Rerun: Is it a trip or a vacation?
This week we have tips for how to survive and even enjoy the obli-cation.
A four-burner stove sat in the grass outside the house, just a few feet from the front door and I said a silent prayer of thanks that it wasn’t a toilet.
My sister, boyfriend, and I had gotten up before dawn and hurtled north on the stretch of I-95 between DC and New York, fueled by liters of coffee and the fervent hope we could beat the soul-crushing Christmas Eve traffic. We arrived hours before dinner to discover my parents’ kitchen reno was still very much underway, the water was off, and we couldn’t use the bathroom until it was back on. Did I mention the liters of coffee? Or that this was the first time I had brought the boyfriend home?
Not long after, the boyfriend-now-husband (😲) and I began differentiating between trips and vacations. Both are time spent away from home, but trips are travel with responsibility and a lot less control over the details—holidays, graduations, a work trip (even one to Paris), and most travel involving small children you parent. Trickier to distinguish are the trips impersonating vacations (see destination wedding, bachelor party, milestone birthday). If you’ve moved your daily responsibilities to a new location and/or you are on someone else’s agenda, whether it’s your boss or your bestie, that’s a trip.
Don’t get me wrong, trips can be loads of fun, rewarding, and relaxing. But vacation is travel fully dedicated to recharging, and the particulars and choices of how to do that are all yours to make. That unencumbered freedom is right there in the word; vacation comes from the Latin word vacatio and means to be unoccupied. A real vacation is a time to ditch the demands of everyday life, tend to your full self, and relish unstructured time and rest.
“Someone I know calls the family vacations she takes with her in-laws obli-cations,” my friend Michele, who works with me on The Sunday Stretch, wrote over email. This Bennifer-like mashup of obligation and vacation feels both harsh and spot-on.
Michele, who looks forward to the annual getaway she takes with her husband’s extended family, has some great tips for making these trips lean more towards vacation. It starts with your mindset:
None of us have complete autonomy over how it’s all going to go, how we will spend the time, what we will see, eat, or do, but in terms of creating life-long memories as a family unit, it’s awesome. Also, these trips in this form may not go on forever whether it’s because younger family members may eventually age out by getting “real” jobs with limited vacation days or for some other reason. Remembering that helps me stay in the moment and find deep gratitude that we can all be together in a new place for a few days.
More tactically speaking, Michele and the hubs also tack on a few extra days on either end to have time together doing what they want to do. Michele’s note inspired me to reach out to a few of my travel writer friends about how to upgrade trips so they feel a bit more vacation-ish. Here is their lightly-edited advice:
For all types of obli-cations
Freelance writer and photographer Nevin Martel:
I love combo trips, because an obligation, whether it’s for work, or for pleasure, will often get you to travel somewhere you might not otherwise go. Embrace these journeys as a way to break out of your routines, challenge your preconceptions, and mix life up a bit. Here’s how I maximize these two-sided excursions.
When the mandatory part of the trip is done, change accommodations. This creates a clean break between you and your traveling companions and, hopefully, any commitments that come along with them.
After all that we time, it’s time to celebrate the me time. Make reservations at a buzzy restaurant, check out an intriguing art exhibit, go on a scenic hike, hit the spa.
Plan ahead. Have at least a rough itinerary outlined, so you don’t spend your portion of the trip trying to figure out what to do. You should always build in flex time and allow yourself to deviate, but have a few experiences planned.
For Work-Related Trips
Erika Bolstad, a journalist and filmmaker in Portland, Ore. and the author of Windfall: The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her and The Windfall Dispatch newsletter:
Over the past four years, I've driven from Oregon to North Dakota six times for book research and to capture footage for a documentary. The trips can be really intense, with long days to take advantage of as much filming time as possible, interviews and research, and lots of driving.
It's tempting to keep working and working and working—and to feel guilty when I'm not working. That's a recipe for burnout. So I have always tried to do something that's not about the book research or filming, that's just for me. Often, I plan my trip around a stop somewhere in Montana on the way home to Oregon. Last year, I got tickets to Tippet Rise, an art installation on a ranch in south-central Montana. I planned my whole research trip around being able to stop there on the way home. It was something to look forward to after a long trip–kind of a reward. A reward that involved 13 miles of hiking to see all the art!
Austin Graff, one of the writers of The Washington Post’s By The Way DC Guide:
Reach out to your network. Make plans to grab dinner or coffee with a friend who lives at your destination. When I do this, my local friends introduce me to the city’s neighborhoods and restaurant scene.
Venture far for every meal. Often, restaurants near convention centers and downtown hotels don’t speak to a destination's local fare. Using Yelp, find a restaurant with a 4.5+ rating in a neighborhood and go!
Walk or take public transportation. You miss out on slow traveling when you Uber everywhere. When possible, walk or take public transportation to slow down and really take in a neighborhood.
For Family Trips
Cynthia Drake, a travel journalist based in Austin:
Of primary importance: Get your own means of transportation and preferably your own lodging. These two things will give you the freedom to spend some time doing what you love apart from the obligations you have.
We are pretty firm about making sure we have some just-us family time to head to the beach. Not all of us have the privilege, but if you have willing and able relatives who can keep an eye on your kids, obli-cations can include some free date nights, too.
Travel blogger Brea Ellis
Attend a local event. If you're short on time or vacation days and can't extend your stay, try attending a local event early in the morning or later in the evening that doesn't interfere with the timing of your obligation. A morning yoga class or farmers market visit, or a happy hour at a local bar can all give you the opportunity to hang out with locals and get a feel for a town, without staying any extra days.
Before you leave for your trip, you can also look up the geotag for your destination on Instagram and see what people are posting about. When I'm traveling to a place I've never been before I like to search for and follow a few bloggers that look like they attend a lot of events. They usually share what's hot around town.
What are your trip vs. vacation thoughts? Do you have obli-cation strategies we missed? Tell us about ‘em.
OOO mode activated,
Kelly
ICYMI👉
Here’s a Q&A we did with
about Windfall and how a family inheritance created a personal climate change conflict
Love these recommendations as I stand in line at the museum of flight in Seattle to visit my brother in law and his partner while my husband does an ultra trail run. Not my favorite type of vacation but we’re making lots of memories. We’ve got our own car, Airbnb, and agenda so taking advantage of free time as much as we can.