Vacation time and travel

[Maister]

How do you tend to spend your vacations? Do they often involve lots of highway miles and a specific destination or do you wander around a bit looking for fun things to do with no particular place necessarily in mind? Are you the sort of person who has a destination(s) in mind, gets there in the most efficient manner possible, perhaps following a carefully planned itinerary/timetable?

Are you one who tends to spend your vacations with some regularity attending to chores or projects (e.g. moving grandparents into a retirement home, or painting the house)?

Would you say that vacations are primarily about relaxation (i.e. not engaging in high levels of activity) or are they about engaging in enjoyable activities (e.g. kayaking, hiking, whirlwind tours of Europe, etc.)?

Do you often do the "staycation" thing (cringe...hate that term!) and maybe do a combination of day trips and chores?

What constitutes an ideal vacation in your opinion?

[dandy_warhol]

My preferred vacation is some place faraway from here with some planned activities and some room for spontaneity. We tend to do enjoyable activities on our vacations and try to do culturally appropriate activities. Some times these activities are met with success other times not so - e.g. horseback riding in Iceland in sleet and rain. But more often then not I'm happy to have the opportunity to try something new and different.

Last year I was spoiled going on multiple vacations - Bahamas (relaxation), WI (family), Cruise to Canada (family & fun), NOLA (FUN!).

This year is going to fall short. (It looks like Russia might not happen due to finances ) And I'm struggling with that. We're now talking about Montana/Wyoming & the Dakotas but (even though I know they have beauty and value of their own) they're falling a bit short of the anticipation of Russia.

I hate doing chores and errands on vacation days, except around the winter holidays. Vacations were meant for fun, relaxation, and experiencing new things!

[Whose Yur Planner]

Since I now live 14-15 hours away, vacations are now spent traveling back to my old stomping grounds and visiting family. It's always a little odd going back to places you used to live, but now your just another tourist. A perfect example of time stops for no one.

[The One]

Vacation? What's that? I only get ten working days off a year!

Now I can talk about long weekends (aka American Vacations)....I do get long weekends....3 or 4 days in a row in which to do something. Sure I've had plenty of three and four day trips, whether by car or plane, but none of those allowed for any relaxation or what I could characterize as a "vacation." These American Vacations I take are anything but relaxing and involve deadlines and are rushed in almost every case because of tight schedules.

I don't consider any time off I've had in the last 15 years to qualify as a "vacation."

[stroskey]

As a young childless couple we want to vacation as much as we can before "it" begins. A long weekend in my mind qualifies as a vacation because we don't have the time to take 2 weeks off every now and then. We like to go on one bigger trip (something tropical) about once every two years and just sit around relax on the beach. About once per year we'll go someplace more exciting than here like Vegas, Phoenix, or Orlando and see the sites and take in the atmosphere. We also go on a few weekend trips during the summer up north to the woods, Chicago, etc. a few times per year.

[wahday]

A complex question. For example, next week is Spring Break for the kids (but not for me). So, the wife is taking them to Arizona to see their aunt while I tend to some home improvement projects (most notably, painting their room).

At the same time, our best vacations have been family road trips. We usually to go see someone, but we make an adventure of the journey as well - camping, seeing strange sites, etc. We have taken road trip vacations from central New Mexico to Colorado, California, Arizona and Texas in recent years.

We also have family in Seattle, so that is really the only place we go by plane to recreate. But I love a road trip...

In two years, our son will be finishing elementary school and my daughter will be entering elementary. We are planning to pull the kids out of school and travel for a year. Not sure where, not sure the money we will have available, but its looking more and more like a sure thing. I find traveling as a family is a great bonding experience for us all.

[TexanOkie]

I usually have set destinations, in the broad sense of the term - like a city, or region of a state (I'm not big on international travel, unless you count Canada and/or Mexico). I usually allocate a certain number of days to get there (most always by car - I love the road), but don't have a set agenda or itinerary both for the time on the road (other than aforementioned "be here by this date") nor once I get to said destination. I have bought tickets in advance for some things (like a Broadway play or Universal Studios tour), but really I just enjoy being able to explore wherever I'm at (which is usually some city or metro area) as if I were a local, much like I do places I actually live. I like looking for places and areas that aren't touristy as well as the Broadways and theme parks, though the latter are usually to placate fellow travelers. For example, three years ago I took a trip to California with my wife (then-girlfriend) and my little sister. Our main stops were Los Angeles and the Bay Area, because we had relatives in the areas we could stay with and we were poor college kids. In Los Angeles, aside from Hollywood and the Reagan Library, we spent almost a whole day just exploring the San Fernando Valley, and had a blast doing so. It wasn't as much fun for the girls at the end of the week up in the Bay Area. My sister and wife wanted to go to San Francisco, which we were going to do the next day, but instead we spent a day looking around San Jose and the rest of Silicon Valley because I wanted to, starting downtown SJ (Tech museum, HP Pavillion, light rail system/SJSU) and ending up at a swanky Indian restaurant in Palo Alto (I forgot the name of the place). To this day my wife is somewhat sore about it...

[kjelsadek]

Generally if I am on vacation I am taking off and not spending it at home-I do that enough already and since I rent there's nothing really for me to do.

Before R.T. camping and hiking at the beach or mountains and white water rafting were the primary vacation activities. R.T. appreciates nature but doesn't want to be out in it for extended periods of time. Generally we spend several days or a week traveling for her birthday, and we've been to Asia a couple of times, and sometimes we get in a 3-day weekend in another city as well.

[Planit]

Our trips usually tend to be extended long weekends (4 days) with friends, family or just us. These include friends to the coast, golf excursion w/ my brother, a bigger city with family and various other get-wawys. We also go home (the FLA beach) for a week as well.

Last two-week vacation I took was in 1995 and I don't see that happening again for a while.



I had a friend who had a very interesting vacation concept. She had one credit card she used only for vacations. She'd select a place and use the credit card for everything on the trip. When she came home and paid it off, she'd be ready go on another one. She varied between long trips far away (which required longer payback) and shorter more local trips (a short payback).

[nrschmid]

When I'm on vacation, I do NOTHING for days/week at a stretch. It usually involves sitting by a pool or in a pool working on some sun in a warm climate. Sometimes I plan an initerary but have been known to easily break it. If I go with friends they all know this ahead of time and they are cool with it. I have been completely independent for years and rely entirely on myself for everything so the ideal vacation for me is not doing ANYTHING that involves physical effort (even if that means getting up from a nap, lol). For years I didn't do too much travel because it was too expensive. Now that I have more expendable income I am seriously making up for lost time I have been known to go out with friends to the local bars and not get back to the hotel/resort until sometime late next morning, hit the sack, get out to the pool in the afternoon, go out to eat, out to the bars, and do it again the next day. So far my schedule:

June 2010: 3 day vacation to visit friends and family back home in Chicagoland. Spending a good chunk of one of those days at the beach followed by the bars
September 2010: 2-3 day trip back up to Chicagoland for Grandmother's 85th.
October 2010: 4-5 day trip down to Austin and Houston, TX (tentative).
December 2010: 3 day trip back to Chicagoland for xmas. I hate the cold, and as much as I love my family christmas trips are more of a formality for me.
February 2011: 9 day vacation to Florida to celebrate my 30th with some friends (Ft. Lauderdale, Miami, and then the Keys)!! Ironically, my parents are spending some time down there as well and might join us for a day.

Besides that, I do a few weekend trips to local cities 100-200 miles away over the summer where I continue my tradition of doing nothing Do I check out the cities in depth? Usually not. I'm a planner, I get to do THAT for my day job

[Chet]

I prefer to take 3 or 4 day weekends and camp. A week long vacation tends to bore me, especially travel far from home.

[Bear Up North]

This Bear has a long history of vacations (because I am old), sprinkled with long trips, short trips, stay-at-homes, fishing trips, camping trips, business trips mixed with pleasure, canoe trips, lake cottage trips. All trips included some sort of alcohol. Examples.....

Quite a few years of renting cottages for a week (Lake Erie and Upper Peninsula of Michigan).
Numerous camping trips. (Tents mostly, until Katie came along. She no like tents.)
Canoe trips. (Boundary Waters, northern Canada, West Virginia whitewater, etc.)
Fishing trips.
3-week vacation in VW Camper, Toledo to Washington/Oregon coast and back.
Stay-at-home vacations, just relaxing, catching up on chores, yadda.

My favorite? Tent camping in the Upper Peninsula. Unfortunately, this type of camping is not what Katie prefers. Me? A pitched tent on the shores of Lake Michigamme, my bass boat pulled up on the sand beach, waiting for the next morning's dew-covered adventure, the local bars (in Republic, Stumps, or Mount Shasta) for dinner and a drink or more. A pile of burning firewood, the smell of a seasoned campfire, the stars ablaze, a Rolling Rock propped in the sand, next to my beach chair. Ahhhh....................

Bear