Category Archives: Vacation

I Have Too Many Vacation Days, So I’m Taking A Blogging Vacation

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Oh No, I’m Losing Vacation Hours, Aughhhh!

I have too many vacation days accumulated!  I bet you’re thinking, “What is his problem?  Too many vacation days???”

Unfortunately, were I work once we accumulate over 200 hours, we don’t accumulate any more vacation hours.  So additional hours accumulated would be lost!  That’s like throwing away money, and I’m way, WAY to frugal to throw away money!

So I decided that instead of juggling days off, taking a day or two every other week, I would take two full weeks all at once.  That will definitely tide me over until the end of the year!

Taking A Blogging Vacation

Yep, that’s right!  I’m going to take my old black laptop and blog while I’m on vacation, at least when I can.  Oh sure, the family doesn’t realize this yet, but if I’m quick about it, I should be able to do my blogging during the down times between our adventures that we will be having on vacation.

I’m going to be taking advantage of my son’s camera feature on his iPod touch, I hope he doesn’t mind (lol, like he has a choice)!

I’m sure in some ways I’ll play the role of a journalist checking out a new unexplored territory!  A win for me will be the fact that I now have an excuse to take lots of pictures!

Bringing Out My Inner Tech Nerd!

I’m going to be taking a few tech books I borrowed from the library and even reading some books online at the safaribooksonline website!

Hopefully, I’ll improve my blog site a bit more than I have in the past.  We’ll see…

Cheers,

MR

Swimming With Dolphins On Vacation

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Both of my kids love dolphins!

dolphin

Awesome Dolphins

So this year my wife found a package were the family can “swim with dolphins” and the go to Sea World the next day during our Florida vacation.  Needless to say, this package is expensive.

Since both of my kids are still relatively young, a requirement in the deal was that at least 1 adult had to also swim with the dolphins too.  After a talk, my wife said she would like to do it, so we agreed that she was definitely going to be the one to swim with the dolphins too.

Because of the high cost, I chose not to do the “swim with the dolphins” activity.  While I like dolphins too, but by not going I will shave an additional $150 off of the price for the experience.  Obviously, the decision was purely financial in nature, but I have to wonder, is this one of those missed opportunities in life that I will regret later because I’m being too frugal?

After a few weeks of thinking about it, I hate to say it but I’m sure that this is one of those experience that I will miss in life because I’m trying to save a buck.  I would now like to reconsider and update the experience so that I too could swim with the dolphins, but the event needs to be scheduled because they only have so many people swim with the dolphins per day.  So even though I changed my mind, I doubt that I will be able to upgrade my time there to include the “swimming with dolphins” element too (I still get to snorkel though).

I don’t see us doing this again in the future, so I’m afraid that I just lost out on a wonderful experience for $150 extra…

What would have you have done?  I’m sure I’ll still have a great time either way…  Later, after my vacation, I will have a follow up post on this experience from my wife and kid’s perspective.

Bests,

MR

 

 

Relaxing But Fun Things To Do On Hilton Head Island

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I decided to review some of my favorite relaxing activities about Hilton Head Island that I’ve enjoyed from my past few vacation.

Hilton Head Island

Hilton Head Island looks like a shoe!

Fun Things To Do On Hilton Head Island

  • Biking – Hilton Head Island is perfect for renting a bike and going biking since its an Island and therefore very flat!  The Island is literally filled with biking paths everywhere!  You can ride for miles and it seems that you never run out of energy.  Even the heat doesn’t both you while you are riding because of the low intensity workout.
  • Family Beaches – Not near as touristy as Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head’s beaches are basically family beaches.  This is a great place to take young kids to explore the beach without the craziness of college age kids running amok.
  • Golfing – This Island is a golfer’s paradise!  Some of the smaller, less know courses are very reasonably priced to boot!  Bring bottle of water while on the course!
  • Quaintness of the Shops and Businesses – I notice that many of the store and restaurants are operated by people who live on the Island.  This makes sense, but it seems more real and since many of the residents are from northern states that have moved down there, it feels like people are there because they want to be there.  I have a favorite cafe/ice cream shop where it has the feeling of a beach bum type of place.  It was cool to see the local residents interact with each other there.
  • Seafood Meal – I know this is going to sound odd, but I enjoy seafood more when I visit Hilton Head Island.  The food taste a little fresher and just seems more authentic overall.
  • Tours of the Area – We’ve taken a few tours and have found that they are entertaining and the guides witty and very funny.  It was cool hearing about the history and the famous or rich folks that live on the Island.  It’s a nice way to relax and learn a few things.
  • Kayaking Trips – This requires more effort than biking, but seeing the dolphins swim up along us during our kayaking route was exciting and just overall cool.
  • Staying at a Larger House – We stayed at a house that had 6 or 7 rooms last time, and to me the house was huge.  I started reading a book, played games with my family, lounged in the pool, walked the nearby beach, and did whatever I wanted.  Activities by the house were totally spur of the moment and unstructured!
  • Free Things Too – Just being there is a great fun time in itself as there are plenty of great free things to do at Hilton Head Island!  Last year while getting ice cream, we saw a performer do make and tricks with animals.  At another location there was a small, free concert going on.

My list of Fun things to do in Hilton Head Island is a relaxing one, but there are many other more water activities you can do too.  Fishing and crabbing is always fun.  Wave runners and the like are an adventure too, we’ve never rented these but you’ll see them out in the ocean often times.

We usually walk around Coligny Plaza and make a trip to Harbour Town, these are touristy locations but still interesting and fun.

I guess the stimulus for this article was that fact that I was Hilton Head Daydreaming again!

Hope you enjoy your vacations!

MR

Making The Most Of Three Day Weekends

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Fireworks

Fireworks

Next week, The 4th of July in the US falls on a Monday, and I’m excited because that means we’ll get a three-day weekend!

In the past, a three-day weekend was just another day to lounge around the house watching the same old TV shows.  I wasn’t a bad way to spend that extra day off, but now that we have kids, it just doesn’t quite cut it.

Today, we look forward to such occasions as special mini-vacations!  We now go to place like Niagara Falls in Canada, the city of Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, the city of Chicago for a stay over, and down to Columbus Ohio for a visit at the Columbus Zoo.  Sometimes we’ll even just pack up the car and spend the weekend at a family members house, just hanging.

It’s not an understatment when we say that we try to make the most of such three day weekends!  It’s only when we have an overlapping sports event or other such pre-existing event or meeting that we don’t take advantage of such weekends.

So what are we doing this particular 4th of July three day weekend?

Today (Saturday) we are going to go to a barbecue with my wife’s family and while we’re there, the kids are going to go swimming.  I usually take my swimming trunk too, because if there isn’t enough people in the pool, the old “Dad Sharky” has to come out of retirement and “try” to attack my ever quick kids.  Somehow they always manage to escape from the larger, faster “Dad Sharky“; they are so lucky (always…).

Sunday we have left open because of multiple thing happening, but it might be a day boating on the lake or going to a family (ad-hoc) reunion since my aunt from Boston, Massachusetts is going to be visiting (a rare occasion).  We already made plans to go with our friends with the boat, but we might go to the reunion if it starts to rain or something else unlikely…

On Monday we are going to take out the wave runners and shred up the lake.  Hopefully it’s not too busy and we’ll have the run of the lake, but it’s doubtful…  Still, it will be a good time…, then later we’re going to meeting some friends for our small, city’s fireworks display.  While the fireworks display isn’t as big as some neighboring cities, it’s still just fine for my kids (who see fireworks at least 4 or 5 times a year anyway).

Make sure you take advantage of your three day weekends and “Happy 4th of July” for US citizens.

Cheers,

MR