A few years ago, the word staycation became popular. A staycation is a vacation you take near home. The advantage to it is that you can save a lot of money and still have a lot of fun. And sometimes, the best thing to do is to ditch the planes, trains, and automobiles and enjoy where you are. Here are a few wonderful staycation ideas for couples.
Related post: 8 Awesome Quarantine Activities You Should Do Now
Why staycation?
The most important reason that most people staycation is money. If you aren’t paying for airfare to another country, expensive resort hotels, and lots of restaurant food, you’ll have a lot more money for the activities you want to do.
A staycation can be smaller days trips in your local area or trips to places you can drive to or take a train or bus to. One way that you can save is by being able to go to popular places in the off-season.
When you look at vacations, it’s not the being there that costs the most. It’s the staying there and the getting there. A decent hotel room can cost more than $150 a night in an inexpensive area and more than $300 a night in most cities.
Airfare will start at $300 and can be $1,500 per person. By the time you pay for airfare and hotel, you’ve already spent $5,000, and you have done nothing yet.
With a staycation, there’s little transportation expense and little or no hotel costs. And with that $5,000, you can see much more of the world.
What to do on your staycation?
One of the most popular books of the past 15 years is the Four-Hour Workweek. In it, Tim Ferriss talks about taking mini-retirements throughout life.
Staycationing is similar. Rather than use all of your vacation time and money on one big trip, you use the money to go on a small vacation every few weeks.
What you can do will depend on where you live.  What is near you that others travel many miles to see?
 As a US-based traveler, I have suggestions for my country, but your area might have similar locations. Living in southern Wisconsin, I can reach Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Green Bay (for a Packers football game), even places like St. Louis, Missouri.
A few ideas for you
Start with the local state and national parks (check out this post on visiting Glacier National Park). Parks are a great place to hike, ride bicycles, and spend time in nature. Most people live near an amazing park and don’t even know it.
Go to an amusement park. There are lots of amusement parks in every country. Chances are there’s one near you. Everyone thinks of the Six Flags parks, but those are only the large corporate parks.
Look in your area for smaller, privately owned parks. In some places, such as in Green Bay, Wisconsin, there’s an amusement park in a city park. In Seattle, there’s an amusement park at the foot of the Space Needle.
Go to “tourist traps.â€Â It can seem like a strange idea for most people, but there are tourist areas everywhere. A small village that attracts a lot of out-of-towners or a legendary location or building right near you is the perfect place to experience your world.
Do the fun stuff. When we’re at home, we work, we eat, we watch TV, and we sleep. On vacation, we get massages, sit in the sun, and have a margarita.
A few staycation ideas for couples to try are to give each other massages, cook a meal together, have a movie date night, and if the weather is warm, take a walk in the park, literally.
The world is right outside your door
99% of people don’t know what’s right nearby. People live their entire lives next to legendary and popular attractions and never know. Look through books about your area, call your local tourism board, or even ask visitors to your area what they’re doing.
You will get a lot more for your money if you staycation and use your airfare on more cool things to do.
Have you tried these staycation ideas for couples? What else would you suggest?
