Do you take mini-trips?

Ronni

The motormouth ;)
Location
Nashville TN
I have always loved short little getaways...a w/e here, a long weekend there...just to get out of town, travel to see friends, travel WITH friends to some specific destination. Since Ron and I have been together we've done a lot of these because wonder of wonders, he loves to do the same!! As I've gotten older it's been harder to get friends to do this with me, so I'm especially grateful that Ron enjoys these kinds of getaways.

We stay at Airbnbs when we go places, if there's no relative or friend we can stay with. We live in Nashville. We've driven to Huntsville AL to visit some of my extended family, to Sevierville (in the hills of the Smokey Mountains) for a couple days to visit with some of his (they were camping there,) to Atlanta to stay with friends and kayak the white water on the Broad River, and a "staycation" type deal too, where we stayed in Nashville, but stayed at an airbnb just outside of town for a change of pace. A couple longer trips too...to The Florida Keys, and to Upstate NY where he's originally from.

We're heading out again this w/e back to the Smokey Mountains, to Gatlinburg and Dollywood. He has more family who are visiting the resort, so we rented a cabin with his daughters, and we'll all stay there for a couple days and visit with everyone. I'm pretty tired of theme parks, I got to Disneyland AND Disnewworld at least once a year, on vacations with my kids (free kid watching for them lol!!) so I'm pretty over theme parks. But everyone else is going, so we'll go, and maybe bug out after half a day, head back to the cabin and sit in the hot tub and drink some wine. ;)

What about you all? Do you like mini trips?
 

My trips must be considered micro!

I like to take day trips, I call them my twenty dollar vacations.

I usually have a destination in mind, stop at a few antique shops, have lunch and see what is happening in the world beyond my cozy little rut.

That's about all the excitement I can stand!
 

The last man mini trip I took was to New Bern and Morehead NC.
We knew there was a hurricane coming but who knew it would hit those two towns so hard.
Glad I went. They are still struggling.
 
We take a couple of days off, every month, and go to the city to visit the kids and casino's. It gives us a nice break from the "routine", and over a years time, it gives us about 25 days of "vacation" for about the same cost as taking a 4 or 5 day "cruise". Most years...sometime during the Winter months...we also hop a flight on SW Airlines, on one of their "gotta get away" fares, and cash in a couple of free nights in Las Vegas.
 
No kind of trips anymore for us. Need to save money, and continue to get things ready, for our move, hopefully next year in May.
 
We take quite a few mini-trips in the car. If I could convince my DH to interrupt his comfortable home routine we'd take more, LOL. It is an issue leaving the house unattended - big city casual crime, even with an alarm system you can't help worrying a bit - which is gradually pushing us to start investigating senior living facilities for ourselves and get out of this SFH.

Since we live in Northern CA there is no end of places to visit. We have fallen into a "rut" of sorts, however; so my goal is to start adding new destinations before traveling becomes too tiring for us.

Currently we travel 3-5 days midweek, alternating between Napa Valley, Sonoma County, and the Monterey/Carmel area. We travel to Mendocino County only every couple of years. My brother lives in Southern CA so we have recently been trying to work in a visit to him every couple of years or so.

Like us my brother is a foodie so it's a whirlwind of great food whenever we get together. The Nepalese, Lebanese, and Korean meals were fabulous; much better than we get up here altho ours is pretty good by most standards. But since he and his wife are still working, we try not to take up too much of their time, so 3-4 days there - we stay in a hotel - are the max.

Of the places we go to regularly we love Sonoma County the most. It's very large and still full of small farms, so the locavore and farm-to-table movements are very strong there. There are many excellent restaurants. Unlike Napa and Monterey counties, we have to split Sonoma up into parts or it's too much driving for a mini-trip. If you take back roads - the scenery is magnificent - it can take more than two hours to get from one town to another. More like three or four if you include some coastal highway driving!

I'm always amazed that one can be 30 minutes from a major commuter freeway and big noisy city, but you'll feel as if you're a hundred miles away, driving on winding backroads with hardly another car on it.

Since I'm usually driving, LOL, I have no landscape photos of this area. I sneaked one off the web - this is Green Strings Farm in Petaluma, CA, taken from one of those backroads. It was taken by photographer Scott Hess. Judging from the fields and vineyards, it's a late spring photo, as the hills are starting to dry up but the wild mustard hasn't started blooming in the vineyards yet.
x11.jpg
 
I love mini trips. As a kid we did a lot of those. My Mom Packed a picnic lunch and along with my Grandma and Grandpa we took side roads without any destination in mind. If we found a stream we would stop and the kids in the family would play in the water for awhile. Sometimes we found some old apple or pear orchards that must have been part of a farm years before.

We would pick up the fallen fruit and my Grandma would be busy for days making all sorts of things from them before they rotted.

The hubby loves to travel but needs exact directions, and a destination. No side roads for him.
 
I wish we did do more mini trips. There are so many great places to go and stay over night and we always seem to talk about it but never go. It’s usually friends that invite us places that gets us out of our ‘comfort zone.’
It’s so nice seeing elderly couples still going places and being adventurous. It seems like the older I get the more I want to travel but there’s so much to do at home that we never do. Our big adventures are to the parents house and back but I’ll still keep on dreaming.

I’m going to plan a trip someday.
Great question.
 
One thing that has made mini trips very affordable for us is being able to stay in Airbnbs wherever we go. It's not just less cost for the accommodations, it also means savings on food. We always choose places that have some kind of kitchen, even if it's more of a kitchenette. We don't need much...a pot and a frypan, a stove top, a couple plates, bowls and flatware, and of course the usual coffeepot and microwave. We make simple meals and save a bucketful on eating out!
 
I love short trips on day two, only if it's trips to nature. It seems to me too little to spend the weekend in another city, I get very tired of the time spent in the car or train, so after such a weekend I'm too exhausted. Another thing is hiking or camping. I love camping, although we haven't gone hiking for a long time. This year I want to organize a family trip and go hiking for 4 days in the reserve, which isn't far from our hometown. Since we have not been on a camping trip for a long time, we have little left of the necessary equipment. I found only a tent for 6 people in two rooms. I think that we need to buy sleeping bags and a mini kitchen for camping, we cann't eat only marshmallows or toast for 4 days. I found an article on this portal https://wildproofgear.com/ with reviews of various sleeping bags no more than $ 100. But I don't know which sleeping bag to choose. We will go to the campsite in August, it must be hot, but I want to choose a warm sleeping bag, it's much softer than usual. Will I be too hot in it?
 
I have always loved short little getaways...a w/e here, a long weekend there...just to get out of town, travel to see friends, travel WITH friends to some specific destination. Since Ron and I have been together we've done a lot of these because wonder of wonders, he loves to do the same!! As I've gotten older it's been harder to get friends to do this with me, so I'm especially grateful that Ron enjoys these kinds of getaways.

We stay at Airbnbs when we go places, if there's no relative or friend we can stay with. We live in Nashville. We've driven to Huntsville AL to visit some of my extended family, to Sevierville (in the hills of the Smokey Mountains) for a couple days to visit with some of his (they were camping there,) to Atlanta to stay with friends and kayak the white water on the Broad River, and a "staycation" type deal too, where we stayed in Nashville, but stayed at an airbnb just outside of town for a change of pace. A couple longer trips too...to The Florida Keys, and to Upstate NY where he's originally from.

We're heading out again this w/e back to the Smokey Mountains, to Gatlinburg and Dollywood. He has more family who are visiting the resort, so we rented a cabin with his daughters, and we'll all stay there for a couple days and visit with everyone. I'm pretty tired of theme parks, I got to Disneyland AND Disnewworld at least once a year, on vacations with my kids (free kid watching for them lol!!) so I'm pretty over theme parks. But everyone else is going, so we'll go, and maybe bug out after half a day, head back to the cabin and sit in the hot tub and drink some wine. ;)

What about you all? Do you like mini trips?


I really enjoy that Part of Tennessee. We have been to Nashville and east of it maybe 5 or 6 times since I retired. Last year while in Nashville, we drove over to Hendersonville to see Johnny Cash’s home and I have several pictures of that area, which I will post later. (I don’t have access to them on my iPad.)

We always preplan the trip so that we can get tickets to the Opry and get favorable seating. We did the backstage tour one time and Ronnie Milsap had just finished rehearsal for the night’s performance at the old Ryman Auditorium. He invited our group to stay and listen to the three songs on playback that they had rehearsed. What a thrill for an old country music fan. Cameras were not allowed for the backstage tour.

I wanted to add that we think the part of Tennessee in the Smokey’s is some of the most beautiful areas here in the U.S. There are many beautiful areas here in the U.S., but when going into the mountains in that area and then maybe taking a back road here and there, you can see some scenes of early Americana. Funny, when we take that trip into the “hills,” I can almost hear the song “Dueling Banjos” from the movie “Deliverance” being played. Once, I even started to hum it and my wife told me to knock it off.
 
I love short trips on day two, only if it's trips to nature. It seems to me too little to spend the weekend in another city, I get very tired of the time spent in the car or train, so after such a weekend I'm too exhausted. Another thing is hiking or camping. I love camping, although we haven't gone hiking for a long time. This year I want to organize a family trip and go hiking for 4 days in the reserve, which isn't far from our hometown. Since we have not been on a camping trip for a long time, we have little left of the necessary equipment. I found only a tent for 6 people in two rooms. I think that we need to buy sleeping bags and a mini kitchen for camping, we cann't eat only marshmallows or toast for 4 days. I found an article on this portal https://wildproofgear.com/ with reviews of various sleeping bags no more than $ 100. But I don't know which sleeping bag to choose. We will go to the campsite in August, it must be hot, but I want to choose a warm sleeping bag, it's much softer than usual. Will I be too hot in it?

Maybe you can try renting a tent and Coleman stove. Someone expert on sleeping bags and weather should guide you on this... we don't know where you are or where you'll be going.

I used to love to camp when I was married.
 
Johnny Cash's Home. There is a very large pond in the back. (If my memory serves me right.) I believe that Barry Gibb bought this home.

Johnny Cash's Home.jpg
 
I take at least one, sometimes two, every night to the bathroom to pee.

I usually schedule similar trips, Trade. The best thing is that it takes so little preparation or equipment. On the down side, the view is always the same. On the upside, when the seat's down, we have a nice forest green seat cover that has a nature like look to it.
 


Back
Top