A ship sits anchored in the harbor of Bahia Honda State Park, Fl. (Compass Points Media / flickr) http://www.flickr.com/photos/compasspointsmedia/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
“I don’t want to drive,” Mrs. Compass Points says to me this morning. “If we only have a few days, driving sounds stressful to me.”
“You know what’s stressful to me?” I say as lightheartedly as I could. “Us trying to plan a trip.”
I love my wife more than I’ve loved anything. But love and marriage can be hard work, and so is planning a getaway together. Unfortunately, nobody put a chapter in the Idiots Guide To Marriage just how hard trip planning will be for both spouses. One person’s adventure could be another’s hell on a mountain, and one person’s R&R could be the other’s extreme boredom.
“Why do you always want things to be so hard?” I’ve heard Mrs. Compass Points ask me on more than one occasion while planning a trip. I always want to put my fitness and mental toughness to the test, to see great natural wonders the tourist crowd misses. Give me a backpack, boots, a kayak, a cycle or whatever, just let me experience what Theodore Roosevelt called a “strenuous life.” I term it the “National Geographic” life for a boy turned 31-year-old man who still gets caught up in waves of spontaneous inspiration to see – rather than just read about – these places.
My wife is all for that … sometimes. This is the woman who has ridden elephants in Vietnam and went canyoneering in Costa Rica with me on our honeymoon last April. During other times, though, like right now, she wants to lay on a beach and have what I like to call the “Conde Nast” life.
We had spent the better part of 45 minutes this morning sitting around our plastic kitchen furniture, sifting through ideas about where to go – Key West, Savannah, St. Petersburg, Montserrat, beach, mountains, New York City … and found ourselves shaking our heads no at every suggestion. Everything was either too expensive or not quite the right fit.
Mrs. Compass Points stands by a waterfall in Costa Rica. (Compass Points Media / flickr) http://www.flickr.com/photos/compasspointsmedia/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
The call of the road and/or the skies has been loud lately, especially for my wife. She’s shouldered quite a burden since the newspaper I worked for cut my job eight months ago, working full-time as a mental health therapist while I unsuccessfully apply for jobs, try to build my freelance writing career and start Compass Points Media. We were lucky enough to buy a house last year, but due to the job loss we can’t afford furniture for the time being. It’s a house but not yet a comfortable home. And the doldrums of winter don’t appear to be migrating any time soon.
We need to escape.
However, like many other couples merging our individual expectations can be messy. How can we get away, travel according to our values and stay within our budget? And while I would love nothing more than to drive across the country, she doesn’t want anything to do with that. Then there’s the goal of the trip – unwinding beach relaxation or soul-bursting, butt kicking adventure?
Oh, and how do we pay for it?
Ah, the perils of traveling while married.
That’s where we find ourselves this early February as we approach our first anniversary in April. Where we’ll go, I don’t know yet. How we compromise, that remains to be seen. There’s an interesting weekend ahead for us, stranded inside our house by a wicked winter storm that’s predicted for the east coast. “Perfect opportunity to sit down and figure out where we’re going,” I said. Mrs. Compass Points sorta rolled her pretty blue eyes.
Compass Points won’t publish tomorrow (Friday, Feb. 5), but we’ll be back Monday, Feb. 8. Maybe by then, Mrs. Compass Points and I will know our direction.
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Hike On, Pointers!
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Remember, you don’t have to have the perfect vacation every year! You’ve (hopefully) got a long married life in front of you.
Also remember, you don’t have to spend every minute of your vacation together. My parents rented a cabin in in CO last year and spent every AM walking together, then my mom would stick around and read in the afternoon while my dad went out for more hardcore biking/hiking.
Can you camp on a beach with hiking opportunities? (Assateague? Cumberland Island Natl Seashore? The Everglades? Big Sur?) Stay in an inexpensive cabin where one of you can chill with a good novel and the other can keep exploring ? (PATC? Vacation Rentals by Owner?) Backpack into some park for a few miles, set up camp, and do nothing/explore as you desire once you’re away from it all? (Dolly Sods? Shenandoah?)
Now I want to plan my next vacation!
The nice thing about your travel values — knowing you as well as I do — is that you can have an ideal vacation/adventure without having to drops lots of cash. You and the wife had a ball doing the hostel thing in NYC, remember?
I say drive somewhere warm(er), like Myrtle Beach or Charleston. If she’s worried about the drive, tell her to pop a Unisom (my wife calls it getting into her “time machine”), and that you’ll wake her when you get there. Added bonus: You can listen to whatever you want on the radio the whole trip.
If you camp and plan to eat in the car along the way, you’d be amazed how little a nice, warm winter trip can cost. How do you think I went to Clearwater all those Spring Trainings when I was unemployed? Heck, I just spent 3 days in CA for $120.