Flashback Friday

                 

Since we've  been on the topic of vacations this week, I though we'd continue with the theme for Flashback Friday and take a look back at vacation postcards.  With email and unlimited nights and weekend minutes on our cell phones today, we hardly ever correspond by snail mail anymore, and vacation postcards have become a thing of the past.  I can't remember the last time I got a postcard in the mail from someone on vacation, nor can I remember the last time I sent one when I was on a trip. 

As I mentioned earlier this week, I was fortunate as a kid and went cross country to California with my parents twice in our cool van.  On the first trip, we stopped somewhere in Arkansas the first night, and I remember looking at the postcards in the hotel gift shop.  I'd decided I was going to buy a postcard from every place we stayed or visited on the trip, and wanted to pick a special one for the first postcard of the trip.  The first postcard on the 1974 road trip to California was one of the infamous Jackelope, similar to the postcard above. 

Almost every service station (yes, that was when they were actually service stations), truck stop, and tourist trap we stopped at on our way to and from California had Jackelope postcards.  They were most popular in Oklahoma and Texas and other points out West.  I admit I didn't see any on our side trips to San Francisco and Monteray - maybe that's because the Jackelopes weren't native to the Bay area.