We Learned by Mistake: An Easier Guide to Planning Vacations

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I began my Ph.D. classes at Mercer University in Atlanta two days after our son, Jackson, was born.  The next year, I gave birth to our daughter, Lucy. My thought process was that if they were young while I was in school, they would not realize that I was not home. Three years later, I graduated, and two weeks after that, Sean began his Ph.D. program at Mercer. We then switched places for three additional years.

I will never regret completing our programs when Jackson and Lucy were young, but school never left a lot of time for traveling. At most, we would jaunt down to Panama City Beach for a few days to smell the ocean air and rub some sand between our toes. When Sean graduated in 2012, we were really excited to go on a vacation that lasted more than three days. Little did we know, in years to come, we would be pulling a travel trailer through the national forests of New Mexico and riding through the mountains in Vermont. However, our vacation planning skills were really learned…by mistake.

Discovering Our Love For Travel

Vacation Planning with a Passport Book

Our kids love history. When Sean graduated in 2012, we wanted to take them to Washington D.C. At the time, this two-week trip was our longest vacation we had ever taken as a family. Sean and I really wanted to maximize our stay because we were very excited. On our first day, we drove from Atlanta and visited both Williamsburg and Yorktown, Virginia. While we were riding through Yorktown, where the British waived their white flag to end the American Revolution, Sean bought an $8.00 National Park Passport Book. With this book, we could get stamps at all the national park sites throughout the U.S. By the time we arrived in D.C. that evening; I had decided that I needed a stamp for every national park.

Washington D.C. was a great place to begin our passport stamp quest because you can get a stamp at each national monument. The National Passport Book was something that I loved, and that love was the first step into planning our vacations. We ended up traveling to many places from our D.C. base that summer. We journeyed to Gettysburg, Valley Forge, Lancaster, and Hershey, Pennsylvania, on that trip. There was too much to see, and we crammed it all into our itinerary. Eventually, we learned that after about three days of festivities, we needed a day of downtime before returning to our adventures.

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Vacation Planning with Season’s Passes

We have a Six Flags very close to us in Atlanta, and we have been pass holders for years. On this particular D.C. trip, we passed Six Flags Over America, located between D.C. and Baltimore. It had never occurred to me to bring our season’s passes on our trip. However, I did know that our season’s passes were good at all Six Flags parks. So, the next year, we returned to D.C. again and made sure that we had a day at Six Flags Over America and Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. The Six Flags parks are not identical by any means, but they are all loads of fun. The second step of planning vacations had made its entrance into our lives.

You might ask why I visited D.C. two years in a row, but even in two weeks per year, the district cannot be covered adequately. So, in 2013, we came back for more stamps and new Six Flags parks. Sean and I were budgeting on vacation… remember, we had just finished six straight years of Ph.D. programs; the money was not exactly flowing. However, the trip was too good to pass up.

Vacation Planning With Clever Lodging

I have a friend who’s husband worked for an apartment property corporation at the time. Apartment complexes’ often set units aside, known as executive suites, so when property executives visit, they have a place to stay. However, when not in use, they can be rented out like hotel rooms. Can you imagine a large family traveling to a city where they can rent an entire apartment on their stay for as cheap or cheaper than a hotel would cost? We learned another valuable piece of information on this trip. Needless to say, we could not pass up another year of D.C.

Travel Tips

These two trips mistakenly taught Sean and me about vacation planning. Here are some of our best lessons that we learned while traveling on a budget:

• Sit down with your family and decide where you would like to travel during your vacations for a few upcoming years. Sean and I knew that we wanted to see every state in the U.S., so we actually created quadrants of the U.S. to visit. The quadrants can change as you plan, or maybe something comes up one year, and you might postpone for a while. At least you have a goal and a plan. Usually, our quadrants shrink because we have learned to factor in days of rest on our trips. Those trips to D.C. had us traveling many miles that could have been planned more easily on additional vacations.
• What do you love? For me, I became a lover of national parks that day in Yorktown. Many national parks are free, and if not, they have a National Parks Pass for that. We began planning our trips around particular national parks within the quadrants that we are visiting.
• Do you have season passes for amusement parks in the city that you live in? Or maybe a museum membership that has reciprocity with sites in other states? Since 2012, we have visited nine of the 12 Six Flags Parks. Our kids appreciate a day of fun while on vacation, and we appreciate not paying when strolling through the ticket booth.
• Are there less expensive alternatives to expensive hotels in large cities? I am very picky about the hotels that I stay in, so an apartment set up and cleaned in preparation for an executive is a far better option than a $150 per night in a hotel. And hey, I will never complain about a full-sized kitchen we can cook in.

Sean and I are not genius trip planners, but we have been lucky enough to learn how to travel by realizing efficient ideas while on those early D.C. trips. We still rely on those learned vacation strategies, and they influence our vacation planning every year.

Do you have any vacation planning strategies that have proven beneficial for you and your family? Did you come by these strategies by mistake, or were they intentional? We would love to hear from you! Leave a comment below.

Interested in vacation planning near Washington DC? Check out Trip Advisor for fantastic lodging deals in the area!

Looking for other articles on economical travel? Read our post on Cruising On a Budget and 15 Budget-Friendly Destinations in Georgia!