I have a ten-day break coming up. It’s me, my wife and our giant year-old puppy. We’re thinking about a change of scenery so it doesn’t just feel like a ten-day weekend, but there are just so many obstacles:
There’s this pandemic you may have heard about. We want to be as safe and responsible as possible – we didn’t even invite close family for Thanksgiving – so eating in restaurants and visiting bars or anywhere with even small crowds are out.
For us, a lot of the appeal of travel is being able to eat in restaurants and drink and mingle with strangers. So right there it’s almost “why bother?”
The dog has never been kenneled, and his first time isn’t going to be a multi-day stay. So he has to come with us.
We’re not winter sports people. Renting a cabin or something in the upper midwest (where we live) would basically put the three of us in closer quarters with nothing special to do.
Traveling to a warmer place would be a multi-day road trip, meaning we’d have to pack enough food to eat along the way or just hit drive-through windows and eat in the car. And then when we get there we’d still be isolated and limited to stuff we could do with the dog.
We even thought about renting an RV, but I think I’d hate it, and it’s a tight space for two people and a big dog.
TLDR – nothing we can think of sounds like much fun. We have funds but lack ideas. Suggestions? Thanks!
Think about renting someplace that isn’t isolated. Even if you can’t eat out, being near a fun downtown area means you can shop, bring take out back to a house and not just a room, and just get a change of scenery.
Don’t know where you are, but a place like Saugatuck or Douglas, MI could be a lot of fun, even absent dining in and mingling with strangers.
I think @IvoryTowerDenizen has the right idea. Maybe just take a couple of days to go somewhere new and bring a bunch of books or crafts to do there? And try to drive somewhere that it’s not cold enough that walking outside makes your face hurt so you can get some new scenery in your brain.
I recently went to a deserted beach town where I rented a hotel suite that had a kitchen so I could make my own food if I didn’t want to eat delivery. It was too cold and windy to really spend much time at the beach, but just bumming around somewhere Not Home with some books and no work was great.
These are good suggestions. We’re just a few hours from Saugatuck or, say, Door County. If they have dog-friendly hotels or rentals, and restaurants open for take-out, it might just work.
My spouse and I have two 7-year-olds. Their school had a one-week fall break. (Year round school.) We were able to find a guest house rental where we had access to a pool, tennis courts, basketball courts, and there were horses, goats, and mini donkeys in the barn. All of this was technically shared with the owners in the main house, but we never saw them. It was like going to a resort just for us. So there are good options out there if you can find them.
We typically use an acquaintance as a dog and cat sitter in our home. I think we paid them a few hundred, and they did a bit of cleaning also. There are also professionals who do this, for higher fees.
We actually have a potential house- and dog-sitter already in the house – our 20-year-old son. He doesn’t want to travel with us and – as much as he loves the dog – doesn’t want 24/7 responsibility for him for several days running.
My friends rented a cabin on a small island (they live in Vancouver) and went for walks on a beach each day. Their dogs were able to run into the surf, and they just read books, and discussed life, and cooked their own fancy meals for 5 days. You could easily do something similar near the Boundary Waters (though no surf) or one of the Great Lakes.
My vacation plans are to stay home and do nothing.
Well, I may implement a new email client on my phone, and hey, maybe even on my laptop. Yeah, that’s about as exciting as it gets this year.
I have an old hard drive to salvage. The file names are gibberish, so I have to open each one to determine whether to save it, and to where. There are almost 2000 files. So that could take a day or two.
We decided the expense and effort of making the trip just wouldn’t be worth the enjoyment level vs. staying home. It makes more sense to save our money and spend it later in the year when (please, Og) we can do everything we want.
