Tips for Planning a Staycation
My husband is in his last year of dental school and life is pretty crazy at our house. Besides the financial burden of school, his schedule makes it really hard to plan any sort of vacation. We decided to stay local this year and have our own staycation. We planned for a few days around a holiday (to save days off) and spent our days discovering more to love about this desert we call home!
I was provided compensation in exchange for this post. Regardless, all opinions are entirely my own.
Who? Are you keeping this staycation to just your family or do you want to invite friends or family to join the fun?
What? What are you going to do with your time? Visit museums? See movies? Go on a hike? Eat delicious food? Find the hidden gems around you, take some time to explore!
Where? Decide where you want to stay. Are you going to stay home or go to a hotel or resort. This will actually set the tone for your whole vacation so chose what works best for you and your family!
As for us, we chose to stay at our house. Mostly because it saved us a little more money, but also because our kids are still little and keeping some familiarity is important! This gave us a little more leeway for our activities.
We used my GWIG app, which stands for “Go Where I Go”, to find some new places to have some fun! First on our list was a tasty treat for breakfast. I typed doughnuts into the app and it came up with a list of places for sweet treats. We had visited a few but some new names popped up so we tried K-May Doughnuts and Bagels. We were not disappointed! We used GWIG all week long to find new food and entertainment locations, including a park great for feeding ducks and new spots at one of our favorite lakes.
The way GWIG works is all word-of-mouth referrals. It works like a digital rolodex that you can share. When you are in a new vacation spot or town you can log in and search for favorited locations near by of other friends who use GWIG. No need to weed through a ton of weird reviews and ratings from an internet search. You can refer anything to friends asking from your favorite burger joint to the best dentist you have ever had.
GWIG also benefits business owners! By Subscribing to GWIG they can see who is referring their business and who is responding to these referrals. Overtime they can use this information to interact more with their greatest advertising tool, you! Word-of-mouth has always been the most reliable form of referral. No one tells their friends about a pediatrician who is just so so. This makes all GWIG referrals 5 stars! The best part, it is free! You can download it here for your iPhone and here for your Android.
We are all about a staycation! We find so many gems around here. It’s fun to play tourist! (we’re in L.A.)
We love doing staycations. It allows us the chance to see things in our area that we didn’t even know were there!
That’s such a cool app! I am all about staycationing where I live 🙂
Great tips! That looks like soo much fun. My family loves staycations.
This seems like a great app! I’ve never heard of it before. I’ll have to check it out.
Staycations are so much fun!! I’ll have to check out this app! Thanks for sharing!
We are picking up on doing more traveling. So this app would be perfect for us how cool.
That is an amazing app. I love the idea of staying in your town for a vacation. It’s actually much more relaxing! No hustle and bustle of packing and traveling with kids!
I love a good staycation. I normally don’t plan it- we fly by the seat of our pants.
Staycations are great for so many reasons. I like the way they help you to appreciate things close to home in a way you never did before.
An app that leads me to donuts?! Sold! Seriously though, staycations are great and you learn about a lot of neat places/shops you never knew existed.
That ducky shot is sooo cute. We tend to stay home sometimes too with three kids I get worn out after a couple of days away. There is also so much to do around here that the kids like.
Ohhh, this is great for discovering new places in our hometown! I love this idea!
Sounds like good advce for staycation. That ap looks interesting.
We’ve been wanting to plan a staycation! I’ll have to download this app and see what it gives me for our area. Thanks for the info.
I’ll have to try GWIG as we’re always looking for new places to try. We do staycations a lot more now since it’s less expensive.
That sounds like a great app! Sometimes staycations are a lot less stressful than going somewhere out of town!
I’m gonna have to see what that app can pull up around here. It sounds interesting!
That is great doing staycations right. I don’t even have time for staycations
I need to check this app out, thanks for the recommendation! I totally need a stay cation!
I have always resorted to Yelp and Foursquare. I will have to check this app out now.
Oh I love the idea of this app! We always want to try new restaurants and cafes when we are out but unless I’ve been recommended a place, I’m always scared to branch out!
I love staycations! Great ideas!
Super cool! I’m going to try this in Baltimore. It feels like we have done everything there is to do and run out of ideas when family comes to town.
What a cool app! I’ll have to check it out.
What a cool app! I’ll have to check it out.
What a cool app! I’ll have to check it out.
With all of the travel I do, this app would come in so handy. I will have to tell my travel friends!
That app sounds really beneficial for business owners as well as “goers”. I love the look of that doughnut!
I love doing staycations. I am a mommy of a 2 and a 3 yr old so my hands are full. I can only dream of a vacation!
I am off in the summer time, so I feel like every summer is a staycation for us. We are always on the go!