enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Robert Maierhofer and twin daughters Matty and Emma, 11, prepare to leave their Yarmouth home Friday on a 1,250-mile road trip to Decatur, Ill., where his sister lives. He said they would show up at her door to surprise her.

enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Robert Maierhofer and daughter Matty of Yarmouth pack the car Friday for a Thanksgiving trip to Illinois to visit his sister. “This is going to be an adventure, a road trip,” he said.

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YARMOUTH — It was a Thanksgiving travel nightmare for his mother, but Daniel Morrison still remembers it as a "magical" journey.

He was 5 years old, riding in the back seat of a rusted-out Volkswagen Beetle as his mom drove from Massachusetts to Belfast. They ran into a surprise snowstorm and ended up staying overnight in a hotel somewhere north of Portland. The next day, he arrived at his grandparents' farmhouse just in time for the Thanksgiving feast.

"I always think of that particular Thanksgiving," said Morrison, now 43. "When you are driving through the night in a blizzard and the wind is whipping through the floorboards, it carves its way into memory."

Dick Foss of Yarmouth, who is 90, still talks about the Thanksgiving dinner he never ate.

When his family was living in Portland, he went on a deer- hunting trip to Windham with his friends. They got lost in the woods and didn't make it back home until after nightfall, when all the food was gone.

"We were all in the doghouse," he said with a laugh. "We never again went hunting on Thanksgiving Day."

Virginia Day, 96, of Yarmouth has vivid memories of watching her mother help neighbors make sausage. It was a ritual that occurred around Thanksgiving because that was the time of year when farmers butchered their hogs. She can still recall the sights and smells of the kitchen as her mother packed ground-up pork scraps into hog intestines.

"As a girl, it fascinated me," she said.

Holidays are like that. They exist in a realm outside the routine of workdays and weekends, evoking memories that are so meaningful they survive for 90 years.

Childhood memories, in particular, are enormously powerful, said Robert Maierhofer, a clinical psychologist who lives in Yarmouth.

Children embrace holidays initially because they are novel, he said. As they grow older, they come to cherish the sameness of holidays and often become the family guardians of tradition, demanding that certain rituals be followed year after year.

"Children like tradition," he said. "They are comforted by the security it offers, that these things are going to happen over and over again."

One of the biggest traditions is the meal itself. The sense of smell, he said, triggers memories better than any other sense.

Then there is the excitement of travel, which is part of the Thanksgiving experience for many American families.

In that regard, Maierhofer is becoming an expert of sorts.

He and his wife, Beverly Strzok, and their twin 11-year-old daughters, Matty and Emma, left Yarmouth on Friday for a 1,250-mile road trip to Decatur, Ill., where Maierhofer's sister lives. He said she would be surprised when they show up at her door.

"This is going to be an adventure, a road trip," he said before departing. "This is going to be part of the memories for our children."

Morrison, who lives in Torrington, Conn., and writes a blog about traveling with families, familyroadtrippers.blogspot.com, said he's amazed by the details he can remember from his Thanksgiving trip to Maine 38 years ago.

Even the hotel room where his family took refuge during the storm was exciting, he said. He had never been in a hotel, and he jumped up and down on the bed.

The next day when he arrived at his grandparents' home, an old house on a 200-acre farm on the outskirts of Belfast, he found it packed with his huge, extended family. All of his aunts, uncles and cousins were there.

A grand table was covered with all kinds of food, including a big turkey and mashed potatoes. It was set with his grandparents' fancy glassware, silverware and china, some of which had been in the family for four generations.

That Thanksgiving dinner became the standard by which he measures all Thanksgiving dinners, he said, and none since has quite measured up.

"This one trumped all of them," he said. "It had the biggest impression on me, particularly the journey."

Staff Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at: tbell@pressherald.com