Special Family Day Trips | Family Economics

By Cathe Holden

Although our family enjoys a few weeklong camping trips or vacations each summer, some of the most memorable outings we’ve experienced throughout the year have been simple day trips, usually within a 2-hour radius of our home. By starting our day with a hearty breakfast at home and pre-packing a cooler with our lunch, drinks and snacks, we have often enjoyed a wonderful family outing for only the cost of gas and parking. When well planned, a day trip can be quite easy and very fun with the benefit of sleeping in your own soft beds at the end of the day. I have observed that as an added bonus, day trips create a greater opportunity for bonding between our children, as they seem to get along best with each other in small doses, with minimal time riding together in the car.

Whether during vacation or holiday, or on a weekend, it’s often a surprise to us how many places we can visit in our area that have gone unnoticed, or how much fun we have at the ones we’ve always known about but had never taken the time to visit. A web search of your local Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau, or one from of a nearby city or town, can provide you with links to many tourist attractions and special events that are within close driving distance. Park services provide maps of trails and parks to explore. If you spend a bit more time searching online, you may also find event coupons and free passes, restaurant specials, and many other discounts that can make your day more fun than costly.

My family enjoys walking and hiking through wilderness parks. There’s one in particular with short, paved trails, so we bring along bicycles for our children to ride around together. My husband and I carry the lunches in on foot and we all meet up at the picnic area at a specified time. On other walking trails, it’s fun to play “who can find?” or host a fun scavenger hunt (where we find but don’t keep), while always keeping the kids in view. There’s nothing like a little competition to keep the day exciting. The prize for the winner is usually a special sweet treat that I packed in with our lunch.

A few fun ideas of places for day trips are:

• State and local parks
• Touring local farms and dairies, factories, and firehouses
• Car and Air shows
• County fairs
• Local festivals
• Amusement parks
• Museums
• The lake, river or ocean

Once we return home, we each journal the best parts of our outings in our family’s Top-Ten Notebook!