I had a great shot all planned for today, but now when I'm looking for it, I can't find it. But I have a back up photo for this one, so it's all good.
I live in Southern California, have so for all of my life. I don't do snow, so to think about a dream winter vacation is pretty much a stretch for me, unless you're thinking about somewhere tropical during the winter months.
As most people know, I love to travel. Natural wonders are my destination of choice. When the kids were little, I used to take them camping all of the time. We went to Joshua Tree, we went to Sequoia, we went to Yosemite, we went beach camping at San Simeon and Hearst Castle. You get the drift. We didn't camp in the winter time, because we were in a tent. Way too cold to be camping like that, although I know people who would do that too. Not me.
Now as I'm older, I have many destinations I still would like to see, but as far as a dream vacation be it winter or not? The only vacations I want to go on now are the ones where my love is at my side.
Go here to read other Dream Winter vacations.
My wife and I communicate pretty well I feel, but there was one area that we really didn't talk about a lot before we got married and that was how we would vacation. I grew up camping. My family went camping just about every summer. I have fond memories of the trips we took as kids to various national parks in the western United States and I wanted to impart that love of nature to our children.
Well, it wasn't until my wife and I were on our honeymoon that I found out that she didn't like to camp. Oops. But for us, it has worked out all right. When the kids were growing up, I'd take them camping and it was a lot of fun. I got to enjoy the kids just by myself, we got to do things that we enjoyed doing, and my wife got a little "me" time where she didn't have to think about cooking for anyone else except her. The nice thing about it is, even though we disagree on our vacation time, we've made this work for us.
The kids and I even started our own tradition where we'd take a photo of our campsite every where we camped. We've missed a couple of spots, either just because we forgot, or once because of a faulty camera, but for the most part, we have a photo for each campsite we've camped in over the years. This particular one is from Redwood National Park, taken when my youngest was entering high school.
Now that the kids are grown and pretty much out on their own, the camping has diminished. I have a couple of buddies who enjoy camping and we'll get out for a week or so in the summertime. That's all I really need to recharge my batteries. But I suspect that my vacation time in the next couple of years will slowly shift away from "campsite 124" alongside a stream to a little bit nicer site, like Room 124 in a high rise hotel where I can enjoy some time with my wife. And that's OK with me.
