In National Lampoon’s Vacation (by far the best movie to come out on my grandmother’s 67th birthday), Chevy Chase as father-of-the-century Clark Griswold does something funny. OK, he does a few things funny, but the one that always got me was the moment he runs to look at the Grand Canyon, nods, and runs off. Granted, he was on the run from the law, but that moment always makes me think of me and my dad.

See, when Dad and I take an excursion to somewhere rare and exotic like Hunstville, Tex., there’s always a place that one of us may have read about, heard about or really think is going to be great. So we go, we look, we nod and we leave. We refer to it as the “Motel’s sewing machine moment.” It’s an homage to Fiddler on the Roof, when Motel gets a new sewing machine, Tevye brays that he will see it, looks in, sees it, leaves. No big whoop.

Family vacations are full of what you may deem a Griswold Moment or a Motel’s Sewing Machine Moment. Family vacations leave an indelible mark on your psyche. Personally, I will never stay in Junction City, Tex. ever since we all took a road trip and had to sleep on the floor of a hotel that, at age five, I thought was called the Junkville Inn.

Vacation movies and TV shows also leave their mark – albeit less painful ones, in most cases.

Let’s talk TV first: Who out there was as obsessed with little clay totems after the Tabu on The Brady Bunch caused so much havoc on the Hawaii episodes? Was anyone else very jealous that the Brady kids got to meet Jim Backus as a gold prospector on one of their vacations — and all I met on our vacation was Frankenstein at Universal Studios?

Those lucky Bradys also got to go to Cincinnati, while the Bundys went to England, the Scrubs folks set a multi-parter for the Janitor’s wedding in the Bahamas, and the folks on Star Trek: The Next Generation had the Holodeck.

Vacation episodes, like real life, allow regular characters to let down their hair – kind of a television version of “What happens in St. Olaf, stays in St.Olaf.” Vacation episodes often are two-parters, sometimes with a cliffhanger – like Ross’s wedding in England on Friends.

When it comes to vacation movies, of course, the gold standard is National Lampoon’s Vacation. In recent years movies like RV have tried to keep up the mantle, but no other movie has Imogene Coca strapped to the roof of a car.

My personal favorite vacation movie is a less-traveled, Lea Thompson-Victoria Jackson-Dice Clay comedy of manners called Casual Sex? (the question mark is part of the title). And that, my friends, is a sentence I never thought I would ever write. Seriously, though, it is a relic from the late '80s about two single women on the search for Mr. Right at a health spa. I know, I know – it’s not really a FAMILY vacation movie.

But the point here is that it’s the end of summer, and we can say goodbye knowing that there are some movies we can always watch to keep that special vacation feeling alive. Wet Hot American Summer much? Heck, Indian Summer – anyone? Anyone? 1993? Julie Warner was supposed to become a bigger star? Google her co-star Matt Craven. His character is named  Jamie Ross, like Carey Lowell was as the ADA on Law & Order.

But I digress. Hmmm, I think I need a vacation. Time to rent some movies and watch some TV.

What are your favorite vacation movies, family and otherwise?

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