In this pandemic season when travel opportunities are limited, there are other good reasons to take a staycation, which is a shorter time away from work with your family. Those benefits include money savings, travel time savings, and convenience related to school year demands, pregnancy, the need to care for aging parents, and work demands.

Here are some ideas for one-day staycations:

• Plan a day hike.
• Take a picnic and outdoor games to a local park.
• Spend a day at a nearby lake.
• Rent kayaks for lake or river paddling.
• Fashion an outdoor tea party for the family.
• Create a front-yard music festival for passersby.
• Create a back-yard movie theater with a white sheet hung on the side of your house and a projector hooked up to your computer.
• Take a reading retreat in a quiet spot in the outdoors.
• Put together a boxed lunch, take a drive out of town, and stop someplace beautiful for a picnic.
• Create your own family spa complete with facials and mutual back rubs, manicures, and pedicures.
• Visit a historic site open in your area that you’ve never seen.
• Watch an online art museum tour, and then create your own masterpieces with your family.
• Create a family food festival for the back yard—with each family member making a different dish from your family’s heritage.
• Plan a porch party. Decorate your porch, provide music and refreshments, and dance the night away. Learn to line dance or ballroom dance by watching videos online.
• Rent a convertible and take the family on a daylong road trip.
• Camp out in your back yard and cook hotdogs on a stick with s’mores for dessert. Play flashlight tag and other night games.

50 Life Lessons For Grads

Janet McHenry is a national speaker and author of twenty-four books, including the bestselling PrayerWalk and her newest, The Complete Guide to the Prayers of Jesus. She and her husband Craig raised their four children in the Sierra Valley of northern California, where he is a rancher. They love to kayak on the beautiful mountain lakes. She’s a member of Christian Authors Network. Connect through her website: https://www.janetmchenry.com.