Despite your best efforts to maintain a smile and a positive attitude, you can feel the current state of affairs eroding your mental health and putting strain on your relationship with your kids and your significant other. You need to get away from it all. Ideally before the weather starts to take a turn for the worst. Ah, but where? In a climate of local lockdowns, international travel restrictions and other complications, the traditional getaway might seem untenable. However, there’s a getaway that you can still enjoy that could be the perfect antidote to the hassle and anxieties that have so far plagued 2020. We’re talking about the good old fashioned family road trip. Let’s take a look at why it could be just the holiday you need this year.
A road trip is an affordable getaway
Many of us are grappling with all manner of money worries. A lot of us have been placed on furlough with significantly reduced pay for months. Some have lost work and income. Freelancers and the self-employed may have had contracts fall through in the wake of the pandemic. Some may even have lost their jobs and had to settle for something low-skill and low pay while they wait for something that’s more within their wheelhouse to come along. One thing’s for sure, unless your name happens to be Jeff Bezos, you’ve probably not done too well out of the pandemic financially.
A road trip, however, is a much more affordable alternative to the traditional vacation. Local BnBs may be much more competitively priced at present than many of the more obvious vacation spots. Or, better yet, why not build your road trip around visiting local camping sites?
Camping is a great way to reduce the cost of your getaway, and when you invest in on or off road caravans for sale, you can enjoy all the luxuries of home wherever you choose to park yourself. It’s a great investment in your future getaways with a lot of manageable finance options.
It gets your faces out of your screens
The screens of our smartphones, laptops, tablets, TVs and other devices have become a huge part of life for most of us. However, our over-reliance on them can damage our health in a number of ways and over time aid to health problems. What’s more, the blue light that they emit can inhibit the brain’s production of melatonin. This sleep hormone is produced in the pineal gland and is an essential part of regulating our body clocks and making us feel sleepy when it’s time to go to bed. When we’re staring into our screens all day and night, it can lead to sleeplessness which can exacerbate our existing stress and anxiety in this difficult time. This is as true for our kids as it is for us.
When the family’s out on a road trip, a little screen time may be necessary to keep the kids entertained in the back seat. Nonetheless, the majority of the time will be spent enjoying local landmarks passing outside of the window. Or simply appreciating the beautiful scenery bathed in gorgeous summer sunlight.
It introduces you to local treasures
The great thing about a road trip is that it allows you to get to know your destination much more intimately than you ever could passing over it in a plane. You might just stop for lunch somewhere that ends up being your favorite spot. Or having a picnic in a park that the kids fall head over heels in love with. If you’re staying within reasonably close proximity to your home, your road trip could introduce you to local treasures that you never knew existed before.
It lets the kids work off some of their energy
Kids need exercise, for all sorts of reasons. They’re little bundles of energy that quickly drive overworked and overstressed parents to exhaustion. And when they have to travel and sit still for hours, that’s a recipe for cranky kids and even crankier parents. The great thing about a road trip is that you can stop anywhere, giving the kids an opportunity to dash around, explore and play in new and exciting surroundings.
It gets you to spend more time with mother nature
Finally, if your lifestyle and career involve spending most of your time surrounded by concrete, you may not know just how much your body is yearning for some contact with mother nature. Time spent in the open air in the company of trees, plants, flowers, birds and animals is a tonic for our physical and emotional wellbeing. Indeed, even something as simple as walking barefoot on grass can carry a range of health benefits that science is only just beginning to understand. A road trip allows you to stop at beauty spots frequently, allowing you to relax in the humble majesty of the natural world.
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