Yes, this Home-Aholic went away from home and from her computer, which explains the absence of recent blog entries.

Our family vacation this year was my favorite kind: an Exploration-cation. We start with a general sense of an area we want to explore, a few loose lodging reservations and a map. Yes, I said a “map” — a big, paper, hard-to-fold, AAA map. I’m a total techno-nerd who loves our car’s GPS and Googlemaps on the iPhone. But to me, there’s nothing better than spreading out the old map to see the big picture when you’re exploring.   

This year, we chose to explore northwestern PA, western NY’s Chautauqua region, and the Niagara area of Canada. So in just one week we saw two Great Lakes, two countries, two small lakes, two spectacular waterfalls, two universities, two historic monuments, two cheesy tourist traps (a Spongebob movie in 4-D and a wax Museum,) one national forest, one state park and a few terrific restaurants where we all ate way tooooo much! The photo above is of a sign that hangs outside a funky eatery we found in a college town less than an hour from our house: North Country Brewing Co. in Slippery Rock, PA. The little antique sign just struck me as funny and totally blog-a-licious. 

On our travels, we also drove by *sigh* numerous wineries. My husband and I vowed we’d visit them someday when traveling sans kids.  

The greatest thing about this trip was that all of these fun destinations were within 4 1/2 hours from our home in Pittsburgh so we were never in the car for very long between stops.  

In addition to the paper map suggestion, a few tips I’ve found helpful for our family when Exploration-cationing:  

• Pack lightly: one small bag per person plus a shoe bag, a swim bag and a jacket bag.  You’ll wear stuff more than once so one lodging with a laundry facility is not a bad idea.

• Bring bottled water, Capri Suns, Goldfish crackers, licorice and protein bars for the car. They travel well. 

• A DVD player in the car is the best invention of all time. Yeah-yeah, I know, the kids should be taking in the scenery along with you. But the fact is their minds can only take so much scenery. And since they’re strapped in and barely able to shift positions, you need to give them something to keep them occupied when they lose interest in their summer reading material. 

• Know that once you stop the car after driving a bit, the kids are going to need to run around and blow off steam before settling down.

• Take tons of photos that include both family and scenery/attractions.

• Have each kid bring his/her own pillow with a brightly colored pillow case (to distinquish it from white hotel pillows.) Hotel pillows I’ve found are generally too firm for kids.

• Bring a bottle(s) of wine (and a corkscrew) for the hotel/motel/cabin: nothing like being able to unwind once the kids have settled down.

Next time you’re thinking about that far-from-home beach/resort vacation, consider a close-to-home, Exploration-cation. Mind you, they are not without their rough spots including cranky kids, getting lost and nasty restrooms. But the experiences and memories are worth it all.

Love Your Home (but Go Away every so often,)
Sue