Yes, You Can Take a Vacation When You Have a Homestead – Even If You Only Have about 24 Hours

One of the things nobody really tells you when you decide you want a homestead is that vacations get complicated…. Really complicated. When you have animals depending on you every day — especially dairy cows that need to be milked — you can’t exactly toss a suitcase in the truck and disappear for a week.

For me, even finding someone who could take over chores isn’t necessarily the easiest solution. Milking cows, feeding everybody correctly, dealing with gates, knowing who belongs where, and recognizing when something isn’t quite right isn’t the same as asking somebody to stop by and feed the cat.

So sometimes, instead of figuring out how to leave the farm for a week, I figure out how much vacation I can squeeze between chores. And apparently the answer is… 24 hours. 😂
From an Iowa Homestead to Las Vegas — and Back Again

My mom is a travel advisor, and she’s gotten plenty of practice figuring out how to plan trips around my rather ridiculous schedule. My requirement is basically: “I’d like to go somewhere fun, but I need to be back before the cows start wondering if I’ve abandoned them.”

One of the best trips she’s planned for me was a whirlwind overnight trip from Iowa to Las Vegas to see The Wizard of Oz at Sphere. I did all of my farm chores and milking right before leaving, and headed out around 1 p.m.. That evening, we had tickets for the 7 p.m. show at Sphere. I went with my mom, my sister, and my niece, so it wasn’t just about seeing the show. We got an overnight together in Las Vegas, stayed in a hotel, had a little family getaway, then got to have breakfast in the morning with family from Las Vegas before heading to the airport at 6 a.m. — and then turned around and headed home.

By about 3 p.m. the next day, I was back on the farm. Total time away? About 26 hours.
And the best part was that I didn’t need anyone to take care of the farm while I was gone.
I simply did everything immediately before I left and again as soon as I got home.

Sometimes You Don’t Need a Weeklong Vacation
I think we tend to have this idea that a “real” vacation has to be five or seven days long.
When you have a homestead, that can feel so overwhelming that you end up doing nothing at all.
Who’s going to milk?
Who’s going to feed everybody?
Who’s going to notice if a cow is acting strange?
Who’s going to shut the gate that has to be lifted slightly before it’ll actually latch because apparently replacing the stupid thing would be too easy?
You know. Homestead stuff.
But maybe the answer isn’t always figuring out how to leave for seven days.

Maybe sometimes it’s figuring out what you can do with 24 hours.
For me, that was enough time to fly to Las Vegas, see a show I’d really wanted to see, spend the night in a hotel with my family, enjoy breakfast, and come home.
That’s a pretty darn good return on 26 hours.

A 24-Hour Trip Doesn’t Have to Look Like Mine
You certainly don’t have to go see The Wizard of Oz, although it was an absolutely amazing experience.
Las Vegas happens to work really well for this kind of quick trip because there are so many things you can pack into a very short amount of time.

You could fly in for a concert or show. You could have a great dinner, gamble for an evening, stay overnight and fly home the next morning. You could plan a girls’ trip, a quick couples getaway, or build the whole trip around one thing you’ve always wanted to see.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be Vegas. The trick is finding somewhere you can realistically get to and back from within the amount of time you have available — and then building the trip around that window instead of trying to force a traditional vacation into your life.

This Is Where Having a Travel Advisor Really Helps. This is also where my mom earns her keep. 😂
When you’ve only got 24 hours, you don’t have much room for bad planning.
Flight times matter. Where you stay matters. Transportation matters. The time of the event matters.
Saving $20 on a flight isn’t much of a bargain if the flight schedule eats up six extra hours of the tiny amount of time you actually have.

Because my mom is a travel advisor, I can essentially give her my ridiculous parameters:
Here’s when I can leave. Here’s when I absolutely have to be home. Here’s what I want to do. Figure it out.
And she can work backward from there. That’s a whole lot easier than me opening seventeen browser tabs and trying to coordinate flights, hotels, transportation, tickets and schedules while I’m also running a farm, working as a nurse and wondering why somebody is mooing at me.

Want Help Planning Your Own Quick Getaway?
If you’re another farmer, homesteader, busy parent, caregiver — or just somebody who feels like you don’t have enough time for a vacation — don’t automatically assume that means you can’t go anywhere.
You might just need a different kind of vacation. And if you want someone to help figure out what you can realistically do with the time you’ve got, my mom, Sally Guisinger at Coasters and Castles has lots of experience planning getaways of all kinds, and the best part is that it does not even cost more to use her to help plan your vacation. Its like a WIN WIN situation all around.

Check out her website or you can contact her here:
WEBSITE

FACEBOOK

Tell her you found her through Grandma’s Homestead.
And if you give her a 24-hour window and tell her there’s a cow waiting for you at the other end of it, don’t worry. She’s had practice. 😂