Day Tripping

Travel Tips

Sometimes the effort of packing up the brood for an overnight stay is just too much to face, and that can be the perfect time for a day away. We've done a lot of these quick getaways over the years-especially when the kids were small-and have found them to be a lot of fun, and pretty relaxing, especially when the day away is followed by a lazy Sunday!

We often plan these trips around places that we want to see in our area, but never seem to have the time to get there, such as the Indian Mounds two hours away, or the downtown museum, which takes an hour to get to with traffic. To get the full benefit of this mini-vacation, you need to treat it as a vacation. Plan ahead. Pack up everything you need the night before for morning reveille. Get an early start while everybody's still in a good mood. Breakfast? Definitely out on the road!

Plan for arriving at your destination mid- to late-morning. If the locale is inviting, you might bring a picnic (packed up the night before), or if the dining sounds promising, plan to eat lunch at a local restaurant. Museum restaurants are often fun and in keeping with their subject. Plan for a late afternoon drive home. For dinner, eat out on the way home, or pick up pizza and a movie on the way back in.

Stay in vacation mode on Sunday. That means no work, and no projects. (Renovating the basement is definitely out, and clearing out the rain gutters can wait for another weekend!) Do only what you really want to do, the things you find enjoyable, especially as a family (this could easily entail doing absolutely nothing). You'll be pleasantly surprised at how rested you feel after your mini weekend getaway, and what a good time you and the kids have had together.

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