Is a Vacation a Waste of Money?

Happy New Year Everybody!  It was a snowy day in Cody on New Year's Day...although the above picture was taken a few days ago.  If you see the pine trees that look a little sickly, that would be the disease that has been killing pine trees up and down the North Fork, making it a tinderbox that caught fire and burned many acres this past summer.  We are planning on spending a few days of vacation at Shoshone Lodge this June, but before I started hoarding every extra cent we decided to drive up and make sure that the area around the lodge was not burnt to a crisp!  I was relieved to see that the area was just as beautiful as the last time that we stayed there, so the vacation is on!  

The nice thing about planning a vacation within 50 miles of where you live, is that you can put money into something other than gas.  Because if we had to drive a lot, we would only have the money to camp.  I love camping but as I am getting older, sleeping in a damp tent is not as thrilling as it used to be.  And with all the grizzly bears around here I get a little nervous every time I hear a twig crunch in the night.  I sleep better in a little cabin with a soft bed, and something harder than a tent wall between me and the grizzlies!

I think that vacations are important.  In our fast paced frantic culture, it is good for our health to slow down a little.  But since the economy is tanking...many of us are rethinking vacation plans.  We decided that instead of canceling our vacation we will stay close to home, saving gas money, and getting a cabin with a little stove and refrigerator so that we won't have to eat out.  And we won't go into debt for our vacation.  We have a little envelope, and every extra dollar that we can save by giving up something else...goes into the envelope.  How much we save will determine how many days we get to spend at the Lodge. 

I guess what I am trying to say is that memories are important too, and as Edith Schaeffer says must be put into the budget.  And sometimes the inexpensive vacations are the most fun!  A cold wintery day in January may be the best time to sit down and consider how you want to budget for your memories!  DLB