Staycation became abuzz in the United States during May 2008 as the summer travel season began with gas prices reaching record highs, which caused a lot of people to forgo traveling opting to stay put instead. The word has its roots in 2003, coined by Brent Butt, a Canadian comedian says a Connecticut travel blog. Other variations include "daycation" (one-day vacation) and "naycation" (no vacation taken). In 2009, Webster dictionary added staycation to its vocabulary.
My husband, daughter and I have been staycationing since 2007, when the economy started to become sour. We had huge bills to pay (huge mortgage, huge credit card bills, etc.), so vacation somewhere else was out of the question. The real estate market went bust and the U.S. economy was on its way to recession.
One of the positive outcomes of the U.S. recession-- we discovered beautiful back roads and rediscovered the beautiful sites and spots that makes San Francisco and the Bay Area one of the world's top tourists destinations. I guess we're fortunate that we live in a city near beautiful tourist spots. San Francisco has tons to offer. 2007 was the first time we also went to Alcatraz (I'll share those photos in later posts). For a long time, we kept putting off visiting Alcatraz and many other spots for that matter, just because they're there...to us we can always go and visit anytime we desire because we live nearby.
So, staycation allows us to go to local spots that we have not seen before. We became tourists of our own city and nearby towns. Don't get me wrong, we still want to travel to other places again, someday. However, for now, we are enjoying being what I call "local tourists."
