Half Day Off from our Vacation
Northwest Return Travelog #15
Holiday Inn in Clarkston, WA - Sun, 1 Aug 2021. 10pm.
"I need a vacation to recover from my vacation!" How many times have you heard someone say that? How many times have you said it yourself? I've said it so many times I've lost count. But I don't just say it, I do something about it.
One thing I do is plan to get home early. Sometimes that's a full day early. Other times it's just getting home before dinnertime the last day of vacation so I have, at minimum, time to unpack, unwind, and get a healthy night's sleep before returning to work the next morning.
Another technique I use occasionally is to take time off from activity during the trip. A slow day, or a slow part of a day, now and then lets me rebuild my energy so the trip remains invigorating and not tiring.
The thing is, it's hard choosing to take time off from taking time off. We working stiffs, at least in the US, don't get a lot of paid time off to start with. It's natural to want to maximize every day available. That's why I save the latter technique above, taking a quiet day or half-day during the trip, as a reasonable Plan B for when things go wrong.
Well, stuff went wrong this trip. That's why we took a half day off day and spent time relaxing at the pool instead of hiking.
What went wrong? Well, as I explained in talking about "anchor" activities in my previous blog, 1) a whole big hike we wanted to do this weekend is on fire, and 2) Palouse Falls was... not as awesome as it could've been in better weather and without smoke clouds hanging low everywhere.
The upshot of these conditions is that we got back to town around 2pm today. We debated whether to try going out in the opposite direction for another alternative hike we'd located in our guidebooks. Ultimately we decided that would have us out too late tonight and would entail too much driving relative to the amount of hiking, plus it would still be under cloudy and smoke-laden skies. So we've chosen to take it easy in town instead.
What does "taking it easy" mean, on vacation? Well, first we ate a leisurely meal at a restaurant. It took several tries but we did find one with comfortable outdoor seating nobody was using. (Everyone else was inside, 100% not wearing masks, because of course there isn't still a pandemic and this isn't one of the areas in the country with the highest rate of infection or anything. 🙄) Back in Blech
Next we hung out by the hotel's pool for a while. The water in the pool felt weirdly cold as the air was cooler today than the past few days so we didn't swim, but the hot tub was really nice for a soak. Then we sat out on the lounge chairs drying off and enjoying the "fresh" air.
Once we'd had about as much of the "fresh" air as our lungs could comfortably filter we retreated indoors to the air conditioned comfort and non-gagging-ness of our room.
Our room has a private balcony, a minor upgrade I finagled when we arrived late Thursday night. On any other trip we would've sat out there multiple times already, but between the heat and smoke here it's just not pleasurable. Once again this evening we hid indoors instead, me stretching out with my computer to catch up on these blogs, and Hawk watching a bit of TV.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/97428.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
Holiday Inn in Clarkston, WA - Sun, 1 Aug 2021. 10pm.
"I need a vacation to recover from my vacation!" How many times have you heard someone say that? How many times have you said it yourself? I've said it so many times I've lost count. But I don't just say it, I do something about it.
One thing I do is plan to get home early. Sometimes that's a full day early. Other times it's just getting home before dinnertime the last day of vacation so I have, at minimum, time to unpack, unwind, and get a healthy night's sleep before returning to work the next morning.
Another technique I use occasionally is to take time off from activity during the trip. A slow day, or a slow part of a day, now and then lets me rebuild my energy so the trip remains invigorating and not tiring.
The thing is, it's hard choosing to take time off from taking time off. We working stiffs, at least in the US, don't get a lot of paid time off to start with. It's natural to want to maximize every day available. That's why I save the latter technique above, taking a quiet day or half-day during the trip, as a reasonable Plan B for when things go wrong.
Well, stuff went wrong this trip. That's why we took a half day off day and spent time relaxing at the pool instead of hiking.
What went wrong? Well, as I explained in talking about "anchor" activities in my previous blog, 1) a whole big hike we wanted to do this weekend is on fire, and 2) Palouse Falls was... not as awesome as it could've been in better weather and without smoke clouds hanging low everywhere.
The upshot of these conditions is that we got back to town around 2pm today. We debated whether to try going out in the opposite direction for another alternative hike we'd located in our guidebooks. Ultimately we decided that would have us out too late tonight and would entail too much driving relative to the amount of hiking, plus it would still be under cloudy and smoke-laden skies. So we've chosen to take it easy in town instead.
What does "taking it easy" mean, on vacation? Well, first we ate a leisurely meal at a restaurant. It took several tries but we did find one with comfortable outdoor seating nobody was using. (Everyone else was inside, 100% not wearing masks, because of course there isn't still a pandemic and this isn't one of the areas in the country with the highest rate of infection or anything. 🙄) Back in Blech
Next we hung out by the hotel's pool for a while. The water in the pool felt weirdly cold as the air was cooler today than the past few days so we didn't swim, but the hot tub was really nice for a soak. Then we sat out on the lounge chairs drying off and enjoying the "fresh" air.
Once we'd had about as much of the "fresh" air as our lungs could comfortably filter we retreated indoors to the air conditioned comfort and non-gagging-ness of our room.
Our room has a private balcony, a minor upgrade I finagled when we arrived late Thursday night. On any other trip we would've sat out there multiple times already, but between the heat and smoke here it's just not pleasurable. Once again this evening we hid indoors instead, me stretching out with my computer to catch up on these blogs, and Hawk watching a bit of TV.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/97428.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]