Last week was my one and only week of vacation from work. It was so nice to have an entire week to myself. In the beginning of the week I worked a lot on my online stuff, I got the house *super* clean, and then towards then end of the week I headed out for a short vacation with the girls.
I had been debating where I wanted to go for vacation since I was on such a limited budget. I decided to go the kind of camping route, so a friend and I headed up to Cave City, KY with the kiddos. Originally this sounded to be a good idea. Renting a cabin at the Jelly Stone Yogi Bear resort was $300 for two nights and split between a friend and I was only $150 per person.
We also decided to split gas costs which ended up being $50 per person. Our cabin slept up to 7 people and was equipped with a refrigerator, stove, microwave, and grill. We took our own food to cook so that we wouldn’t have to pay to eat out for every meal. This left me with $100 left in money that I had budgeted, but I also had brought extra just in case.
The High Price of Nothingness
Since we drove four hours to get to Cave City I wanted to do fun stuff with the girls. We went on a tour of Mammoth Cave which only cost $10 for me and my kids got in free. The cave tour was worth the money. That was the only activity we partook that was worth the money.
When my girls saw the huge dinosaur statues sitting outside of Dinosaur World it quickly became the talk of the day. With all of the begging to go I quickly said yes. It took us about 15 minutes to walk all of the trails but cost me $40 in tickets.
I was extremely disappointed after my visit at Dinosaur World. I thought just hanging out at the pool would satisfy my girls. And it did, until we decided to take a drive and go exploring.
Every time the girls would see a sign for an attraction the temper tantrums would begin. All they could think about was going back to Dinosaur World and visiting every other place that had a flashy sign in front of it. The tantrums were starting to drive me insane so I tried another spot. We visited a Wildlife Museum which cost $26 for the three of us to get in.
This ended up being a little better of a bargain, but once again it took us about twenty minutes to see everything there was.
All in all we ended up spending most of our time at the cabin. I didn’t go too much over budget but I ended up listening to a ton of whining and crying. The lack of naps added to this a lot.
The trip was fun, but until my girls get a little older I think I’ll be avoiding tourist attractions. I think they would have enjoyed staying in a hotel with a pool just as much as anything else.
I can totally relate!
We take our kids to Florida and rent a beach condo a couple of times a year and I swear that we could easily just stay in the Holiday Inn in our hometown and have the same experience. All they want to do is swim in the pool!
With kids all the hype is usually not worth it unless there are just alot of kids. Then its not even about the place but the people they are around. Children just want to have a break and get out. We got tired of going here and there and being disappointed. I would say still take them since you only live once and you never know until you go but limit the number of places. $40 dollars to walk trails is crazy.
My son is older now, but I can remember coming home from several vacations with remorse over too much money having been spent on a big, commercial vacation. These are vacations that he either doesn’t remember much about, or they don’t hold value to him now. Interestingly, he recalls his favorite vacations being family reunions, which were very low budget. My son is an only child, but I come from a large family, and we combined resources to provide a large house in the mountains and we took turns cooking/providing food for everyone. We played games, the kids played outside, and we had “Christmas” in June, where each person brought a gift between $5-$10, and we had an exchange. None of us exchange more than Christmas cards during the holidays, so would do this instead.
I’m sure your girls had a good time though and will appreciate what you did for them!
The only vacations I foresee taking for awhile, after my son is born, are ones to visit family. As a child, I loved visiting family and then spending a day or part of a day doing something fun like going to a zoo or museum. We didn’t take more involved trips than that until I was in high school and those were carefully planned trips where the attractions were decided before we even left home. I hope to follow a similar model.
I am sorry that the attractions from your trip felt like a waste of money.
Sorry to hear your trip wasn’t as fun as you had hoped. Probably a good idea to avoid the tourist traps I mean tourist attractions. Kids that age are generally easily entertained but when they see those bright tourist signs…they are enticed by them. I’m sure they would have had just as much fun playing games and swimming in the pool.
Aww, that’s a super cute picture! I read how Disney and other theme parks recently raised their prices, and I just can’t imagine how families vacation there. Likes others have said, young children are easily entertained and mostly want your attention. Personally, I wouldn’t take a child younger than 6 or so to expensive tourist attractions.
The other day I mentioned (to my mom)that I wanted to go to the Sand Dunes in Southern Colorado because I’d never been there before. My mom then informs me that I HAD been there before and had a great time. Basically, kids have iffy memories LOL.