Summer’s here and lately I’ve been contemplating what it means to take a vacation. Most people would agree that it means taking a break from whatever you normally do, yet our ideas of a great vacation are as varied as we are ourselves.

For me, vacations require travel – vacating my home and work environs for an opportunity to see what else there is in the world. Not all travel is a vacation, but all my vacations include travel. Some folks may imagine that being able to stay at home is the perfect vacation. I can remember a time when I thought so, too. It’s a shame we have to work so long and hard to pay for a house that we have little time left to enjoy it. Yet, my idea of a vacation implies indulging one’s wanderlust.

When I was a child, vacation time was my dad’s only chance to visit his brothers who had moved out of state. If it weren’t for these trips, I guess I would have very little notion of my extended family. So I highly value trips made for reunion and visiting, but family visits are not vacations. In fact, they can become your normal routine. A vacation, by contrast, breaks the routine.

Some folks always use their vacation times on a quest for entertainment. I’m sure the resorts, cruise lines, and casinos appreciate that, but it’s not my idea of a vacation. A lady I worked with recently told me that every single one of her vacations was a trip to Branson, Missouri – for me, that would be torture. I’m looking for escape, not indulgence. I don’t want to be entertained or distracted – I want a chance to explore, to discover, to experience and learn something new.

It isn’t possible for me to rest or to restore my soul while immersed in a crowd being harvested by resourceful and determined capitalists. Take me far from rat race and set me in nature.

Now, I will confess that I love to visit an art museum, that I love to hear a symphony or see a play, and it’s nice to see historical sites. All of these fit in nicely with my idea of a vacation, so I guess I’m being hypocritical about entertainment. But I’d just as soon skip the music review, magic show, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, and the like. And I know kids love of zip lines, arcades, carnival rides, theme parks and water parks, but at this point in my life I’d just as soon wait outside.

If I’m visiting a city for the first time, I really enjoy one of those tours that employs local people with encyclopedic knowledge of their towns history, architecture, and attractions. I liked the double decker bus in New York City, the trolley in Boston, the trolley and water taxi in Baltimore. When we visited Savanna, the informative guides and the chance to rest and stay cool as they drove was most enjoyable.

As we age, vacations somehow become associated with bucket lists. What is that one prefect destination you have to see before you take the off ramp to the sky? European, Alaska, New Zealand? My dad always talked about wanting to see Alaska, but he kept putting it off. I signed him up to get the brochures from lots off cruise lines and travel agencies. My cousin finally talked him into taking the trip together, but before he could get embark he had a medical condition appear that destroyed his confidence in making the trip. It was all downhill from there.

I’m of the opinion that a vacation is a trip that I never feel able to afford to take, yet can’t afford not to. A proper vacation enriches your life. It is something to look forward to, something that makes it all worthwhile. Some of my favorite vacation experiences have been the spontaneous, the accidental experiences that happen when you have no reservations – when you don’t over plan.

One of the first times I got to ride in a plane it was in a C-130 Hercules. This is a cargo plane and there was only one tiny window, but I was invited into the cockpit where I could see very well. We were flying at 30,000 ft and I felt like I could almost see the curvature of the Earth. It was a profound moment to realize how large the Earth was and how small my little world was in comparison. Most people live there lives with seeing very much of it.

So if you get a chance to take a vacation, I hope you’ll take it. See the world.