Have you had your summer vacation yet? If you’re like many Americans, you might very well be on it right now. I’m somewhat of an expert on vacations, having suffered through more than a few of them. Here are a few of my thoughts on some of the more popular types of vacations that may resonate with those who have had similar experiences.
Disneyland – What could be better than a week at the Magic Kingdom? Isn’t it every child’s dream vacation? Well, maybe, but not necessarily. It’s certainly a mistake to assume every toddler is going to be entranced by sights of Mickey and Donald. Disneyland is great for a few hours, but it’s hell for a family with little kids beyond that point.
For one thing, the lines are very long and the Anaheim sun tends to get very hot. For another, the sugar highs that the kids will experience from all the junk food you feed them will eventually morph into depressive lows that are likely to be accompanied by crankiness at best and complete breakdowns into uncontrollable tantrums at worst. And if you have two or more kids of varying ages, be prepared for a scene of rotating basket cases, as each child wears down at different points in the afternoon.
The Beach House – This one should be a winner, right? You rent a house on the beach and all you have to do is roll out of bed and you’re in paradise. Unless the house isn’t actually on the beach but instead is a few blocks away (as most of them are), in which case you have to lug all the beach equipment there and back each day. And do you take your lunch or plan to buy something from the snack bar? Either way, you have to plan for everyone, kids included, and kids will get hungry at the most inopportune times.
But nothing can beat lying on the sand with the sun beating down on you, unless you forget your sunscreen and end up with a third-degree sunburn. Or you forget the bug spray and end up bedeviled by sand flies and mosquitoes. And how many days in the sun on the beach can the average human endure before something akin to cabin fever starts to set in?
Cruises – Nothing beats a cruise for a carefree vacation, right? All the comforts of home provided by the friendly crew, all the food you can eat, and all the activities you can want right there at your fingertips. At least that’s what the brochures say. The reality is slightly less romanticized.
For starters, your stateroom will feel more like a closet, and the meals will fall a good bit short of five-star dining. They are mass produced, after all, since all cruise ships nowadays are massive floating hotels, many housing upwards of several thousand guests. And don’t think everything is free, because almost nothing is. Oh, the food is, but drinks, other than tap water, will cost you, as will almost any shore excursions that you want to experience.
And remember that thing about cabin fever? It can hit on a cruise as easily as it can in that beach house, especially if you also happen to get a little sea sick, which they also don’t warn you about in those brochures.
Road trips – This one is the classic post-WWII American family vacation. You pack the kids and suitcases into the family car and drive to some of the country’s great tourist spots. Uh, right. The odds are that within two hours of your departure, the kids will be fighting with each other or asking you in ever more impatient pleas if “we’re there yet.”
And when you do get there, it will be in a motel where you’ll be cramped into a room that really should only accommodate four, but they’ll give you a rollaway for one of the kids. So the five of you are stuck with the one bathroom and no escape from the forced intimacy of the situation. Try that experience for a week or two, and you’ll wish you’d never left home, and that’s assuming the tourist spots you do get to are all they were cracked up to be. Some are, and some most definitely aren’t.
Sight-seeing – Pick your favorite city, the one you’ve always dreamed about visiting, and plan a week or two in a posh hotel so you can devour everything the city has to offer. It could be New York or Paris or London or Rome. Or maybe it’s one of our great national parks instead: Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore. (Rushmore isn’t really a park, but you get the idea.) Wherever you go, be prepared to do a lot of walking while you listen to tour guides or read brochures that tell you what you should be seeing. And almost all of these spots will be crowded with people just like you, with kids just like yours who are easily bored and require constant attention. And you’ll be surprised at how uninterested they are in the majestic and historic places they are seeing with you.
Camping – Maybe the best way to get away from the rat-race of your normal existence is to take a camping vacation with your family. What could be more fun? Pitching a tent, eating food cooked over a campfire, telling scary ghost stories to the kids before they go to sleep, hiking all day while you explore nature in all its beauty and wonder?
Of course, you’ll need to be prepared for the unforeseen but highly foreseeable irritants, like bug bites, poison ivy, twisted ankles, the lack of rest rooms when you need them, kids too tired to walk any more, kids getting bored, spouses getting irritated because the other spouse isn’t helping enough. You get the picture.
In the end, it might just be that the best summer vacation consists of staying home, sleeping in every morning, taking in a few movies, playing a little golf, and reading a few good books. And you’ll save a few bucks, too.
scotch7 says
Some while ago we had an exchange about Ed taking retirement or not. I encouraged him to log off, tune out, drop out and TRAVEL. Ed said his decision was to not retire. He likes what he was does and feels he contributes to the ongoing progress of mankind in his own way. Tough to push counterpoint to that.
Now that he’s told us all of his vacation stories in one brief essay, it all makes more sense.
I’d like to pitch for retirement again. Not the full-on sandals sweats and daily golf bit. No, but how about half-time teaching and half-time… call it extending your education for the benefit of future students.
Just do something different half of the time, even if it means teaching something else, as long as it is someplace else. The key is to do it in a different place, preferably a different country. If there is such a thing as Lawyers without borders…
Of course it’s ok to rent a small apartment in a different city/state and stay put for 3 months getting a very broad overview of the food, music, movies and general culture as well.
When you get back to Sacramento, you’ll have a whole new point of view to share with your students. You might even come to like it yourself.