Read it or Weep

Staycations April 15, 2009

Everyone’s on a budget or downsizing these days. Why not downsize a vacation to a “staycation”? Matt Wixon’s book The Great American Staycation : How to Make a Vacation at Home Fun for the Whole Family has some great ideas about staying home or near home for a family vacation.  He describes how his parents took him and his two siblings on a fake-cation (a fake vacation) when he was young by driving 75 miles north of their Phoenix home to escape the summer heat. They swam in a creek, ate dinner somewhere, and slept in the van in a parking lot. Well, staycations are a big step up from the fake-cation. Wixon gives lots of ideas for interesting ways to spend a vacation near home (at home or within 100 miles). In his list of factory tours there are a couple of ideas for places in Ohio- the American Whistle Corp. in Columbus and the Carousel Magic Carousel factory in Mansfield. There are chapters for outdoors and adventure, educational, sports staycations, and more. There’s even a suggestion about how the public library can be incorporated into a “staycation”!                                                          ~Ann