I Found Out Long Ago It's a Long Way Down the Holiday Road

I am a planner by nature. Throughout my life, I have put together activities for my friends from simple outings to trips to scavenger hunts. I met WonderWife™ during a kickball game that I co-organized for some friends. I even had a hand in planning my own bachelor party. I am an organized person and I like to research, so planning vacations don’t phase me. Plus, I kinda don’t trust others to get the details right.

WonderWife™ is also a good planner. She may be a bit less organized than me but she gets the job done, especially when it comes to booking plane tickets where she can sniff out a bargain like a beagle on the hunt.

Like most things in my marriage, we work well together planning a vacation. Of course, we don’t take very many vacations. More often than not, if we’re packing up the brood in a car or a plane, we’re trekking to visit family. But when we do plan a bona-fide Geek Boy family vacation, WW™ and I do it together. When it comes to taking the vacation, however, we deviate in our methodology.

I’ve gotta be honest with you, when I’m a on vacation I get a little Clark Griswold. I not only read the guidebooks, I ingest them. In the weeks before, I’m all over the internet. (Ah glorious internet, how could I have possibly existed before you? I want to know all of my options for fun and figure out a way to fit them into the trip. I plan. I schedule. I need to make sure I know what we’re doing at least a day or two in advance. I’m the guy who lugs around the books and makes lists. I don’t want to miss something cool. If the world’s largest ball of twine is in the area, we should be there to bask in its splendor, right?

WonderWife™ plays it much looser on vacation. Her attitude is this: the rest of our lives are scheduled, why do it on vacation? So what if we don’t go hiking today? There’s tomorrow.

This kind of drives me nuts.

But she’s right. A vacation isn’t a vacation if every minute is planned out. So I’ve had to learn to mellow out and compromise. There are a few big ticket things that we plan, but we also need to give ourselves enough freedom to play things fast and loose.

And you know what? Some of the best times we’ve had have been spontaneous excursions that have sprung up because we’ve had the time for them (and because we’ve had the guidebook with us).

How about you? Who is the planner when you take vacations? Do you have different vacation philosophies?