Holiday travel-family drama-are you planning holiday travel?

Yes…my sister is hosting a week in a chalet in France and “encouraging” my mother and I and family to “take a once in a lifetime trip.” I’m not a big traveler, prefer quiet holidays at home, but I’m just at the point in life that I’m ready to just say screw it YOLO. I have refundable air booked but that’s it so far…😬🤷‍♀️

I would like to go to my mom's over Thanksgiving but with the gas prices and my big old dang truck, not sure if we will or not. I do have some airline vouchers I could use but I haven't really looked into it. They are with Jet Blue, so that is a gamble anyways.

We are going to Abu Dhabi for Thanksgiving. Dh qualified for a race there that week. And then Christmas is Cabo, we usually go every other year, but didn't go in 2020 because of covid, so it's been 4 years.

Kids are traveling for Thanksgiving (coming home from university), but it's a relatively short break, so we'll stay home. We're traveling over Christmas. We've made 3 international trips this year, and hope to make another in October. We've been pretty lucky considering all the flight disruptions in general (my kids have been a whole lot less lucky on domestic travel to and from school). We've really enjoyed traveling again after so many cancellations with covid - not to mention having a ton of airline credits to use up.

We haven’t traveled for thanksgiving for at least 10 years - unless you include traveling 3 hours up the coast to Mendocino- we do that sometimes. Same with Christmas.

All three kids will be traveling home from college for the holidays so I highly doubt we will go anywhere.

I doubt it - the kids may come here for Christmas but I'm not counting on it

Your cousin probably should have felt out the potential guests to see if this was something they were interested in.

On the one hand, at least the invite has come early enough that you could in theory plan travel (nothing worse than finding out a few weeks before about people's expectations).

On the other hand, heck no. I spent the first half of our marriage shuttling us to one family member or another for every Thanksgiving. It was always logistically awful -- crowded flights, parking-lot highways, expensive hotels -- and it's a bad time of year for me to travel, because the last week of classes is the following week, so if I can't get back in time, it's a mess. When I had the twins, we told people we couldn't be counted on for Thanksgiving, and it has been soooooooo nice. Most years, we only host people who live here in the area, and it has become a holiday I actually enjoy.

Combine the usual travel nonsense with COVID and there is no way you are getting me anywhere for Thanksgiving other than my own dining room.

We wouldn't think twice about hoping in the car and driving 8 hours no matter what time of year (Why would you fly?). I don't think it's crazy for your cousin to plan a family holiday. It sounds like fun.


We are typically home for the holidays and family travels to us (some by plane) since we live in the same hometown/state near parents on both sides. But we have certainly traveled throughout the years - some big and some little trips. We are currently thinking about a Christmas trip for this year or next.

We don't do Thanksgiving here, so maybe I don't understand the importance of it, in which case take what I say with a grain of salt haha! 

I just converted miles to kilometres to see if that's a distance I would be prepared to drive for one weekend. It's over 800km!! No way in hell would I drive that far for a weekend!
1. The cost of petrol means I would have to take out a second mortgage to get there.
2. I hate driving.

And I also wouldn't want to pay airfares for a weekend trip, especially a holiday weekend which will be as busy as all get out, not to mention expensive. 

I would happily skip the family reunion in this case. Luckily my DSO would be firmly in the "no effing way" camp, so at least I wouldn't have to argue with him about it, or be made to feel guilty.

Thanksgiving is always a Thursday, so when people call it Thanksgiving weekend, they do mean a 4 day weekend, in some cases longer.

That being said, I hate family gatherings and I hate having obligations on holidays and there is no way I would go.

We have been going over Christmas since 2006. We own at the Pueblo Bonito properties. The first couple of years we stayed at the Monte Cristo Estates, now we have 2 houses at Novaspania. But the Sunset Beach resort is totally family-friendly and has tons of pools. They have busses that you can take from Sunset Beach (on the pacific coast side) to the Sea of Cortez area where they have the Blanco and Rose resorts. We switched from every year (2006-2010) to every other year starting in 2012 when we had our oldest. So we have been there pre kids to now between me and my sister-in-laws this year we will have 10 kids ages 18 down to age 4. We have loved our time there we are very much looking forward to this year (since we didn't go in 2020). There is also the Pacifica resort on property that is only for those 16 and older if you aren't traveling with kids.

Another one who doesn't do Thanksgiving, so that's not an issue. We might join in the annual Thanksgiving dinner at our church - many of the founding members of our community were American, and our first Mass was 1st Advent, 1971 (last weekend of November) so we always have a big pot-luck Thanksgiving party to mark both occasions. But that just involves local travel.

We are planning on going back to Australia for Christmas. We have a 1 month old granddaughter who we haven't met yet, and her baptism will be in December, so we'll make the most of the long journey and stay for a few weeks. We haven't booked anything yet - we're in the middle of a house move this week - so this is on the back-burner right now until we're settled.

Neither of our families live near-by so holidays are a non-issue - a quiet time at home with just DH and the boys.

We are currently planning two trips, though.

The first is home to visit my family in Newfoundland (DH is coming with me this year). There will be very little down-time (exactly the way my adhd brain likes it) with a food festival, lots of hiking, brewery tours, cod fishing, and a trip to the west coast.

The second is a January dive trip to the Maldives with DH - 4 days land-based, 7 days on a dive yacht. We booked the flight through Doha so I’ve also booked an evening driving tour there. I’m excited for this but the flights are going to be a slog - two overnight flights each way.