Eleventh salon: What makes a vacation a vacation?

[jenett]

Welcome to the eleventh salon! Wander in, invite a friend to come along, and chat! (Not sure what's going on? Here, have a brief FAQ.) You can find previous ones in my salon tag. Please take a quick look at the reminders at the bottom of this post, too.

I am now on vacation, so you get vacation question, round two!

What makes a really great vacation for you? Are you a person who just wants to sleep and recuperate and drink thing with little frilly umbrellas in them? Do you want to go to interesting and unfamiliar places and explore the world? Do you want to do this with other people or on your own?

My usual vacation is either "Stay home and get things done on projects" or "Go visit people I like in place I am not currently living". The current vacation is the latter, though not in my most usual place for it, and I'm contemplating what it would take to go do two weeks in England in the fall of 2014. (which would be a Go See All The Things vacation, for slightly odd values of 'Things' because I've already seen most of the obvious tourist things, and have a very specific "This museum and that place" set of goals.

(I am currently in a room filled with interesting and fascinating people in person, and there will be other people around tonight, so comment replies slightly slower than usual.)

Quick reminders

- jjhunter did a great guide to following conversations here on Dreamwidth. Also a roundup of regular Dreamwidth events.
- If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (I've heard from a few people who worry they're going to say something that's going to be taken weirdly. If it helps, I am usually around and if there's a thing you'd like to get out in the conversation, but you're not sure how, feel free to PM or email or IM me, and I'll nudge the conversation that direction.)
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, and I added some thoughts about getting conversations going a few weeks ago.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two, with a few nearly a week later: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.

Comments

[mrissa]

I am on a vacation of sorts too! I am in Lanesboro at a bed and breakfast with Mark for our anniversary. We took a long walk along the Root River today, because, um. What we do when we visit places is go visit their water. Trees are also nice. But "here we are, what shall we do, I know, let's walk by their water" is really one of our very standard things. (Why Mris does not often vacation in the American Southwest, Reason 316.)

I don't think of conventions as vacations because I am required to interact with too many monkeys for it to feel like a break, even if I'm not getting as much writing done as usual (which I usually am not). When I am on vacation, physical exhaustion is fine but emotional exhaustion or feeling overwhelmed is not really the thing.

[jenett]

(Why Mris does not often vacation in the American Southwest, Reason 316.)

That? It made me totally crack up.

Walking by water is, yes, exceedingly pleasant, though I do not manage to do it reliably. (Also, at the moment, the water is in Entirely The Wrong Direction, which is weird. (It is largely south, rather than east or River.)

[batrachian]

There are many pleasant things about Phoenix. The lack of water is definitely unsettling, though.

(Though I am curious as to what qualifies as 'enough' water to folks, and have this theory that the scales are calibrated very differently depending on which side of the Mississippi River one grew up on)

[kyrielle]

I'm curious about your theory. More or less water for those east? I'd think it would depend more on what one grew up with than where?

(I grew up in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and I adore water. There's too much water if it's flooding, but otherwise, how does anyone live in these bizarrely dry places?? Heh.)

[batrachian]

My theory is that anybody who's grown up in the Great American Desert* is inherently used to a lot less water than folks elsewhere. Not that we don't have rain and snow and rivers, but it's not near as...ubiquitous as it is on the eastern half of the country. And yes, it's a geographic oversimplification, but I've looked at the rainfall charts and it's a difference of, if I recall correctly, about an order of magnitude between where my extended family lives (Michigan, Lower Peninsula, Kalamazoo area) and where I call my native biome (Denver, CO)

*Roughly speaking, from the Mississippi River west to the mountain ranges in CA/OR/WA; the actual coastal parts of the West Coast are, clearly, a different story altogether.

[kyrielle]

Ahhh. Yeah, the Willamette Valley is west of the Cascades, which I think are the range you are thinking of - it goes from high desert to lush watery landscapes there, give or take. (There's also the Coast Range, but that doesn't demarcate as much of a climate change, just makes getting to the coast in winter a bit aggravating.)

[batrachian]

Yes, the Cascades, precisely, and I believe the relevant range in California is the Sierra Nevada. (I have not ever lived that far west; my long-term habitation has largely been in Denver, with short stints at various times in Las Vegas, Phoenix and the last three years here in Boise (which is still technically desert by definitions of rainfall; it's just a high, cold-ish one)

[kyrielle]

Huh! And today I am linked on Facebook to a lovely page that shows factoids in maps. I have verified _none_ of the factoids but some seem relevant to this - the map of rivers in the US, the map of vegetation in the US, the map of rivers that feed into the Mississippi.... Some are just fascinating to look at. http://twistedsifter.com/2013/08/maps-that-will-help-you-make-sense-of-the-world/ - again, haven't fact-checked or even source-checked their data.

[kakiphony]

As someone who was born and raised where your family is from and recently lived in the Front Range, I think you're right. Frankly, the first summer I visited Colorado it made me cry because the land seemed so dry and brown and just plain sad. (New Mexico did the same thing to me, on an even grander scale. I just couldn't get over the feeling that this is where we sent people to die as we drove through the state. I did like the Los Alamos area, but the desert just devastates me.) I got used to it after a while, but I still feel MUCH happier and more at home in green rolling hills with lakes and rivers every 5-10 miles.)

[batrachian]

Expressed beautifully and eloquently. Thank you. <3

(Now I'm wondering if there is potential for small-world stories here; not that you'd necessarily know me from elsenet, but perhaps some of my family. Just as a musing-about-things; I know there's a lot of geography and social landscape and so on and so forth)

[kakiphony]

Most of those small-world stories are more likely to involve my husband than me. He has a lot of friends from high school who attended Western Michigan and Michigan State. Whereas I...uh...didn't really have high school friends and fled (to western Mass) after my sophomore year to attend an early admittance college program.

We both actually grew up about 45 minutes south of K-zoo in St. Joseph County. When I do have small-world stories from there, they tend to be from the few years I practiced law and was on the library board there. The only internet connections I have from that area who are fandom/geek related, I met through a HS friend of my husband's -- and I connected with them via bpal of all things!

[kakiphony]

Or are exceedingly tangential through my real life college friend who grew up in Gaylesburg.

[batrachian]

Ah, oh well. It's still very nice to meet you. :D

[elisem]

(Coming in late to say: Yay, BPAL!)

[batrachian]

I was musing on this myself earlier; the weekend before last was a major convention for me, and while I took nearly a week off of work for it, my brain hadn't really classified it as a vacation.

I think the major reason for it is not that I worked my arse off (as you do, when running conventions), but rather that essentially the entire weekend was spent in professional, get-shit-done mode. By the time Monday evening hit and we were at the Zombie Dog party (which would have been a perfect social cap), I was too sick to properly unwind, and just went home and went to bed.