When it comes to travel, we typically spend years planning a trip as we save for it.
This summer’s vacation – a 16-day east coast road trip – was no different. We spent the past two years working on the timeline and itinerary. We mapped out our route, figured where we’d be for meal times and chose well-reviewed restaurants with menu items to satisfy each of the five of us, researched the attractions to avoid tourist traps, chose our spots to see the sights, booked hotel rooms for each night…
Then, we scrapped it all.
Yup. Threw the whole plan out the window and canceled all our reservations.
In uncharacteristically spontaneous fashion, two weeks ago, we completely changed our plans.
For several months, we’d been feeling some apprehension about the trip. Our last big road trip in 2017 was fabulous, so it wasn’t that we didn’t think we could handle a long road trip. But, for so many little reasons, none of us were truly excited about the upcoming travel. And a vacation is too big an investment of both time and money to go into it unexcited.
It wasn’t easy for us to let go of all the planning we had already done, but we finally decided that it just wasn’t the right trip for us this summer.
In our ever-planning fashion, we had been looking a few years ahead and considering a cruise; every time we saw an ad for a cruise line, the kids would get excited. In one late night of searching, we found that for what we had saved for the 16-day road trip (plus all our accumulated airline miles), we’d be able to book roundtrip flights to Florida and a 5-day cruise to the Bahamas – leaving in less than 40 days. There were only three rooms left on the cruise and a limited number of seats left on the planes. Without taking much time to mull it over, we booked it.
It was exciting. Exhilarating.
Intimidating.
I quickly began to second-guess our decision.
Then, last night, my daughter left this on my nightstand.
“I'm going to love vacation. Thank you.”
You know what? I think we are all going to love vacation this year.
(This post originally appeared on Facebook.)