Opinion | Meagan Francis: Instagram travel bragging is killing the family vacation. - NBCNewsTHINK
I was puzzled. The previous month I’d seen photos on this same acquaintance’s Instagram feed of a road trip to visit family in a neighboring state, and just days earlier a weekend excursion to tour museums and a zoo a few hours away.Then I realized that road trips and weekend outings were not what she meant by “getting away” on a “vacation.” No, she meant Vacation with a capital V — somewhere exotic or tropical or at least too far to drive to.
But is a passport required to have an enriching experience? Don’t long weekends, road trips and simple getaways to the beach still count as vacation? I’d argue that they do — and that this focus on “big” experiences can add stress, expectations and a sense of dissatisfaction to something that’s supposed to be a relaxing, enjoyable way to decompress.
There’s no doubt that travel trends have changed since I was a kid in the 1980s. While renting a cabin at the lake for a week was considered the height of recreation for most middle-class families back then, a report from the data and analytics company GlobalData states that thewill grow from 300 million trips in 2017 to 376 million in 2022.
And if all that keeping-up-with-the-vacationing-Joneses wasn’t exhausting enough, it’s made worse by the fact that we don’t necessarily have the means to actually TAKE the trips we covet — unless we put them on credit, of course.last year. Of the nearly 1,200 parents surveyed, 71 percent of the parents of children under 18 who planned to take a summer vacation anticipated putting at least part of their vacation expenses — about half, or an average of $1,019 — on a credit card.
I spent my childhood in Michigan traveling the old-fashioned middle-class way: road trips to see family, scenic drives around the Great Lakes, camping in the woods or staying in rustic cabins and cottages — and, when I was a teenager, one memorable un-air-conditioned 22-hour drive to Disney World.
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