child free vacation week, nice idea, but

I don't think it will work. Here's why.

My ex and I got married on Labor Day weekend many years ago. We went on our honeymoon shortly thereafter, to Nags Head Beach in North Carolina because money was tight.

You would think that would be a great time to vacation, but it was hellish. It was packed with pre-school aged toadlers and screaming loaves. Everywhere we went, there were multi-childed families with kids running everywhere like yard apes and screeching during meals.

It sounds like a nice idea, to do this while kids are in school,but toadlers and pre-verbal sprogs have some of the worst behavior issues, simply due to age.

PNB's realize this, and many will grasp the facts that their kids can't be counted on to behave in restaurants, or even on vacation for that matter, so they get a sitter or THEY DON'T GO ON VACATION UNTIL THEIR KIDS ARE OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER AND ENJOY IT.

It's the Breeders who don't grasp that their lives have changed and they need to make some modifications, instead of foisting their lifestyle changes on the rest of us.

Yes, there were a few sprogs and toadlers on my week after Labor Day trip, those ages seemed to me to be generally less mobile, and more watched than the older kids. Like I said, at least 95% of the people I saw were unaccompanied by children of any sort. Having had to experience the hell of summer in a tourist area many times through my life, I've found that having maybe 5% of the people around being burdened by chidren is way preferable to having 90% of the people around with children. From what I've seen, if a fambily has one kid, they're going to have more for some ungodly reason, eventually they'll have to keep their vacations to the time between Memorial and Labor days.

You know when I think is a good time to go someplace? Columbus Day weekend.

Yes, the sproggies are out of school for a three-day weekend. But it's in October, when most breeders don't think about taking trips. By then, summer has long past, and they are thinking ahead towards Giftmas break.

As baseball fans, Catdaddy and I make an annual pilgrimage to Cooperstown, NY. We would NEVER go there in the middle of the summer, as I hear that the place is infested with brats then. At first, we tried going during the first week in December. That worked out well, but for the snow and the fact that the Farmers Museum was closed for the season, that was something we wanted to see.

So, next time we tried Columbus Day...we usually go from Thursday to Monday. This has worked out really well...the weather is better, the fall foliage is gorgeous, and although we see SOME sprogs, they are few in number. So now we go every year for an extended Columbus Day weekend.

I didn't mean to sound like I was poo-pooing the idea, just talkin'. Summer is very crowded.

I like vacationing in October too.

I've got a coworker who did the whole drive to the Grand Canyon road trip in January a couple years ago. She said is was practically devoid of fambiles, and the only real problem was driving through the Rocky Mountains, which got kind of scary during a snow storm.

I'm still advocating for the week after Labor Day here...I live near Wisconsin Dells, a wonderland of tacky tourist traps, amusement parks, cheap teeshirts and fudge in case you don't know. Anyway, I have to visit it every few weeks for work. To compare the experience pre-Labor Day, with a post-Labor Day experience is like comparing Chuckee Cheeze's to Chez-Too-Goddamned-Expensive-To-Bring-Kids-To-Even-If-You-Could-
Afford-The-Extra-$100-For-Their-Wasted-Food.

I figure, if enough of us take our vacations at a time which might coincide with a time when fambilys for the most part aren't around, there'll be enough of us giving the stink eye to the parunts who do decide to take young Toadly to experience the grandure of (pick your destination of choice), that they'll think before they take Toadly out for the unappreciated vacation at that time again. Of course they are parunts, so I doubt they would get it.

If a bunch of childfree folks go on vacation at a time when the folks who make money off tourism are still open, but not making money off famblies, and tell them how much we like their facilities without children, they might actually offer us some free meals, cheap tickets, lodging deals etc. to try to make money off us when the famblies aren't around. I just wish there was just a week when I could go anywhere and not have to worry about some screaming, filth spewing, germ factory running into me AND get offered some free crap to lure my "all my income's disposable" butt into their place of business. I know there are "adults only" resorts, but they seem like sort of a creepy swinger, key party sort of thing. I could be wrong about that, I guess.

Those "adults only" places are more than tacky, they're positively awful. When Mr. Sprogless, and I were young and stupid, we went to one of these. The shithole was crawling with pervs, swingers, and dirty old men. While we were thinking that it was just a resort for couples, retirees, etc., it was more like a half-way house for desperate losers. We laugh about it, now, but at the time it was like being awake in a nightmare. Please, avoid these pervert colonies, don't do what I did, unless you're into that kind to that kind of stuff. In that case,enjoy!