I used to travel with a tripod and a large camera bag. The bag could store my EOS 650, three lenses, my Olympus OM-G with its 28-80 zoom (as a backup camera), a micro cassette recorder, a set of warming filters in two different sizes, and a partridge in a pear tree. On a solo trip I felt like I was married to it. The bag was constantly with me, and it filled the empty chair when I ate dinner alone. The micro cassette recorder let me log each picture I took, with description and complete technical details. Transcribing the recordings gave me something to do between dinner and bedtime.
Increasingly tyrannical airline restrictions on carry-on baggage forced me to reconsider my travel companions. 400-speed negative film made the tripod mostly unnecessary. Joining the tripod on the shelf at home is the 50mm f/1.8 that I originally got with the EOS 650. I keep it around for those few times when I know I’ll need it for available light.
While the micro cassette machine and logs were somewhat helpful for keeping track of where I had taken pictures, I found I had no use for all the technical information. It was easier to forgo the recorder and just keep a concise record of where I had been and what rolls of film I had exposed that day.
I bought a small Tamrac “Explorer 2” bag in 2000, for my trip to Provence. About the size of a handbag (I sometimes call it my “man purse”), it can be carried with a shoulder strap, with a handle on the top of the bag, or with a belt that goes around the waist. It held my Elan II (with the 28-105 lens attached), the 22-55 lens, and either the Minolta Freedom Zoom Explorer or the 70-210 zoom. There’s also room for spare batteries, lens tissue, and a circular polarizer (all my lenses took 58mm filters). I ditched the warming filters because I can easily adjust the color balance of any image after I’ve scanned it.
The “man purse” works just as well for digital (and fits nicely under an airplane seat as a “personal item”). I currently use two lenses, a Canon 28-135IS and a Tokina 12-24. The Digital Rebel XT fits in the top of the bag with one lens attached and pointing down into the center compartment. The other compartments hold the other lens and the SmartDisk FlashTrax hard drive. Unfortunately, the center compartment isn’t wide enough for an attached lens hood, so I have to remove it and store it with the other lens. The front pocket has plenty of room for a spare battery pack, an extra memory card, lens cleaning supplies, and two polarizers. There isn’t room for the chargers for the camera battery and the Flashtrax, so those indispensable items go in my carry-on bag.
The x-ray scanners for carry-on bags generally won’t harm film. But never put film in a checked bag, since damaging film seems to be the only thing those million-dollar baggage scanning machines can do reliably! A carry-on bag scanner actually subjects film to less radiation than it gets from natural cosmic rays during a flight. But since repeated “safe” x-ray scans (and flights) can cause cumulative damage, it’s best to avoid any unnecessary risk.
A federal regulation at 49 CFR 1544.211(e)(4) (you might have to search for it if that link has changed) gives passengers at American airports the right to a hand inspection of their film. It also requires the placement of a sign near the x-ray machine informing passengers of that right. Amazingly, this regulation remains in force even with “Enhanced Security.” But screeners sometimes ignore or deny it. That might be entirely justified when a crowd of passengers are waiting at a checkpoint. But sometimes, even if there’s no queue and you arrive early, they just don’t feel like being inconvenienced with extra work.
Some photographers carry a copy of the regulation to show recalcitrant screeners. But I think that’s the wrong approach. When screeners have the power to bar you from your flight, select you for “secondary screening,” fine you, or even have you arrested or detained, it means that the rules (and your rights) are exactly what your particular screener decides they are at that particular moment. Arguing about the regulations, or insisting that the screeners on your last three flights hand-inspected your film, is likely to be futile.
What might work is, first, to arrive extra early. Then ask the screener very politely if he or she wouldn’t mind possibly doing you a favor by hand-inspecting your film. Emphasize that you’ve got plenty of time and are willing to wait until it’s most convenient for him or her. Asking nicely for a favor (in full recognition of and deference to the screener’s absolute and unchallenged authority) rather than asserting a “right” may increase the likelihood that he or she may deign to grant your request. If the screener says no, resign yourself to having lost your one chance. Apologize profusely for having bothered the screener, smile graciously, and immediately surrender your film to the x-ray. The film will almost certainly survive unscathed, and you’ll have avoided unnecessary trouble.
Again, you’ll have the easiest time if you cheerfully submit your film for x-ray scanning and don’t give it another thought. If you’re going to a foreign country, that will be your only option on your return flight; most other countries don’t allow hand inspection. But if you can’t avoid worrying about the very small risk of x-ray damage (especially if your itinerary involves multiple flights), you can easily avoid the risk. Buy film at your destination, and have it processed there. X-rays can’t harm processed film. Or else regard airport “security” as justification to finally switch to a digital camera. X-rays can’t damage memory cards or computers.
Whatever you do, keep a careful eye on your camera bag during the screening process. Distraction is inevitable while you’re taking off and putting on your shoes, and when the screeners inspect your clear plastic bag of toiletries, pat you down, or (inconsistently) inflict the latest indignity they’ve added in reaction to yesterday’s threat. The TSA’s definition of “security” extends only to the threat of terrorism. When it comes to the far more common threat of thievery, you’re on your own.
Some professional photographers avoid airport worries entirely by shipping all their equipment to and from their destinations with an air freight carrier. They often have no other choice, since strictly-enforced limits on carry-on baggage mean that valuable equipment would otherwise go in unlocked checked bags. Even if you don’t have a lot of costly equipment, the peace of mind might make this option worth the significant cost.
This was originally a response to a July 2008 entry in Arthur Frommer’s blog. I recommend reading that blog post first. Arthur Frommer achieved fame and fortune with Europe on $5 a Day, a guidebook that convinced millions of Americans that they could afford to visit Europe. His blog normally offers cogent commentary and sensible suggestions for travelers interested in value for money.
Until very recently, a hometown vacation was unfairly relegated to people who could afford nothing “better.” Or it was piously prescribed as a penance for those who must “give up travel” to get out of debt, save for a down payment on a house, or otherwise learn a painful lesson about financial responsibility. But in 2008, the deteriorating value of the dollar made international travel too expensive for many Americans who had regularly enjoyed it. The costs of both airfare and driving skyrocketed with the price of oil, making any long-distance trip unaffordable for many. So vacationing close to home officially became a “trend.” It even got a trendy (and execrable) new name, the staycation. It unfortunately remains trendy as the Great Recession and its “jobless recovery” continue into 2010 and beyond.
As with anything trendy, a lot of ink and bytes have been devoted to expounding on the “staycation.” Opinionated pundits range from respected travel writers like Arthur Frommer who needlessly denigrate it, to bloggers who take it to ridiculous lengths. And plenty of retailers are eagerly— or perhaps desperately— cashing in on the “trend.” It’s likely that both the trendiness and (one can only hope) the ditzy name will fade away. But the concept of enjoying a low-cost, low-hassle vacation that doesn’t require flying or traveling long distances is a very sound and sensible one in this Brave New World of economic meltdown, metastable oil supplies, and global warming. Shorn of both its former stigma and its current faddishness, it deserves an honorable place among vacation choices for all budgets.
The main problem with the term “staycation” is that it’s so fuzzy and imprecise. It can refer to at least three distinct things.
Home is Where the Heart (and the Vacation) Is
The most restrictive kind of “staycation” is the vacation at home. Depending on the available budget, “vacationers” leave their dwelling only for necessities, or perhaps for trips to nearby restaurants or movies. Families can spend quality time around the pool (if they have one), camping out in the back yard (if they have one), or perhaps watching videos. Couples can enjoy some romantic time together, and singles can catch up on reading or deferred projects.
“Cocooning” (to use another trendy synonym) can provide the cheapest kind of vacation. It also avoids the hassles associated with travel. For those reasons, it has its devoted adherents. Many people in high-pressure jobs who lack the time or inclination to plan a “real vacation” welcome it, or at least accept it, as a necessary respite to prevent burnout.
Because it lacks the most important aspects of a vacation— in particular, getting away from home— many people find a vacation at home less than satisfactory. But it does have its place. After several years of trips to Hawaii and Death Valley during the Christmas-New Year week, I decided that travel during The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year is best left to the hordes who clog the airports and roads, paying premium prices to either join or escape their families. So I now look forward to ending the year at home, reading books and watching video movies I haven’t had time for. “Stay home for the holidays” is what I unhesitatingly recommend for anyone who has this time off from work.
If you are planning a vacation at home, check with local officials about any nearby scheduled construction work. I once took a week off from work, intending to spend some relaxing time at home. But I was unaware that a sewer renovation on my street would begin that week, until the jackhammers started tearing up the pavement under my bedroom window at 7 AM on Monday morning. When I called City Hall (from a payphone around the corner), the official told me that I wasn’t the first to call about it. The contractor had apparently neglected to send required notices to area residents. So my week off ended up entirely different from anything I had planned.
A Real Vacation In Your Home Town
A “staycation” most often means a vacation spent exploring your home town or a nearby major city. This is what Arthur Frommer disparages as a “shameful second-rate substitute for travel.” He is entitled to his opinion, but to me this statement sounds ignorant and arrogant. An international trip charged to a credit card at 30% APR and paid off over decades can be “boring, enervating, [and] vapid.” Conversely, an inexpensive local vacation can be an exciting, fulfilling experience that creates memories to cherish for a lifetime. Despite what airlines and tour operators desperately want us to believe, the enjoyment of a great vacation does not necessarily correlate with distance and expense!
The key to a great hometown vacation is very simple, and a lot of fun: Prepare and plan— and eagerly anticipate!— a local adventure just you’d plan an exotic foreign trip. Buy some guidebooks, or check them out from the library. Identify some interesting places and attractions. Then develop a detailed itinerary based on what you’ve found. You’ll very likely end up with a list of places you’ve never visited, possibly including famous tourist attractions. Think of those clichéd stories of native New Yorkers who have never visited the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. And you could compile an equally long list of places you had never heard of before.
Knowledge is power. Specifically, it’s the power to transform a “staycation” from merely “moping around the towns in which we live” into a genuinely exciting vacation. Even if you’re normally a play-it-by-ear traveler who prefers to arrive with a blank slate and go wherever whim, caprice, and serendipity may lead, you must spend some time researching and planning your hometown vacation. The research and planning will help you view a familiar place through excited and well-informed eyes, which in turn helps you to discover fascinating new things in what you might have considered mundane and uninteresting. And that’s what can elevate a “staycation” into something special! For that matter, research and preparation can help you get the most enjoyment from wherever you visit.
Consider taking a sightseeing bus tour, and then go back to those places you found most interesting. Visit the local zoo, museum, or theatre you’ve overlooked. Go to a farmer’s market. Perhaps spend a little time wandering around the park you pass every morning on the way to work. In other words, do exactly what you’d do on any other vacation.
Still, the town in which you live is an unavoidable consideration. If you live in or near a popular travel destination, you’ll have an easy time planning an exciting “staycation.” It will probably be a matter of winnowing an impossibly lengthy list of choices down to what you can reasonably do in the allotted time. You can save the rest of the list for future “staycations.”
Conversely, if your home town or region isn’t known for its vacation appeal, finding interesting things to see and do will require more effort and creativity. But remember, that’s actually fun! Although you can almost always find something interesting to do wherever you are, if you look for it, I’m not denying that there surely are places where any possible “staycation” will indeed be “boring, enervating, [and] vapid.” I’ll discuss some possible ways around that problem later.
Cheap Isn’t Always the Best Value
If money is of paramount concern, taking a series of well-researched day trips from home can provide a satisfying low-cost vacation. You’ll also avoid the hassles of packing and unpacking, and end each day in your own bed dreaming of the next day’s discoveries. But unless your budget truly requires it, a vacation with home as a base may be false economy. The familiar environment, the daily “commute,” and the quotidian distractions of chores, routines, mail, and phone calls can all significantly diminish the experience of “being on vacation.” You could enhance a home-based itinerary with some of the same preparations you might make for trips away from home: Tell people at work that you’re on vacation and can’t be reached, ask the post office to hold your mail, and unplug the phone and the computer.
I took a two-week “staycation” in October 2007— nearly a year before the “staycation” officially became a “trend”!— driving from home to various destinations in the Los Angeles area. I visited places I had never been, or hadn’t visited in decades, despite living in Southern California my entire life. My research turned up several places I had never heard of before. And I found photographic opportunities that were genuinely as satisfying and exciting as anything I’ve seen anywhere.
This was definitely the cheapest vacation I’ve ever had. It cost me only the expense of driving my own car several hundred miles, parking (most of which was free), some nominal admission fees, and treating myself to a few lunches when I didn’t feel like packing a picnic. But despite all the discoveries, this is not a vacation I look back on with much pleasure. I spent too much of it in my car, going nowhere. The daily commute to and from home on the nation’s most congested roads made it more stressful than enjoyable.
I chose to commute from home not specifically to save money, but because there would have been little advantage to staying somewhere else. Southern California’s numerous attractions are scattered in all directions over a huge area, so there’s no convenient “central” place to stay. And there’s no real alternative to driving.
Based on what I learned in 2007, I’ll plan, research, and look forward to shorter “staycations” in individual small sections of Southern California’s wonderful giant crazy quilt. And I’ll stay in conveniently-located accommodations so I can enjoy it without the stressful commute. That might be a good approach for a “staycation” even in a city with adequate public transportation, if your budget permits it.
Expanding Circles
If budget constraints don’t require commuting from home, a “staycation” can be an opportunity to stay at a local hotel, and to try some local restaurants. Even if it’s close to home, a hotel might provide better access to public transportation, or a location that lets you spend your time at the places you want to visit rather than in a car or bus. You’re also getting away from home, an important aspect of a vacation that’s inherently lacking when you’re commuting from home. You could also use some of what you’ve saved on airfare and car rental (plus all the “ancillary revenue” fees) to buy better accommodations, meals, or shopping.
Staying in a hotel— or in a vacation rental, condo, campground, or anywhere other than home— opens up the most expansive definition of “staycation.” That means a trip not necessarily in your home town, but within maybe two or three hours from home by car, train, or bus. That’s too far to commute from home, so the trip provides a true “travel” experience. But it’s close enough not to require flying. This definition can accommodate a variety of regional trips. For example, from Los Angeles it could include San Diego and Santa Barbara, great destinations that also happen to be the only places to which pathetic Amtrak offers somewhat usable if not particularly convenient service.
Though purists would balk at calling this sort of trip a “staycation”— and yes, there are “staycation” purists— it’s clearly within the more inclusive definition some writers use. But families, couples, and even single people were enjoying “staycations” in cities, parks, resorts, and campgrounds close to home long before Satan spawned the originator of that pernicious portmanteau. This is possibly the most popular type of vacation for Americans. It’s the most practical choice for the long weekends (or even short weekends) that are too often the only option for vacation-challenged American workers. Plan to linger longer, and possibly take advantage of mid-week hotel rates that can be much lower than on weekends. Anticipate and enhance it with research, and you’ve got yourself a vacation that, by any standard, is the Real Thing.
Expert Advice, To Heed and To Ignore
Once you’ve decided on any form of “staycation,” do yourself a favor. Ignore the pundits and “experts” who claim to have a Definitive Standard of What a Vacation Must Be. Their “Definitive Standard” is almost always based on promoting a specific agenda. They want you to be miserable if you don’t buy what they’re selling!
I have no quarrel with Arthur Frommer about the merits of international travel. I’m appropriately grateful to have enjoyed the “extraordinary privilege” of doing some of that, back when cheap oil and a strong dollar made it easily accessible. But that era seems to be over. The pervasive and persistent fallout from the mortgage greeding frenzy has made any kind of long-distance vacation inconceivable for too many Americans. A “staycation” allows even people enduring economic hardship to enjoy a break without breaking their finances.
Increasing numbers of people who aren’t necessarily suffering economically are so disgusted with the ordeal air travel has become that they refuse to subject themselves to it. Unfortunately, visiting another part of this big country without flying could involve quite a bit of time in a car, train, or bus. If you don’t have the time or patience for that, a well-planned “staycation” offers a way to enjoy a good vacation without the needless stress, discomfort, and dubious “security” hassles that go with flying.
That said, if the Legendary Chicken Fairy offered to give us whatever vacation we wanted, I doubt very many of us would choose a “staycation.” (Possible exceptions are people who travel for a living; or those who recently moved to a new city and might relish a chance to explore it before the novelty wears off.) Mr. Frommer does make the valid point that someone who has experienced international travel could well scorn a “staycation” as a “second-rate substitute,” since it can’t provide the experience of a different culture. There’s unfortunately no way around that reality, especially if you choose to focus on it.
And let’s face it, when you forgo that trip you wanted in favor of a more practical or affordable “staycation,” some disappointment or resentment is almost inevitable. But the simple, inexpensive, and fun strategy of preparing for your “staycation” exactly as you’d research and anticipate a foreign trip will mitigate both difficulties, even if it can’t completely eliminate them.
Another mitigation strategy is to plan your “staycation” around sharing a local experience with family, friends, or a significant other. That’s often what makes any vacation special and memorable, irrespective of where you go. This is obviously impractical if you vacation solo. But if you usually end up going alone because you can’t find a compatible companion who has the time, money, and/or interest, consider inviting a friend to join you in visiting some places you’ve overlooked in your home town. You might actually have an easier time finding a compatible companion for a low-key, low-cost, local adventure than for a trip that involves a significant financial commitment.
If that doesn’t work, a solo “staycation” can become a self-improvement project. For example, dining alone is the bête noire of many solo travelers, even for some who delight in everything else about going alone. Slay that beast (or least muzzle it) by treating yourself to dinners at some local restaurants during your “staycation.” And if you have always wanted to take a solo trip but are hesitant to do it, a short visit to some nearby place by yourself is an easy and inexpensive first step toward overcoming your apprehension.
The one worthwhile thing about the “staycation” as a trendy fad is that you can feel good about telling your friends and co-workers about your exciting plans for a local vacation. They’re likely to be doing the same thing! But “country-collectors,” and others whose main motivation for travel is bragging about exotic destinations to envious associates, deserve no salty tears if economic concerns reduce them to taking “staycations” that provide no bragging rights.
Avoid the Fake-Cation
The other advice to ignore comes from advocates of what can only be called a fake-cation. Can’t afford that Caribbean cruise? String up a hammock in the backyard, play some reggae on the boom box, drink some rum, and you’re in Jamaica, mon! Is a romantic anniversary trip to Paris beyond your budget? Cook some French toast, rent some French movies, sip some wine, et voilà! And then there’s the virtual vacation conducted entirely on the Internet, which I fear may eventually surpass the “staycation” as an inane trend. If you genuinely enjoy playing “let’s pretend,” I certainly wouldn’t want to spoil your fun. But that kind of fake-cation— including the infamous “family camping trip” in a backyard tent— can become “boring, enervating, [and] vapid” very quickly.
Conversely, if you enjoy cooking you might have a great “staycation” devoted to the cuisines of some foreign destinations you’ve always wanted to visit. That isn’t a fake-cation, since you’re enjoying the very real activities of cooking, eating, and (hopefully) sharing food. You can resume the daily grind of counting calories when the vacation is over.
Also, if you live in a big city with interesting ethnic enclaves, you might be able to overcome at least some of Mr. Frommer’s objections about the lack of opportunities to experience a different culture. A reasonable facsimile of Taipei or Tegucigalpa may be just a bus ride away! But otherwise, trying to make your home or your home town into something it’s not only invites disappointment. You’ll have a better time if you enjoy your local destination strictly on its own terms, without false pretenses. Once again, the key is to research and plan your local trip just as if it were on another continent.
Finally, I’m not suggesting that you should take only “staycations,” on some lofty principle. I’m merely suggesting that the “staycation” should be valued rather than denigrated, as a useful travel option that can sometimes be the right vacation choice. And of course, enjoying inexpensive “staycations” can help you save up for that international trip you really want to take.