What's the longest vacation you have ever taken?
14Well, I finally did it. As of 7/14 (at 2315) I am officially retired (turned 69 on 7/9).
On the 15th at noon I flew to Europe for a month.
Trip included:
a few days in Amsterdam
a one week river cruise to Basel Switzerland
2 days in Beaune
1 day in St. Etienne
3 days in Sallanches/Chamonix
4 days outside and in Paris
2 days in Chartres
1 day near Amboise
3 days in Angers
2 days in Brussels
flight out of Amsterdam
Total time gone from the house was 30 days. (Which was really convenient since that is the limit for USPS holding your mail)
Saw a ‘metric-shit-ton’ of family and had a great time.
Europeans mostly all get an extensive amount of time off (the French view August as basically the month that everyone takes a vacation). Americans tend to work WAY too much.
What is the longest streak ‘on vacation’ you have ever scored?
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maybe a week
i’d loose my shit doing that. if i go away after about 3 days, i am ready to go home, even if there is stuff to do
@Cerridwyn
You remind me of the lottery winners that say they need to keep their jobs because they don’t know what they would do with all that free time… I am pretty sure I would manage to cope!
@chienfou oh I can cope with not going to work. I’ve been retired for over a year. But going away somewhere that isn’t my space is different
@Cerridwyn
Oh… I get it. I can see how that could be taxing.
As a kid a month every summer. Car camping all over the USA and Canada. As an adult no clue as I worked a lot of places that felt like being on vacation (tall ships, outdoor adventure instructor…) in a bunch of states and countries. Hmm do you count being unemployed as a vacation? On occasion I’ve had stretches of that.
@Kidsandliz
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if you spent time ‘enjoying’ those days then yes… I would consider that a ‘vacation’. Much like my vacation actually started after I ‘quit’ working.
(OTOH I am currently typing this on a work computer since I am doing some PRN work to help out and to restock the bank account for the next trip(s).
@chienfou Old habits die hard.
@chienfou Most of the time when working for outdoor adventure whether in this country or abroad it didn’t feel like work. Too many things we did were fun. I guess that would be the ideal job.
Longest was about 1 year but not totally vacation. “Escaped” from California in a new 34’ motorhome. My father had recently died so that made it possible because he was always super-worried about everything I did and this relieved a bit of that. My mother got that way too but not quite as bad most of the time.
Stuff sold off or in storage. Had friends manage rental of the house. Was figuring when we came back would move but not sure where to.
Getting TL;DR so don’t want to go on too long but might add more later. Winter in Colorado with Ski Pass to Monarch (one of the lower-cost ski areas but high altitude so great snow.) Did part-time work writing software for company (dial-up of course; what else was there?). Did a trip to get motorhome service to fix some 1st-year defects and drop by Houston for a few weeks of work with our customer there. Had Thanksgiving Dinner with our customer I’d worked with for years. Invited to his property which was a pecan orchard. It is nice when customers that you had long and sometimes confrontational relationships with can also be friends. [Nowhere more true than in Italy but that’s a later story]
Anyway after all that, cuttings things short but still too long, Florida including NASA and Disney places, Washington DC on 4th of July, Joined an RV organized trip for a month including Montreal, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. Baah Harbor Maine. Then Burlington Vermont where I got to meet with another previous customer that also was a friend. West to states that may or not exist like South Dakota. Still not sure if there is a North Dakota. Oh yeah the big stone portrait mountain with Tom Brady. (Oh wait he’s not there yet?). Relatives in Colorado and then back West to resume official work while I finished repositioning. Temporarily lived in Scotts Valley with address on Disc Drive which was former location of Seagate (some of you may know this). It is cool to have lived on Disc Drive for a while.
What is this vacation of which you speak?
@heartny After my TL;DR story I’d say I had a lot of years like that too. Sometimes it’s OK if you are in a good groove and happy going along with it. Other times when you need it, make it happen!
OK earlier story, honeymoon to Alaska in 1992. First a stealth marriage in Colorado where wife’s relatives were (not truly eloping but most people from CA work didn’t know; just thought I was on a long vacation)
Good ol’ Ford truck with Lance camper. A few days in Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. Wife dropped her wedding ring at a scenic viewpoint because she was putting on hand lotion. Stopped at Old Faithful. Didn’t know ring was missing till we were at a campground later. Set up truck to go again, drove back and there it was in a parking lot,
Alaska highway of 50th anniversary 1942-1992. A lot still gravel, then anyway. All the Alaska places. RV Camped on some beaches. Even the pipeline highway (aka Dalton Highway or “Haul Road”) which technically you were not allowed to drive on past a certain point unless you were a trucker but we did it anyway. Going over the Brooks range is something cool (northernmost mountain range). Saw some grizzly bears. Didn’t get all the way to Prudhoe Bay though, got nervous about not really being allowed there at the time. Stayed overnight at nice free turnouts. Sun did not go down – just below the hills a bit. I went to sleep and wife was reading a book and when I woke I asked if she was still reading and if it ever got dark enough to use a light and she said no, North of Arctic Circle is fun. No Northern lights though for same reason. Road through Yukon featured a place with a famous 2-seater outhouse. Return British Columbia with ferry trip Prince Rupert to Vancouver Island on the way. On Vancouver Island did some dirt road adventuring in camper, saw some more bears (not Grizzly there), camped by a remote lake. Eventually WA Mt Ranier and Mt St Helens, eventually had to go back to real life was CA at the time.
Damn, can’t believe we did all that.
Anyway those were the highlights.
Also wanted to add that a co-workers wife when we got back said it sounded like a “Honeymoon from Hell”
To @chienfou mostly, that sounds like an amazing trip but a lot of moving around. The cruise part sounds good though; I would like to do something like that. All those other cities are wonderful but I can’t imaging that much relocation.
When I had to do work in some places in France my wife would go with me and even though I had to work during most days, you got to explore and learn almost what it’s like to live in those areas. Sometimes 2 or 3 weeks at a time. Usually after a brief hotel stay she’d find short-term rental apartments like weekly furnished rentals. So we got to “live” in an apartment in Grenoble and one in Nantes for a brief time. Just short-term fantasy life but especially after doing some work ,which was not that bad, nice to feel going back to my “home” in the French city of the week. This type of travel didn’t happen all that much, and it was a while ago, but I enjoyed the experience a lot.
Also when mentioning RV travel on longer trips one of the best things was finding a nice place and staying there for a few days or a week and just exploring, or some days just hanging out and doing not much. We’d be in places with power and some would have cable TV and Internet which you needed back then. Or in some years had a satellite dish with me. A lot of hassle; glad those days seem in the past. But was great at the time.
It WAS a lot of relocation, but I hadn’t seen some of these cousins in many years. Several had been to the US when they were teens to spend the summer with us, and now as adults it was their pleasure to entertain us in their homes. That meant there were a lot of long dinners with lots of courses and bottles of wine!
Had a chance to rent an EV for the second part of the trip after Paris. Ended up with a Polestar which is made in Sweden, and was a blast to drive, though a learning curve on charging. Turns out there are several different charging station companies and each of them has their own app to interact with it and didn’t take credit cards at the chargers. Couldn’t download some of them onto my phone (since it wasn’t an EU phone), which was weird. Never really felt like I was at risk of being out of juice, but it was a bit frustrating. I’ll be renting an EV on Guadeloupe early next year so I’ll have a little better handle on what I need to be prepared this time.
@chienfou They were Volvo’s performance division that was spun off into its own brand but still under Geely’s corporate umbrella. The car is Swedish engineered, but the assembly line is in China.
Aging Wheels has one which he drives a lot:
@narfcake
my bad… should have said Swedish design…
Does summer vacation from school count as a kid?
I think two weeks is longest… usually around the holidays so I don’t have to use PTO for the entire time off. but I usually have to save up time off the whole year for that. Right now with the job I’m in, I don’t feel like I can take off more than two or three days at a time. I had originally taken off Tuesday next week and I ended up shortening it to a half day because there were so many meetings being put on that day I didn’t feel like I could be out. I’m not that “important” at work, but it’s a bit of FOMO and I’m a contractor rather than an FTE and I feel like I will be the first to go if something goes wrong.
A former employer had a great perk (they called it “Sabbatical”) - 8 weeks off in one chunk, with pay, every 7 years. I was there long enough to enjoy that twice.
For the first one, we spent the whole 8 weeks in New Zealand (I have family there). We left the US on New Years Eve, so enjoyed summer Down Under. We toured around both islands, using my sister’s place (in a nice small resort town on the North Island’s east coast) as base.
For the second one, we bought a (lightly) used RV and drove it around, leisurely exploring the northern US and into Canada. Nice, but we came back a couple weeks early and I started some repairs/remodeling of our house.
On the Saturday before I was to return to work (after 8 weeks off), I was doing some prep work on the roof (the roofer was coming on Monday) and I slipped and fell off. I busted up my left foot pretty badly, had surgery (metal plate and 5 screws holding my foot together - it’s still in there) and spent some time in the hospital recovering. So it was another couple of weeks before I could return to work and then could only last half a day or so before going home and re-upping on the meds. I was on crutches for 3 months, then 6 weeks of rehab. I still limp a bit, 31 years later.
@macromeh
not the preferred way to extend a vacation!
I took a year off between jobs because I needed to reset. I returning to work at probably the worst time. I decided in mid-February 2020 to start looking again, and about a week later the pandemic was declared. I eventually found a job and started in July. One year and one week after quitting my previous job.
@jo2y I’m quickly approaching 2 years off between jobs now… and need to up my job search game. And by “up my game” I mean I desperately need to actually do it, not just think or talk about doing it.
My son is WFH and one of the items he negotiated with the firm he works for now was extra vacation time (he was happy with the $$ compensation but wanted more time off)
Ended up getting them to agree to ‘unlimited’ time off, which translates to if you get your work accomplished the rest of the time is yours. He has taken several extended trips in the past 18 months and will frequently schedule a WFH day from wherever he happens to be… here, Scotland, Seattle etc. It works well fro him. OTOH he has been on work related road trips to AK, CA and TX recently so there is that as well.
@chienfou That’s absolutely not how “unlimited PTO” worked at my last job… but I’m glad that it’s working out for someone. I mean, officially it was supposed to be that way, but realistically it was “unlimited guilt for PTO” instead. Give or take. Probably depends a lot on employee assertiveness, mental health, and numerous other factors.
@xobzoo
My son is pretty confident so he doesn’t have much trouble with guilt. He knows he is doing his part and then some so feels fine about the time he takes.
I think it’s pretty healthy.
Of course most of his time is in shorter blocks than a month…
The one I’m on right now. I left home: Montgomery, AL on April 22. I expected to be home in July, maybe early August. I think I’ll make it home in two weeks.
). Now it’s time to go home.
Montgomery->California->Oregon->Idaho->Oregon->California->Oregon->Idaho->Oregon, so far. I leave for Idaho Friday. Then I’m supposed to leave for Montgomery Monday. It’s about 5 days to Montgomery driving by myself. The extra Oregon California Oregon bounce was to finish projects that an early arriving granddaughter cut short. My van gets 30+mpg so it hasn’t been as expensive as I thought it would be. That was the last bounce back to Oregon from Idaho was because my van started acting weird so hubby had me come back to Oregon to get it repaired. I have a better support network here instead of Idaho. It ended up being an easy fix here and daughter got to play chauffer (plus I got extra baby time
I got to see the Grand Canyon, the dams on the Columbia River, spent 6 weeks adventuring with my 9 year old grandson, got to annoy two of my daughters (LoL), met some amazing people and may be moving back to Oregon for good.
@sarahsandroid
Sounds fantastic! Welcome back to the sunny South. We are FINALLY getting some rain today (30 miles from MGM).
Two weeks. I’ve taken several two-week road trips all over the US and Canada. I developed my road trip habit taking one-week trips.
I’ve gotten to the point where it’s all about the driving, with stops along the way. I drove to Alaska to get my fiftieth state. The next year I finished Canada (well, the provinces; I still haven’t been to NWT or Nunavut, but Inuvik is calling me, and I see they’ve finished a road to the Arctic Ocean).
Growing up in Europe, pretty much a standard vacation was two weeks… We might spend a week staying with relatives in Germany or Hungary to cut costs a little and then go exploring elsewhere for a week. In Europe it’s looked on a little strange if you take just a week off or less to go anywhere, as in “what’s the point”…
As an adult living in the US, I would take two weeks off for each of the kids birth… But I wouldnt really call that vacation.
I think in the last 25 years I’ve probably taken a week off twice, maybe three times. Most of my PTO is eaten up doing stuff for the kids or my wife … not actually taking time off.
In 1976, I emptied my bank account and set off on an exploration of the mountains in Utah and Colorado. I came home broke 8 weeks later. It was amazing.
@werehatrack
I bet it’s the vacation you always remember and you had the time of your life.