A few months ago, I came across an article describing how colleges were making cuts to their history programs. Faced with budget shortages and declining interest in degree programs, it seems that history departments were the low hanging fruit to cut down. A few weeks ago, a friend took her niece on a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, and since that was one of my most favorite vacations as a kid, I started to investigate planning a trip for my own kids.

The first article to pop up when I did a Google search surprised me. It was about the budget crisis Williamsburg has been facing due to declining attendance numbers. As I started to go down the rabbit hole that most Google searches lead me to, I discovered that this problem isn’t isolated to Williamsburg. Across the board, historical sites are experiencing a decline in attendance and interest.

When I was a kid, most of our family vacations revolved around some kind of educational trip. Sure, we had a visit or two to Disney World and we went to the shore for a few days with friends, but by and large, our vacations were to places like Plimouth Plantation; Washington, D.C.; and Colonial Williamsburg. We did day trips to Valley Forge and Gettysburg. One summer, my mom planned one day trip every week. We went to the Landis Valley Farm Museum, President Buchanan’s home Wheatland, and toured the Asa Packer Mansion in historic Jim Thorpe and the Ashland Mine Tunnel. We spent a day in Harrisburg, touring the capitol building and visiting the State Museum.

As I’ve raised my own kids, I’ve tried to incorporate similar trips into their upbringing. A’s health issues have taken us to Philadelphia quite regularly, so we’ve hit up Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, the Franklin Institute, and the Please Touch Museum. We got family passes to the Camden Aquarium and the Philadelphia Zoo one year when we knew we would be making several trips down there. In addition to being fun and educational, it’s given the whole family a reason to enjoy a trip that usually includes a little bit of a hospital stay. My kids have benefited from trips organized by their Scout troop to see the Statue of Liberty and the Battleship New Jersey.

As we’ve made these trips, I’ve noticed that they weren’t quite as exciting or as engaging as they were when I was a kid, but for the most part I chalked it up to everything looking bigger when you’re 5 or 6 years old. My kids still enjoyed themselves and learned a lot, but some of the key memories that I had of some of these places and things I told them about just weren’t part of the program anymore. As I looked back through pictures of my first visits, I was sure that things really had been “bigger and better” back then.

Putting together what I’d read about budget crises and the declining interest in historical venues, things were starting to make sense to me. I could see a vicious cycle starting to emerge. Fewer people visit, funding starts to decrease, exhibits get less interesting, as they can’t be staffed or maintained, and even fewer people visit. To me, it feels like we’re in danger of losing some of these very precious resources.

So why does this matter? I’ve brought this subject up with people lately, and I’m saddened to hear so many responses along the lines of “eh” or “things change.” Of course, someone always brings up “well kids these days and their video games” implying that moseying around a stationary museum for the day isn’t exciting enough for perpetually stimulated youth. We are doing a real disservice to our kids when we start to feel that way. I’ve chaperoned enough field trips to know that sometimes taking kids back to the basics can be the most exciting thing that happens to them. Just the change of pace is enough to attract their attention.

The message from just about every history class I’ve ever taken, and the underlying theme to my dad’s relentless history lessons as we drove around the battlefields at Gettysburg for the twentieth time was something along the lines of “not being able to understand where we are going if we don’t understand where we’ve been.”

I’ve seen a similar quote attributed to the likes of Maya Angelou, James Baldwin and JFK, and I’m sure if I looked on Google, I could find the sentiment expressed by many other inspirational figures.

The great thing about these trips is that they don’t have to break the bank or require months of planning. There is no better place to start than the No. 9 Mine in Lansford. This trip is one of my kids’ favorite. We’ve gone several times, much to claustrophobic Mom’s dismay. It’s not just the excitement of riding the tram car down into the mine, it’s knowing that just a hundred years ago, they would be heading to the mine as breaker boys. It’s knowing that their great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents rode that same path, to provide for their families. It’s coming to an understanding of what it means to be a “Coal Cracker.”

This summer, I’m hoping to repeat some of the quicker day and weekend trips that I took as a kid, heading to Harrisburg, Jim Thorpe and Lancaster, for some local history. These next few years are a sweet spot for this sort of thing. The kids are old enough to absorb and appreciate such trips, but they’re not too old to think it’s a giant bore or that they know everything and can’t possibly learn something new. As we inch closer and closer to high school and college, it seems especially important that my kids have a greater understanding of their own history, as well as their family’s and country’s history. Hopefully, in addition to good memories, we’re working on creating bright futures.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.