Cheap Family Vacations

The real secret to cheap family vacations is to be opportunistic. When a friend offers you their cabin on the lake, say yes. Can you have as much fun at the cheaper, closer amusement park? Then that's where you need to be. Do the kids like the idea of cooking dinner over a campfire? Drive right on by that reastaurant. Find out what everyone really enjoys. It's sad to spend MORE on a trip for LESS enjoyment.

Examples Of Cheap Family Vacations

In Michigan, and many other places, you can find reasonable motels on the beach. Cheaper, and usually more scenic, are the numerous campgrounds on the beaches of Lakes Michigan, Superior, and Huron. You can find these in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and in Ontario, Canada. Below are a couple beach-based vacation ideas.

Treasure Hunting Vacations

Two metal detectors will cost less than a few nights with the family in a hotel. Why not camp near a ghost town or beach, and spend your days hiking, exploring, and hunting buried treasure? We always find interesting things when we take our metal detector to the beach. The kids will love the adventure, and when they get bored with digging up quarters, they have swimming nearby.

Beachcombing Vacations

This is cheap, and the whole family can enjoy it. You can find all sorts of things washed up on the beaches of the Great Lakes and the Oceans. In Michigan, we used to find bouys, parts of houses, and light bulbs. The light bulbs actually worked, a mystery solved years later when a sailor told me they throw them overboard for target practice. We were finding the ones that escaped the bullets.

We also found chunks of coal that had fallen off freighters. We burned them in the campfire. We found balloons with messages attached, sea shells, fossil rocks, odd-shaped driftwood, pieces of styrofoam big enough to use as rafts, and - you get the point.

Camping Vacations

If your family is willing to live in tents for a few days, or if you already own an RV, camping is the cheapest of cheap family vacations. We recently stayed at Williams Landing in Florida for eight days. We stalked alligators, watched armadillos walk through camp, saw a dozen other forms of wildlife, and sat around the fire trading stories with new friends from England and Texas every night. The cost, including the hot showers: zero. Woodall's catalog, available at any big RV dealer has listings of free campgrounds.

Other Cheap Family Vacations

How about a Montana testicle festival? Festival vacations can keep the whole family happy. You'll usually find carnival rides, music, events, contests, and more. By the way, Montana's testicle festivals are billed as family events, but good luck trying to get the kids to eat the "Rocky Mountain Oysters."

Boondocking is all about parking your recreational vehicle where you don't have to pay. If you aren't sure that kids will enjoy being in the middle of nowhere, find a ghost town or other treasure hunting locale. In Arizona, an old Mayan Indian showed us where to look for arrowheads, semi-precious stones, and ancient pottery. The desert is a great place to escape to in the winter, and treasure hunting is cheap vacation as well.

There are many more cheap family vacations, and many ways to keep any vacation cheaper. Stock the cooler with 25 cent pop instead of paying pop-machine prices. Keep the kids full on healthy snacks to avoid restaurants. Be an opportunistic vacationer.

Steve Gillman hit the road at sixteen, and traveled the U.S. and Mexico alone at 17. Now 40, he travels with his wife Ana, whom he met in Ecuador. For more cheap vacation ideas, and to read their stories, tips and travel information, visit: http://www.everythingabouttravel.com

house refresh service Arlington Heights ...

In The News:

Teens increasingly turn to AI companions for emotional support and advice, but experts warn of developmental risks and inadequate safety measure.

SEO is dead, and its replacements are here to stay. Here's how to stay visible as AI takes the internet in an unprecedented new direction.

Vancouver architects created a prefabricated off-grid retreat on Keats Island that was helicopter-installed in two days with solar panels and rainwater systems.

Chinese automaker BYD introduced the affordable Atto 1 EV at the Indonesia auto show, offering 75 horsepower and 236-mile range option to compete with gas-powered vehicles.

There has been a recent surge in "quishing" attacks, which are a form of phishing that uses QR codes instead of traditional methods like emails, text messages, and phone calls.

Unitree just dropped its latest creation, the R1 humanoid robot, and people are talking.

Google just announced a partnership with Italian firm Energy Dome to help store clean energy using carbon dioxide in an entirely new way.

Checking your drink for drugs no longer needs to feel like a science experiment. Scientists in South Korea have created a new solution, a temporary tattoo sticker that instantly detects tampering.

Dating safety app Tea suffered a breach of its own, compromising selfies, photo identification, and images from posts, comments, and direct messages within the app.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) have developed an ultra-thin traffic noise absorber that significantly reduces sound levels while occupying just a fraction of the space required by traditional materials.

Known as the Lib Earth House Model B, this single-story home was created using 3D-printing technology and a soil-based mixture instead of traditional concrete.

Google's apps, such as Chrome, Maps, Search, and YouTube, are constantly tracking your activity and sending it to Google.

If your Facebook account was disabled and you believe it was a mistake, follow these proven steps to improve your chances of getting it back quickly.

A new study reveals that AI models can secretly transmit subliminal traits to one another, even when the shared training data appears harmless.

Microsoft is moving toward a password-less future. As part of that shift, it no longer wants the Authenticator app to handle passwords or payment methods.

Halo, the world's thinnest open-source AI glasses, packs more intelligence and capability than any other smartglasses that have come before it.

A coordinated phishing campaign has breached sensitive patient data at several cancer care providers affiliated with a Tennessee-based network of oncology practices.

A recent survey asked 1,000 Americans just how deeply they connect with their pets. Some of the answers are sweet. Others? A little wild.

Microsoft released patches for a SharePoint zero-day bug after hackers compromised over 400 servers worldwide using weaponized exploit chain.

Facebook's parent company, Meta, removed millions of accounts and adopted stricter policies against unoriginal content to help authentic creators break through on the platform.

Scammers have created convincing fake TSA PreCheck sites to trick travelers into paying fees and sharing data, with first-time applicants never paying online being key protection.

A new iOS 18.6 iPhone update fixes a passcode exposure bug, address bar spoofing and multiple memory corruption issues in quick, free security patch.

Paralyzed woman Audrey Crews controls a computer with a brain chip from Elon Musk's Neuralink, demonstrating breakthrough brain-computer interface technology.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

Meta removed over 600,000 predatory accounts from Instagram and Facebook while launching enhanced safety protections for teenage users on both platforms.

Cheap Family Vacations

Vacation Rental