In Colorado, we’ve been enduring a long streak of cool, cloudy days. If you’re from an overcast part of the world, you might be questioning the word “enduring,” but as I mentioned last week, Colorado normally gets more than 300 days of sunshine a year, and when the clouds linger, Coloradans whine.
Fortunately, we’re still seeing signs that summer is around the corner. A huge indicator is that the blogosphere is full of great posts about taking a cheap summer vacation this year:
Five Cent Nickel posted on “Planning a Family Vacation Without Breaking the Bank.”
Wise Bread wrote about “The Ultimate Frugal Vacation” — a staycation, where you stay home instead of paying for gas, airfare, hotel, dining and all that goes with a traditional vacay. Cynical note: This post is illustrated with a gorgeous photo of an ocean, sea kayak and cliff … not part of the staycation landscape except for a lucky few.
Frugal Dad looks at the other side of the coin in “Family Summer Vacations.” He says he’s tired of staycations, and after some family stresses this year, he’s ready for a change of scenery.
Staycation or nay-cation?
We sometimes “staycation,” and my family loves the chance to hang out and chill out at home. For me? I work at home, so a vacation at home just means I have to strive to resist logging on to my regular work life, and I have a tendency to get bogged down catching up on chores.
For that reason, I’m looking into a variety of vacation options for the summer, including investing in quality camping equipment that can last us a few years. Camping remains a very affordable way to get away from it all, while remembering how beautiful our planet is. We also plan to spend some time with family and friends, and take some short trips — including one to the mountains that Mr. Cheap and I are on this weekend.
Coming tomorrow: 12 ways to plan a budget family vacation.
What are your vacation plans this summer? Are you taking a trip, planning a staycation, or too busy to have thought about it yet?
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Comments ( 8 )
[...] on the theme of vacation planning, check out this list (from Bills.com) of 12 ways to make vacation [...]
12 ways to plan a budget vacation | Cheap Like Me added these pithy words on Jun 06 09 at 5:11 am[...] Excerpt from: Take a frugal summer vacation | Cheap Like Me [...]
Take a frugal summer vacation | Cheap Like Me | Family Summer Vacations added these pithy words on Jun 06 09 at 10:40 am[...] experiences to share with you, dear readers — especially following last week’s posts on frugal vacations and vacation planning [...]
What I did on my summer vacation | Cheap Like Me added these pithy words on Jun 11 09 at 4:53 am[...] I mentioned two weeks ago, we are gearing up for a camping trip. One of my favorite camping breakfasts is instant oatmeal. [...]
Dealbusters: Frugal, homemade instant oatmeal | Cheap Like Me added these pithy words on Jun 25 09 at 5:41 amCamping, all the way baby!! We’ve got three camping trips scheduled (a couple are just long weekends) and bought a lot of our equipment off of Craigslist. I totally thinking camping is the way to go because it is (a) cheap and (b) out in nature – getting kids away from the plugged in world.
Green Bean added these pithy words on
Jun 05 09 at
8:25 am
We are doing a hybrid vacation in a few weeks. For the first 5 days we will be staying in the same rental house we have stayed at 3 times on the Oregon Coast. We are familiar with staying there so it is an easy transition for my kids and I. It is a huge house which we rent with other families which is nice since it gives our kids some company and enables a few parents to sneak away to cook meals (something I love). The other two days we are staying in a yurt also on the Oregon coast. Oregon has an amazing state parks system. We try to stay in yurts or cabins at the year’s equinoxes and at the summer solstice. Yurts in Oregon are a dry place with real beds. They are usually in beautiful places near interesting things. You do need to bring a camp kitchen but yurting takes a lot of the stress out of camping with three small children. Do you have yurts to rent near you?
Erin added these pithy words on
Jun 05 09 at
2:03 pm
Ha! I tried to use XHTML but it didn’t work like I thought it would work. Oh well. (Can you add below how to close the tag since I forgot?)
Erin added these pithy words on
Jun 05 09 at
2:04 pm
@Erin – Back in town and fixed the bold! It was missing the / to close the tag (/strong). I am sometimes just flummoxed as to why things work or don’t in WordPress …
Cheap Like Me added these pithy words on
Jun 07 09 at
5:35 pm
