Five Fun Family Vacation Activities Your Kids Will Love

This is a post inspired by TwitterMoms. If you’d like to participate please see the following link: http://www.twittermoms.com/forum/topics/share-5-fun-family-vacation

It’s that time of year again, the flowers are blooming, school is almost out and everyone has one thing on their mind. Vacation!

Although my family is still young and we have no children in school, AND I don’t work myself, I have to admit that taking a vacation has been on my mind for months.  Being a stay-at-mom mom has it’s advantages for sure, but as far as I’m concerned it’s one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever had. Since my husband is only home on weekends it can be especially exhausting. I manage everything to do with the household, my son and our bills. On top of all of this another little family member will be joining us in a few months.  So you see, I need a vacation! because my life is about to get even more hectic lol.

When I think about vacations I think about my Grandparents, in particular my Grandma. I still remember her trying to teach me how to read a map about the age of 8. I had no idea at that time why I needed to know such things. My Grandparents and I traveled through a lot of the U.S. when I was young and seen a lot of things. The awesome thing was that even though we went to National Parks and monuments the things I remember most were the silly little things like Wal Drugs in South Dakota, or fishing at a state park while visiting my relatives in Memphis. Visiting the museum there and seeing the mummy of Ramses the II.

I am so grateful for those memories and I hope that one day I’ll be able to make memories like that with my own children.  So here I’d like to share 5 fun family vacation activities your kids and YOU will love, based upon my own experiences and

• Day Trips to Local Museums – You may not have the money or the time to take a vacation but weekend getaways or even day trips can be just as memorable and fun for you and your children.  In our area we have places such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, The Detroit Science Center, Cranbrook, The Henry Ford Museum and Village.  All of these places can be fun, entertaining and educational at the same time, while still being relatively cheap.  Imagine your kids when they see rocks from the moon or visit a planetarium for the first time. When they see the bones of a T-rex or check out one of the most famous paintings in the world. They’ll carry those memories the rest of their life, even if it wasn’t technically a “vacation”.

• Discover a New Beach – Here in Michigan we are lucky to be surrounded by the Great Lakes. Along several roadways you can find small towns and villages with cabins, small motels, fishing, boating, kayaking, canoeing, and tons of other activites and sites. For many years now my husband and I simply jump in our car on the weekend and drive. We stop by many road side parks and just take in the view. We eat at a local diner, we walk on the pier and sometimes we have a picnic.  Sometimes we stay overnight in a little motel for a night and get started early the next morning.  We have visited the town my grandfather grew up in, found the local cemetery and tried to find my distant relatives there and we have driven back roads and just dreamed of someday living on a farm.  All of it positive memories.

• Camping – This is one thing I never did with my grandparents, as they owned a big trailer sort of like an RV that we used to sleep in. However, you still park at campgrounds and when you’re a kid it’s exciting. There are always other kids running around and tons of friends to be made. When I was a little older I did however go up north near Lake Superior with my parents and we stayed in a little cabin in the woods. It was one of the only family vacations we ever really took and it’s still with me to this day. It’s always fun to fish, boat, and just walk in the woods and discover new types of tree’s or flowers. Nature is an endless source of entertainment and one that can be very cheap.  Many years later when my ex-boyfriend and I went camping in the Smokies we were only in our twenties and were able to afford it. Most of the time you can camp for around $11 a night. How can you argue with that?

• Off The Beaten Path – If you’ve ever taken road trips with your family when you were a kid then you probably remember seeing signs for such things as “Mystery Spot” or “Bison Farm” or maybe even something like “World’s biggest ball of yarn”. Who knows lol. All you remember is how much you wanted to go there, right!  I remember always begging and pleading to stop at every little weird sign I seen. Once I was an adult and did a little road tripping myself I was able to do those things and I can tell you, as a kid I would have loved it!  My Grandparents did like to stop at some of those things so I have a lot of fond memories, along with ones I made on my own when I traveled by car from Michigan to California.  Little shops near the painted dessert and petrified forest where you could pick out your own pieces of petrified wood (which reminds me, where is my piece of petrified wood?) and the world’s 2nd largest meteor crater. Point is, take a risk and you may just discover something really memorable.

• Eye-Spy  & Ad-Libs– Who doesn’t remember these games? I played eye-spy tons of times with my grandparents and friends that were riding along with us. We’d incorporate the license plate game into it and would have something to keep us busy our whole road trip. It may seem silly to some parents but for kids it’s fun and entertaining.  Ad Libs is another fun and really educational game for you and your kids to play. You’ll brush up on your adverbs, nouns and adjectives while helping keep their brain active over the summer. 

In Summary

You’ll probably be asked 1000 times “Are we there yet?” Just take a deep breath and remember what it was like to be a kid yourself. Now, go have fun and be silly. Your kids will thank you for it later.

  Disclaimer: I wrote this blog post while participating in the Williamsburg Tourism and TwitterMoms blogging program for a chance to get a $50 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.”