Backyard Family Vacations

I read an article in the Cleveland Times Dispatch about the effect of high gas prices on family vacations. It took me a few minutes to justify why my small family takes a vacation about every other year and what we learn from it. The author, Connie Schultz, recalled that her family didn’t take annual vacations, nor did she ever attend a summer camp. Hmm, I thought, when I was growing up my mother planned the annual summer vacation AND I attended some kind of summer camp every year until I was 12. We did a lot of “roughing it” style of camping (no RV, no camper, a tent w/ no air mattress and port your own potty) when I was younger all along the eastern seaboard, Appalachian and Smoky Mountains, and near the shores of Lake Michigan and Ontario. We never went to Florida’s Disney nor a resort, but we always managed a week together – it was bonding with nature and its elements.

Of course, I remember backyard campouts with the neighbor kids, I was one of 2 girls in the neighborhood, but that didn’t seem to matter much then. My dad built two swings, one round and one traditional, and hung them from the great limbs of the largest Weeping Willow on the street. The first sandbox I had was an old tractor tire filled with grainy sand and the occasional cat poop that was a child’s rite of passage to ALWAYS use a shovel! Sometime before I turned eight my dad built me a real wooden sandbox with corner seats – that was the best sandbox! 

For most of my childhood, we lived beside a bottomless stone quarry, which was always open for discovery. Tadpoles after the rain, flat, smooth stones for skipping, monster machines and dynamite blasts, and the occasional arrowhead – the most valued treasure of all. So yeah, I have fond memories of staying at home during the summer months, making box houses, digging in the sandbox, planting seeds in the garden, playing checkers and marbles with the boys, and catching lightning bugs in the evenings.

So, maybe backyard family vacations are the future for families to reconnect and create memorable moments without the expense, stress and hassle of planning, packing and complaining about long lines and people-filled places. I would rather spend my money on buying a trampoline, inflatable pool or pup tents and share it with the neighbor kids all summer long, than a week with a complacent teenager who complains of not having his Xbox within reach.