One staycation idea that has had quite a bit of popularity is to enhance your local vacation experience by staying at a local hotel. In fact, I’ve mentioned before how hotels are providing discounts and coupons for local residents.

Now, I am a professional piot. As a professional pilot, I have stayed in A LOT of hotels. After a while, they all start to look the same. Same beds, same food and same pool. So when I get a break from professional traveling, and get to travel for fun, the last thing I want to do is go stay at just another boring hotel.

So why not trying stay at a bed and breakfast?

I remember when I was young, one of my most memorable vacations was staying at a Amish Bed and Breakfast in Berlin, Ohio. As a kid, I enjoyed the fact that it felt like you were visiting a long lost relative’s home. I loved meeting and talking to the owner’s of the house and also the other guests. It is a much warmer, friendly environment than a hotel chain.

Find a local Bed and Breakfast.

A great tool for finding a local Bed and Breakfast is to go to Bed and Breakfast.com. You can enter a destination, enter a date and do a search. You can also purchase Bed and Breakfast gift cards, what a great gift idea!

Here’s a good example of a recent local bed and breakfast staycation search. I’m in Indianapolis, Indiana on a business trip and did a search for a local Bed and Breakfast. I discovered the Wheeler House Bed and Breakfast. Located only 20 minutes south of Indianapolis,IN and 40 minutes north of Bloomington’s Indiana University. The Wheeler House is the boyhood home of well know Indiana Empressionist Artist, Clifton Wheeler. Thought to be his first mural, is panoramic view of the Mooresville countryside in the late1800’s/ early 1900’s. Other aminities in this restored 1895 Victorian Home are a Tea Room, Book Store, and Antique Store. All three B&B rooms are decorated with antiques, antique furniture, and collectibles. they each feature private baths and inroom movies. Included with your stay is a 50% dicount at the Silver Owl Teriputic Massage located on property. Massage services are also available in room at no extra charge. For your shopping pleasure, four other Antique Stores are only 2 blocks away.

See how easy that was? Find a local Bed and Breakfast near you for your staycation today!

When my wife and I go on vacation usually we have much different ideas about what makes a great vacation. On my ideal vacation, we do as much as physically and humanely possible in a single day. We visit every site, every attraction and take in as much as possible of our new location. My wife’s ideal vacation? Sit by the beach and read.

Although we won’t be able to sit by beach and read this summer, we will be able to sit in our backyard and read while on our staycation. I actually just finished a book by John Grisham and I highly recommend it, it was The Innocent Man and unlike a lot of the books by Grisham, this one was non-fiction!

The kids are out of school, you have a week of vacation and a gallon of gas costs $4.10. So what are you to do? What are some good staycation and activities for kids?

Here are some ideas my wife and I came up with (these ideas where also subsidized from Berlin’s Whimsey Blog)

• Picnic in the Park
• Go on a Bikeride
• Call your local movie theater, many of them do free movies for children in the mornings
• Visit your local children’s museums
• Go canoeing
• Public Water Play areas / parks (free!)
• Put on a carnival. We just went to a birthday party for our nephew, where his parents made the events out of everyday items and scrap wood from the garage.
• Minature Golf in the evenings
• Backyard Camping
• Play Mad Scientist with vinegar, food coloring, baking soda and other safe kitchen ingredients

I’d love to hear some more of your ideas. If you are looking for more great staycation ideas for kids I’d encourage you to visit…

• 40 Free Boredom Breakers for Kids on Summer Vacation
• Berlin’s Whimsy: Staycation Kids Summer Ideas & Activities…

Enjoy your summer staycation with the kids!

Because this is the internet’s only dedicated staycation site, I am constantly on the search for websites that offer staycation idea for local residents. Today’s find is the online newspaper, Prescott eNews.com, which is offering staycation ideas for residents of Prescott, Arizona. Some of their ideas are:

• Visiting “tourist” attractions like Sharlot Hall and Smoki Museum
• Local Hiking Trails
• Book a hotel room at Vendome Hotel or Hassayampa Inn
• Tickets for the Arizona Revue
• Stopping by the World’s Oldest Rodeo

Some pretty good ideas for residents and for those lucky vacationers this summer with Prescott on your itinerary. Here is the orginial link for some more information:

Prescott eNews - Introducing StayCation Destinations

As the term staycation is growing in popularity, I am noticing a increasing trend of local websites promoting and encouraging residents to have a staycation by providing ideas and coupons for things to to in the local area. Take for instance the site, huntsville.org which has developed an entire page to a local staycation at: http://www.huntsville.org/stay

This page is chock full of staycation ideas in Huntsville, Alabama and the surrounding areas. They even have a contest for a $1,000 staycation gift package. To enter this contest, all you have to do is provide a local hotel receipt from within the county. Another great feature of the site is “stay-cation coupons”. Here is an example of a staycation coupon from the website:

I think this is a great example of a community embracing and encouraging it’s residents to participate in a staycation this summer.

If you know of other great local websites that encourage staycations from it’s residents, feel free to share by using the contact form.

You heard it hear first folks, a “fitcation.” It is my term used to describe the idea of using your staycation as a means to focus and improve your fitness. Now I have to admit, this staycation idea was inspired by a post from the Fit Chicks Rule blog: Take a Fitness STAYcation this Summer!

The basic idea is to capitalize and focus some downtime on your health and fitness. Some specific fitness ideas that you can do close to home:

• Explore your local bike trails
• Take a extended hike at a local state or national park
• Go canoeing or kayaking on some local rivers and lakes
• Sign up for some local 5k or 10k races. Can’t run? Find races that allow you to walk.
• Organize your own neighborhood Olympics. Meet at a school track and have competitions in various categories (I actually did this one a few years ago…it was fun!)

If you have any other “fitcation” ideas be sure to share them. The only requirement is that it be 1) Fun and 2) Healthy.

Have a fit staycation!

The term “staycation” and “high gas prices” are usually mentioned in the same breath, so it is only fitting that the internet’s only website dedicated to giving you staycation ideas is also wanting to help you save money when you do have to travel. Even on a staycaion, you might find yourself traveling a bit locally, so it only makes sense to find ways to improve your car’s efficiency and save some money.

First, it is important to be educated about how fuel efficiency works and the factors that can raise or lower your car’s MPG. My friend Shane has created a website to help with understanding how your car’s speed affects it’s efficiency. I’d encourage you to visit:

• MPG for Speed.com - features a fuel saving’s calculator used to calculate the effects of speed on your mileage

Once you calculate just how much fuel you are wasting by speeding we can work on trying to increase our MPG. I just saw a special segment on Good Morning America about hypermiling:

• Hypermiling.com - a method of increasing your car’s gas mileage by making changes to the way you drive (it really works)

Even if you hypermile, eventually you will run out of gas. So we need to find the cheapest price at the pump in town. Usually the local A.M. radio stations will tell you where to find cheap gas in town. But if you miss the announcement or want to find out on your own you can visit these sites:

• Gas Price Watch
• Gas Buddy

I’ve included links to these site on the right under Fuel Saving Sites.

Enjoy your fuel efficient staycation!

My neighbor’s son celebrated a birthday at his house this past Saturday. As I watched him and his friends drench themselves with water guns and water balloons, I thought to myself how fun it would be too make your own waterpark! My nearest waterpark is about 60 minutes away, cost $10 to park and admission is $27.99. I roughly figured that to take my wife and kids for a day could cost me at least $115 including admission, food and $4.00 a gasoline there and back.

I did a little search and found some great alternatives to spending a day at the waterpark…make your own. The nice thing about investing in a waterslide is being able to use it again and again. It can quickly pay itself off versus weekly trips to the waterpark. The other added benefit is being able to entertain your kid’s friends. Can you imagine the cost associated with taking your son and his 5 friends to the waterpark for the day? Outrageous!

Here are some nice slides available from Amazon.com (yes, they sell more than books and CD’s!)

Here’s a staycation idea.

I was on an extended business trip a few years ago and found myself in Orlando for a few weeks. During the first week we hit up all the usual bar-and-grill restaurants and began to grow tired of hamburgers & steak. One of my coworkers and I decided for the second week of our stay to have an international food week.  Each night of the week we would eat at a restaurant that had food from a different country or region. We had Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Thai and German! It was great. It was a good way to try some different restaurants we normally wouldn’t go to and provided a little variety for a otherwise boring trip.

So give it a shot at home! Go out and make a point to try some different cuisines in your neighborhood. Even better would be to pick a meal from a different region or country and cook it at home yourself. To help you get started cooking your own international meals I found a book on Amazon. It is entitled the The Best Recipes in the World. This is a book from legendary author Mark Bittman which is geared toward the home chef (perfect for me.)

Enjoy your international food week staycation!

I was watching T.V. tonight (which is rare) and I saw a commercial for the ESPN Golf Schools. This got me thinking. I never have any money to take golf lessons because I am always having to save for a summer vacation. Because this year I’ll be taking a staycation, I can take golf lessons at a local club with the money I saved by not taking my normal vacation.

I went to the ESPN Golf School website and was surprised to find that the prices were not completely out of reach. You can get a basic 3-Club Tour for $525. There are, of course, more expensive options but I’m trying to stay cheap. I also wanted to make sure this idea could qualify as a staycation idea, which means minimal travel. They have courses available in just about everywhere so you won’t have to travel far. You can go to the website to find more information.

You can also Save up to 40% off your next round of golf at over 200 golf courses!

FOUR!