving to Taos, New Mexico, for a downhill ski vacation when a blizzard closed all the roads. There was plenty of snow, but in Leoti, Kansas, not known for its hills.
17. Ruth Ellickson wrote that “after the bottom was ripped out of the five-person rubber raft and after riding side-straddle as we bashed against rock outcroppings, my severely battered, bruised and (possibly) broken leg remaining unswollen due to the frigid river water…at the river bank, we abandoned the useless rubber Cheerio and climbed a steep, solid rock embankment into grizzly bear country.”
18. Deb Wisniewski had infected wisdom teeth when her family set out for the camping trip on the North Shore of Lake Superior – before the sewer backed up into the basement at 10 p.m. the night before and her five-year-old woke with her eyes glued together by infection. It poured rain on the whole drive up, and then, after pitching their tent in the pitch dark in the national forest, her husband had to set out with a flashlight and a golf umbrella to find her dog, which had just come home from the Humane Society (editorial comment – and for this?). That flapping in her face that awoke Deb was the back half of the tent that had collapsed on her daughter, in the middle of the mud-sodden lake surrounding the blow-up mattress. No motels nor even private homes were nearby. But Deb’s family relocated the next day and enjoyed a picture-perfect vacation at a picture-perfect campground where they only later learned there had been a bit of a problem… with bears.
19. Carol Dirks got a page at the Denver airport as she was leaving for her ski vacation from relatives telling her that her house had been robbed.
20. Ann Marie Ames was working at a charity golf tournament in North Dakota, even though she’d never golfed, when a turtle peed on her while she was trying to save its life. She later broke her shoe and scraped her knee in what she describes as a “tragic post-tournament conga line incident.”
21. Liz and Frank Stumpf set off from New Orleans in a borrowed motor home with their son and daughter-in-law, a six-month-old baby and a 13-year-old nephew. The motor home died in Alabama where “we limped into Mr. Herman’s truck garage (and spent) three days in 100-plus weather, showered in the public showers of a truck stop” and later found their vehicle was entirely filled with ants.
22. Susan Walkey, her husband and eight-year-old son rented a “motorized lawnchair” for a one-hour cruise of Mission Bay in San Diego. Halfway through the trip, one of the pontoons started taking on water and as the three slid off the “lawnchair” and into the drink, Walkey’s husband called out, “Tread water!”
23. Tracy Toon took the southern route home for Christmas and got caught in an ice storm. Edward Hopper-style, she spent the holiday in a cold café dining on crackers and cheese. She celebrated New Years in a motel that used sardine cans for ash trays and the meal in the Italian restaurant next door cost more than the rent. Says Tracy, “I counted my blessings anyway.”
24. Mary Lou Michaels showed up at the romantic honeymoon cabin rented well in advance to find it had been given to someone else who could stay longer. Although they honeymooned in a Quonset hut with a shared bathroom down the hall on a roll-a-way bed, it could only get better. And she’s been married 28 years!
25. Laura Haefs-Flemming went on her first vacation in 14 years to Barbados, where, on a catamaran/snorkeling outing, although she was the only single person on board, the crew and all the other passengers managed to leave without her, as she bobbed in the ocean – shark bait until they noticed!

And what account of the winners would be complete without Brian Steptoe’s account of his Olympic vacation to Turin? He arrived to find that his hotel reservations had been taken over by a Mr. Steppin, who would not give them up, his tickets had been claimed by a Bill Steffens and his car by Brian Wolfe – both of whom, when confronted, admitted that their had been an error in their favor and refused to change anything.

Thanks also and either cologne, earrings or a ‘Still Summer’ guaranteed-indestructible keychain to runners up Patrick McBride (he of the dead alligator), Tiffany Sanders and her battling sister, Marcy York for fun with a drunken bus driver, Monica Simpson who went to Niagara Falls to celebrate her first baby and nearly lost him, Ramona Samuels whose Mormon family of twelve children forgot one six-year-old who took a bathroom break, Lynn Muesser whose vacation got off to a bit of a deadbeat start at O’Hare and Kathy Kerst who spent her trip solving other people’s problems.

Write to me, jackie@jackiemitchard.com, to claim your prizes and … inflate a kiddie pool in the back yard next time!

Thanks for all your entries, your good humor and for reading my book!

Jackie M.