Familiarity breeds content for certain repeat visitors

Elouise and Wilmer Horton first set eyes on Yosemite National Park 56 years ago.

“We had just got our first car, a 1947 Nash, aqua blue,” Elouise recalls, “and the first place we went to, of any distance, was Yosemite. I loved it.”

The Long Beach resident has returned more than 100 times, with Wilmer until he died in 1995 and alone or with friends since then. On Thursday she was planning to sit down to her 49th Bracebridge Dinner, the annual Christmas pageant at the park’s Ahwahnee hotel, after stopping in Fresno on the way to request her place at the table next year.

Travel broadens the mind, we are told. And most of us believe it. On their next trip, three-fourths of Americans want to go to a place they’ve never visited, according to the 2003 National Leisure Travel Monitor, an annual survey of travelers’ preferences and intentions.

But for a devoted cadre of tourists, some destinations bear repeating. Again and again.

Why do they do it?

“We’re boring,” jokes Linda Creager, a West Hills educational consultant. With her husband, Matt, a businessman, and their three daughters, she has been staying at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa at least once a year for more than 20 years.

It’s tempting to accept that answer. But probe a little deeper and you’ll find a mix of nostalgia, friendship and soothing ritual.

For travelers, going back is like comfort food.

“We almost use it like a second home,” Linda Creager says of the Hawaiian hotel. “We know the routine.” The result: total relaxation.

The Creagers travel often, for business and pleasure, to Japan, Europe and elsewhere. One year, returning from an adventurous trip to China, “we stopped in Hawaii, just to recuperate,” she recalls. Call it a vacation from a vacation.

Sam and Marianne Alhadeff of Poway, Calif., who own a business together, have been going to the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the Big Island for more than 20 years, sometimes four or five times a year.

“It’s like coming home to Grandma,” Sam says. “You’re having breakfast, and they know my son Michael likes sweet rolls, so they bring out a plate.”

He adds: “We work really long hours.” But when the family goes to the Mauna Kea, “I don’t take a cellphone,” he says. “It’s hard to find me. It’s a real retreat.”

Stressed professionals like the Creagers and Alhadeffs “are looking to stop their world because they want to get off ... and re-center,” says Dr. Mark Goulston, a Santa Monica psychiatrist. An added bonus: Deciding where to go is one more decision they can scratch off their to-do lists.

Many repeat vacationers find lasting friendships too.

For 24 years, curator-author Sandra Cumings Malamed of Los Angeles and her husband, Kenneth David Malamed, an investment counselor, have gone to Villa d’Este on Lake Como in Italy.

“We always have the same room overlooking the lake,” she says. “We know every single person in town who owns shops and restaurants.” The hotel’s staff members, she adds, “have watched our children grow up.”

Movie director Ken Annakin of Beverly Hills, who fell in love with the Caribbean while shooting the 1960 Disney film “Swiss Family Robinson” on Tobago, will make his 28th trek to the Coral Reef Club in Barbados in January. He and his wife, Pauline, look forward to meeting at least 10 other couples who visit at the same time each year, he says.

Sometimes the familiar “destination” can be a ship or cruise line.

When retired letter carrier James D. Biggs of Paramount and his wife, Barbara, made a 57-day voyage from Vancouver, Canada, to India in 1992, their ship, the Pacific Princess, lived up to its image as the former “Love Boat” of TV series fame.

“We came back with 19 ‘adopted kids’ ” from the ship’s waiters, dancers and other crew members, James recalls. “We hear from them still,” he says.

The Biggses have sailed more than 100 times with Princess Cruises on various itineraries. But port calls aren’t the point. “Most of the time, we don’t even get off the ship,” James says. “We really like the ship.”

For some repeat travelers, the destination itself is the attraction, especially tropical resorts and national parks -- favorite nests for swallows who return. They never tire of the sublime, ever-changing beauty of nature.

“Every year we get excited when we make the turn and see the Tetons for the first time,” says Mary E. Bishop, a Casper, Wyo., resident who has gone to Grand Teton National Park for the Fourth of July each year with her family for more than half a century.

“It’s never the same,” Yosemite fan Elouise Horton says of her favorite national park, which she visits at least twice each year in winter and summer.

She and Wilmer, who built airplanes for Douglas Aircraft and then Boeing, used to hike the park’s trails together. “We didn’t have family in California,” she recalls. “We met people up there and became friends with them.”

She still loves the fancy Ahwahnee, dropping by in the daytime. But she sleeps at the more modestly priced Yosemite Lodge, always in the same room. “I’m a long way from being rich,” she says. “I drive a 12-year-old Buick Century.”

Over the years, Elouise says, she has seen the price of the Bracebridge Dinner increase from $12.50 to $275 per person, but she keeps going anyway.

“Sitting in front of that great big fireplace at the Ahwahnee hotel -- there couldn’t be anything better than that,” she says. “It’s the ultimate.”

Besides, she and Wilmer always loved Yosemite in winter.

Elouise doesn’t say she goes back each year to bask in half a century of wonderful memories.

She doesn’t have to.

Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.