I’m Bored!

What parent hasn’t heard that lament from their child during Summer vacation? Just imagine what their teachers have heard every day at school.

Vacation for me was going to my grandparents house, getting to gather eggs, pick blackberries and helping my grandmother put another layer of wallpaper on her walls. Literally, when you pressed on her walls, they crackled with all those layers of wallpaper and paste.

In a good year, we went to 4-H camp going swimming, making crafts, hiking, learning how to do folk dances to songs like, “The Salty Dog Rag.” Then, when I was 13 years old, my aunt and uncle invited me to go with their family to Chicago and Niagara Falls. That’s when I got the traveling bug. No cure as of yet. Oh, yeh, we never said, “I’m bored” or we got to do some fun stuff like vacuum, dust, you know.

When our boy was growing up, we took him on lots of trips. And I used an old trick to keep from hearing him say, “Are we there yet? I’m bored. or How long does THAT take?” Age six, I gave him a roll of nickels. and told him he got to keep them all except that he would lose a nickel every time I heard him say one of those phrases. By the time he figured out that a roll of nickels wasn’t that much money, we graduated to dimes and then quarters. He never lost any quarters.

Family vacations—do you feel the vacuum of Disney World? For the price of a family of four to go there, tickets, hotel, gas, food in and out of the park, skip the line passes, well, it’s expensive.

For the same amount, rent a house on Jackson Lake, especially if it comes with a dock, buy some inner tubes, or some pool floats and enjoy the water all day. Or go to a hotel with a pool or a lazy river, most even provide breakfast.

Go to a minor league baseball game or a state park or Six Flags. There are plenty of things to do without driving for hours or in a traffic jam and until your children are a certain age they will never remember those vacations anyway. Where did you go when you were eight years old?

We did some great family vacations, to Los Angeles once on a Clark Howard special airline rate of $89 round trip. We stayed in the Hollywood Hills, went to Malibu Beach, ate at a crazy restaurant named Ed’s. One year we flew to San Francisco on another airline special, walked on the Golden Gate Bridge, drove to Yosemite National Park and saw El Capitan mountain, and panned for gold near Sutter’s Mill.

For me the best vacations are the people I’m with, the chase to find the deals, not so much the destination, but that helps a lot. Have a fun Summer!