Matt Wixon - The Great American Staycation: How to Make a Vacation At Home Fun for the Whole Family (And Your Wallet!)

The Great
American
Staycation

How to Make a Vacation at Home
Fun for the Whole Family

(and you wallet!)

Copyright 2009 by Matt Wixon.
All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by
Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, Inc.
7 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322. U.S.A.
www.adamsmedia.com

ISBN 10: 1-60550-656-7
ISBN 13: 978-1-60550-656-2
eISBN: 978-1-44052-035-8

Printed in the United States of America.

J I H G F E D C B A

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For Janell and my three biggest motivatorsRyan, Cooper, and Nathan.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Amy and Kevin, Andy, Brenda and Ed, Brian, Carrie, Cristi, D. Ray, Joslyn, Katie and Chris, Lin, Melissa, Nancy B., Nancy and Mike Z., Nikki and Donald, Norma, Tom, Toni, and everyone else who shared their ideas and experiences. I hope your next staycation is fun, memorable, and doesnt include a writer bugging you about the details.

Contents

What Is a Staycation?
And How Can It Work for You?

Appendix: Online
Staycation Resources

Introduction

Twenty-five years before staycation became a buzzword, my parents packed their three kids into a rented van for an overnight fake-cation.

Yes, a fake-cation. As in fake vacation.

After all, the van wasnt really rented. My parents got it at a reduced rate, or maybe even free, in exchange for listening to a sales pitch on conversion vans. When the sales pitch was over, the van was all ours for the next twenty-four hours.

And what a twenty-four hours it was!

To escape the summer heat in Phoenix, Arizona, we drove seventy-five miles north to higher elevation. We swam in a creek, ate dinner somewhere, and then slept in the van in a grocery store parking lot. One bench seat folded flat into a bed, and my parents slept there. My brother slept on the floor, and my sister and I each slept in a captains chair.

The captains chairs reclined less than an airplane seat, making sleep almost impossible. I remember struggling to get comfortable as I watched cars zoom by on a freeway next to us. The next morning, with our twenty-four hours nearly complete, we headed home.

It was one of several fake-cations my family took when I was a kid. One time we spent a weekend in a townhouse that required my parents to sit through a three-hour sales pitch.

Another time, our family spent a weekend at an RV park that was mostly populated by retirees. The park had a small, deteriorating miniature golf course that was fun for an hour or two. But after that, my brother, sister, and I had nothing to do but play cards in the RV and walk over to the shuffleboard courts and sling around the sliding disks. I remember I ate an entire box of Cheez-Its in one day during that trip. Not because I was hungry, just because it was something to pass the time. The most memorable moment of that weekend was when my brother and I, tired of watching the three channels available on our portable five-inch, black-and-white TV, walked to the RV parks community center. There we found a television set to watch, but that only lasted a few minutes. We got yelled at for turning up the volume because it was interfering with the man calling out the bingo numbers.

Very memorable, but not the greatest vacation. Truly a fake-cation.

But I dont blame my parents. Three kids were expensive to fly anywhere. And the emotional cost was probably higher, given that my brother, sister, and I could get into an argument in the middle of church. On Christmas Eve.

Money was tight, and so was time. My dad, an insurance salesman, switched companies so often that he didnt accumulate a lot of vacation days. He did accumulate a lot of business cards, however, and we used the backs of the outdated ones to write down phone messages.

Obviously, the seven-day family vacation to Walt Disney World wasnt an option for my family. But now that Ive taken some jabs at my parents, Ill give them some credit. Even without much money or time, they still wanted to put some kind of vacation together.

Thats exactly what millions of Americans, including me, are thinking right now. How are we going to spend our next vacation?

Wed all love to really splurge. Wed love to jet away for a fourteen-day trip to somewhere exotic. Wed love to lounge on an exclusive beach and snap our fingers to have someone deliver us food, drinks, and in my case, SPF 140 sunblock. But for many of us, reality cramps our vacation fantasies. The economy is in a downturn; gas prices are up and down (but usually up); and airlines are cutting flights, hiking fares, and adding fees for checking luggage. Theyre even charging for pillows now. Eventually, Im guessing the airlines will add a passenger convenience fee to any flight that doesnt end with an exit by inflatable slide.

The airlines are a little desperate, obviously. And theres a good reason why. In June of 2008, consumer confidence hit its lowest level in sixteen years. Inflation is up, home values are sinking, and salaries are stagnant.

In an Associated Press story that was printed in newspapers across the country, an economist described it this way: From a consumer perspective, this is the most troubling economy since the 1980s.

Economic conditions are painful, no doubt. So what do we have to do? Unfortunately, as much as we hate it in this country of big hopes, big dreams, and Big Macs, its time to downsize.

That brings us to the staycation. The stay-at-home vacation. The kind of vacation nobody really talked about until it became a product of necessity. The kind of vacation that my parents tried to pull off back when the economy was in another mighty swan dive.

But those were fake-cations. A staycation doesnt have to be that way.

I know this because Im now in the position my parents were in twenty-five years ago. Like my parents, my wife and I have three kids. And since we started having our kids, and heard its a boy! three times, weve spent many vacations at home.

Finances are a big reason. Its expensive to take kids on vacation, and after our first son was born six years ago, my wife suspended her career as a teacher. Another reason we started taking stayca-tions, although we never called them that, was just how stressful it is to travel with kids.