We are retired. Currently on a month long road trip visiting friends/family. Having the car gives us a lot off flexibility, which has helped with an unexpected health issue with BIL. We might end up extending our trip. That will require a mail favor from the neighbor because max mail hold is 30 days. We did same for him last year - get key, pick up the held batch from package box.
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Thatâs what makes good neighbors, good neighbors. 
Hope your BIL will be ok.
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Weâve always traveled and plan to do more in retirement.
My thoughts: There are certain trips that lend themselves to being shorter. Maybe itâs the cost, maybe itâs the format (cruise, need a guide for hiking, biking, ski trip, etc.) Do those while youâre working as you wonât resent the time limitation.
There are trips that require a certain level of fitness. If these are on your list (Machu Pichu, etc), get them toward the front of your queue. If they fit into the category above, great!
If there are trips that need more time â perhaps Australia/NZ because of flight time, a slow amble through a foreign country, save them for retirement. Also, save the trips that can be done more cheaply with flexibilty. Renting an apartment in Paris for a month, getting a beach house in the shoulder season, etc.
Some part of this depends on how confident you are as a traveler as well as where you want to go. We have friends who only travel on tours whlle we greatly prefer the independence. Having a hotel concierge can be nice, and in some places, it is enormously helpful. Otoh, having a kitchen, experiencing the local supermarket, etc is quite a bit of fun and far less touristy. But I might choose differently in Paris or Amsterdam than Johannesburg.
So no, donât put off travel, but be strategic so you can do it all! (And I fully concur that you might want to find friends to travel with or even join a group as a solo.. DH isnât a hiker, so I do that with friends. )
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Once I decide on a destination, I always give my H first right of refusal on a trip. If he declines (has only happened once so far), I have a travel wingman (my widowed SIL) who is always up for going anywhere, any time.
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Yep, other traveling companion options is always good! Iâve gone on a couple of trips with D19. While H and I share most interests and enjoy most of the same things on trips, one he definitely doesnât is days in museums lol, which both D19 and I love. We had a fabulous trip to Berlin and Vienna a couple of years ago, which involved a lot of seeing art as well as the other historical/cultural aspects. I saw something about the new âBaltic expressâ (kind of misnomer) train yesterday, which is basically a hop on hop off train through Czech and Poland. D19 is keen on that, H less so. (H also goes on off-road motorbike adventures with his friends and I do tennis tournament trips with mine, but those are usually just a few days at a time once or twice a year.)
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I have two friends that I am still close with that I met through my job I was at for almost 30 years. Both of these women have husbands that no longer want to travel. When I had lunch with these friends last week they told our group that they are planning a trip to Europe together for early spring of next year. If at some point my H decides he doesnât want to travel any longer I will ask these friends if I can join in on their trips.
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I can throw any number of stones at my in-laws, but one bouquet I must toss is their insistence on a family vacation that started with their immediate family and over time expanded to include their childrenâs spouses and then grandchildren. Theyâd rent a house for a week, and weâd pay to get there. Destinations were usually beaches and lakes in the Southeast but every few years out West or even Europe. Many years, it was our only vacation and I did sometimes resent that. But as a result, we all caught the travel bug and I developed stronger relationships with my BILs, SILs and nephews/nieces than with my own family. Now, my wife and I are the ones paying for the venue and hounding our kids and their spouses to make sacrifices to join us.
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Thatâs nice that you have some possible alternate travel buddies.
@vistajay - like you, I do appreciate my husbandâs siblings arranging yearly vacations with all the families for 25+ years (a tradition started by their grandfather).
And - like in your family - my kids have developed the kind of close relationships with cousins you get from spending a week in the same house/pool/beach every summer since babyhood.
And (unfortunately) my kids donât have those same relationships with my brotherâs kids. Relationships take proximity and regularity.
Itâs moreso that I would have liked more vacations with the four of us. And perhaps half a week less at the beach with in-laws so we actually would have some spare vacation cash for other trips. lol.
But as I realized later in life - as with so many, many things - if you want something to happen, make it happen yourself.
So now Iâm planning fun vacations with my adult kids/H - making up for lost time and hoping we can continue adventures together for a few more years!
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We definitely are in the âgo nowâ and âgo moreâ camps. When the kids were younger and finances and schedulers were tight, we did lots of 3-4 day trips. I recall each one of them with great fondness. Of course, I wish we had longer but better for us to go than not. Now, we still have limitations, mainly with schedules, but are doing our first trip to Europe. Weâre hoping to do a mix of short and longer trips in retirement.
PS @gardenstategal really like your suggested break-down of the stages of travel while working/then retired. Makes a lot of sense & considers the important variables!
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As someone who has traveled regularly with my kids their whole lives, I will say they seem to have a much greater appreciation for it now that theyâre older and can understand what a privilege it is. We recently took a non-extravagant family trip to Puerto Rico in March, the first weâve all taken together in a couple of years. My D20, who has been on her own and paying her own way in life for the past year declared it was âIf not the best, at least top three of all of our trips.â I honestly believe that has more to do with her stage in life than the actual trip, as weâve been to some pretty amazing places together over the years.
As for H and I, we are cognizant of how fleeting the years are when the âkidsâ are still just all ours, and can travel with us, so yeaâŠit was a pretty special vacation.
SoâŠI bet the adventures youâre having with your family now pack an extra punch for all of you.
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I am not at all ashamed to have used vacation travel as a way to get time with adult DS! Itâs a nice way to spend time and have new experiences together in our âall adultâ family configuration. Itâs also a relatively easy way to do something nice for DS now that weâre less aware of what other needs/wants might be.
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