Staycation – Vacation Close To Home – Part 1

This Summer we decided to do a Staycation. I took the week off from my day-job but we did not want to have the expense of hotels and travel costs for a far off Vacation. We chose fun things to do close to home.

On Monday we started by bending the Staycation model a little. We drove to Idlewild in Pennsylvania. This is just a few hours from our home in Northern Ohio. We left at 6:30 AM and we got there a little before noon and stayed till they closed at 8:00 PM. Friends of ours who have also adopted two girls, went with us to Idlewild.

Idlewild is an awesome amusement park for younger children. Abby, our six-year-old, is 46 inches tall and Sarah, our three-year-old, is just 36 inches tall. Abby was tall enough to ride most of the rides by herself and Sarah could ride most if accompanied by an adult. Only two rides require the kids to be over 48 inches tall.

They also have Raccoon Lagoon which is especially for small children. Sarah was able to ride all the rides there by herself and she absolutely loved it! Abby and the friend’s girls with us also had a lot of fun in Raccoon Lagoon even though the rides were a little young for them.

After leaving Idlewild we drove two hours to West Virginia and stayed two nights with Linda’s aunt, Auntie Linda. We love hanging out with Auntie Linda and this saved us hotel costs for the two nights.

Auntie Linda owns a Cake Decorating business, “Cakes With A Personal Touch Plus.” Abby loves to watch them bake and decorate cakes. Sometimes she gets to help out a little. Then she talks about how she may start a cake business when she grows up.

We just hung out on Tuesday and had fun. We went to a park and played a little in the afternoon.

Auntie Linda had a friend over for dinner. We had a wonderful roast with potatoes and carrots. Then for desert we all went to Dairy Cream Corner and had lots of ice-cream.

The next day we drove 4.5 hours back home. We had borrowed my brother-in-law’s Garmin so that Linda could sleep on the trip without us getting lost. While it worked pretty well, Linda is a much better navigator. the rout the Garmin took us on probably took about 30 minutes longer than the way Linda is used to going.

Anyway, the extra time allowed us to almost finish Charlie and The Chocolate Factory on CD. We had borrowed it from the Library. I had never read the book. I was scared by the first part of the movie when I was a kid and never wanted to look at it again. But listening to it on CD helped me get into the story without being freaked out by the scary-clown-looking guy who plays Willy Wonka. I had never realized it was an allegory on raising children. Very interesting book and fun while we were in the car.

In Part 2 I will share what we did on Thursday and Friday of our Staycation.