What do I want my summer vacation to actually look like? 🏕️

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New adventures or relaxed and laid back?

The trip from North Harmony State Forest to Nordhouse Dunes in Michigan is giving me pause. While on paper I can do this leg of the trip in one day, I worry about in practice. Google Maps says it’s 550 miles and 7 hours and 53 minutes which can be done in one day but that ignores the major cities it routes you through with delays and stressful urban traffic. I could overnight somewhere in Ohio or Lower Michigan but the options are pretty limited for quiet dispersed camping as much of the lands around there are either developed or private farm lands.

I’m not totally against staying a few nights in a campground but it seems like just more time lost in the journey and a lot of days on the road. In contrast, just going to the Finger Lakes National Forest might be boring but also quiet and relaxed. Should summer vacation be relaxing but the same old? Or should I create a new exciting journey seeing more of America? It’s the 250th anniversary of America and maybe my best chance to travel before my parents get too old with a brand new and hopefully reliable rig, still I don’t know if I want to spend so much of my vacation cooped up in side of the cab of my truck driving.

Something I want to do more in my forties and into my fifties – travel to new places 🛻

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Next year I am thinking of getting a new, small, reliable fuel efficent pickup truck. It won’t be cheap but after 14 years with Big Red I’m due for something newer and more reliable that will open up more options for travel beyond my usual haunts in New York through West Virginia.

In 14 years from now I will be 56, going on 57 years old. It will be 2038, and I will potentially able to take state retirement with more then 25 years in with the system. Maybe it will be meger retirement compared to if I stayed longer, but I if I can focus on building my off-grid homestead full-time and be mostly self-sufficient, in end does money really matter? But that’s something more for the late 2030s.

In the mean time, I want to explore and see more of America. What is it really like living in Rural Midwest tor even the West? I don’t really have much interest in seeing the Grand Canyon or Zion National Park. I much rather spend my time on backroads in my pickup truck, camping on a dirt road in some little pull off along the way in National Forest. Have a fire in an informal stone ring, spend the night in the wilderness. See places that aren’t in the tourist brochures.

People are like buying a new truck is a terrible idea. Depreciating asset! Poorhouse life! Less money to invest! Don’t you want a big house with vinyl siding and an asphalt roof in a suburban neighborhood where people would be horrified at plastic in a burn barrel and smell of hogs? Rundown homesteads are hardly an investment, don’t you want to be a successful professional, a unit director and have a nice place in suburbs so close to work and giant mounds of garbage that are everywhere these days?

Truth is I want to get away from the giant mounds of garbage, even if my old truck of the past decade and a half is soon to be shred and mounded up in one of those piles.  I don’t want a plastic picket fence or granite counter tops or all the things that “wealthy folk” have in their house. I want a life that looks like a run down hunting camp, then something invested in. But in the mean time, I want to travel and see more of Real America and not the plastic crap towns and canned tourist parks they advertise in those glossy magazines that aren’t even that great for starting fires.

Don’t you want to …

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One of the most annoying things in this world is when people either say, “don’t you want to …” or actually implying a similar thing, suggesting there is a right way to live one’s life, and that any other way is foolish. Often I see this phrase most frequently used in advertising, sometimes that explicitly but also sometimes very subtlety in other, quite obnoxious ways.

1. Expressing an Expectation

In many cases, the speaker already assumes the answer is “yes.” They aren’t asking if you want to; they are subtly telling you that you should want to. 

  • Example: “Don’t you want to go to the party?” implies the speaker thinks it’s a good idea and expects you to agree.
  • How to respond: Treat it like a regular “Do you want to” question. Answer “Yes” if you do, or “No” if you don’t.

2. Disguising Opinions or Advice

Sometimes this phrase is used to offer unsolicited advice or a nosy opinion without being direct. 

  • Example: “Don’t you want to wear a jacket?” is often a polite way of saying “I think you should wear a jacket because it’s cold.”
  • Example: “Don’t you want to settle down and have a family?” can be a way of pushing traditional societal expectations. 

3. Seeking Validation or Engagement

The phrase can also be a way for someone to prompt you to ask them more questions about a topic they want to discuss. 

  • Example: “Don’t you want to ask about my vacation?” implies the speaker is waiting for your permission to share details they are excited about.

4. Guilt-Tripping or Judgment

In some contexts, it can feel like a judgment on your parenting or personal choices. 

  • Example: Being asked “Don’t you want to hold your baby?” while you are busy preparing formula can feel like an implication that you are being uninvolved or lazy.

    Map: Artists Rock - Sunset Rock
    Map: Blackhead Mountain Trail
    Map: Green Mountain National Forest North

    I don’t want to DIE in New York State

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    I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in New York State if I can all avoid it. New York, the confined living operation, is a good place to make money if you don’t mind the wokeism and the extreme demands of greenies and wilderness advocates.

    Truth is I worry a lot about my time to escape. I told myself after college that my job was a temporary one just to save up some money for moving on to the next stage of life, buying land in some rural area far away from the cities. But that was years ago now, and each year I’ve made a bit more money, saved more, and realize I need more to fully be able to build a life away from city, especially with limited opportunities for good work away from cities. As the money and work gets better as my career advances, it gets harder and harder to walk away.

    Now with my parents getting elderly, I see another threat to my future. Their homestead with the much to large and modern house. What happens if I ended up inheriting it? And then all their equipment plus other equipment I end up buying? Livestock I end up buying? How to a wind that all down when I’m 55 years old and can put in for early retirement to persue my dreams?

    Plus another concern I have is just time. The less then 13 years  between now and age 55 will come and go quickly, but so will the 15 years between age 55 and 70, the later year which I tentatively plan to make the final year of my life. It just seems such a short time period when you look at it that way. But there is no guarantees between 70 even if I don’t blow out my brains at that age.

    Maybe it’s just that I need some nights in wilderness, but I want something more then a one night stand in life. Even summer vacation when I spend 9 nights in National Forest, it’s just a vacation. I set things up and before long it’s taken down and packed away. And then there was those videos of Homesteady moving to Alaska and so many other off-gridder channels.

    Truth is I can’t get back time, but my investments are growing, though slower now that the economy is heading towards the crapper in the short-term. Granted lower stock prices are good for future growth, especially as I continue to buy the dip, but I’m also watching the time fall of the clock one meaningless year after another.