My first year away from home, spent one week with my room mate and her family celebrating Chanukah and the 2nd with the next door neighbor from the dorm & her family, chopping down a Christmas tree and teaching my room mate Christmas carols. We had great fun! It was pretty low cost, as I recall, especially for us students.
“Unfortunately, it set the standard for us for farmer’s markets, and we’ve yet to find one anywhere near as good all these years and others, although nice, can be disappointing.”
Oh my, the ferry terminal market in San Francisco will change your life. That’s one of my favorite places in the world. It’s even good in the winter. I love our Midwestern markets in high season, but there’s no such thing as local olive oil, or citrus, or pomegranates…
My undergrad boyfriend and I had different college calendars; he was at Oberlin when I was at Bryn Mawr. We each spent our respective spring and fall breaks crashing at the other’s dorm, sneaking into the dining hall and joining in on classes. After three semesters of that, I felt a little like I’d gone to Oberlin, too.
This was a pastime, not a vacation, but in law school I used to go for long walks down to the Mt. Auburn Cemetery. The Victorians used to hike and picnic in cemeteries, and this one’s design reflects that. Beautiful ponds, hills, benches…it’s peaceful and lovely.
The terminal building n SF is nice but like much of SF, the prices are HIGH and would have been way over my student budget. The Davis and Eugene farmer’s markets had potatoes for 5 lbs/$1, bushel of almonds $5, $1/lb mushrooms, etc. this was in the 70s/80s. Being vegetarian was fun and easy with such reasonable, fresh and yummy produce.
I worked in the summers, so no big trips. I did go camping with my boyfriend and seven of his hallmates over a weekend in junior year! They were a nice bunch of guys and probably were well-behaved because of me. It was a great time, nonetheless.
I don’t have any stories of my own, but my mom has great stories from cheap, fun vacations as a student. She would save enough money to buy a plane ticket and that’s it, and she would just hitchhike across Europe and Latin America, staying with people she met and became friends with. She went wherever the wind took her, practically – no itinerary, no money, just an adventurous spirit and gumption.
Nowadays, that wouldn’t be safe (nor was it particularly safe back then; thank god nothing horrible happened to her), but my mom was a somewhat fearless, wild hippie.
For spring break my sophomore year at Mount Holyoke, some friends and I booked a trip to Bermuda with one of those awful, fly-by-night travel companies. We stayed in a lousy place (plumbing issues and far from everything),but had a fantastic time.
In the summer before our final year in school, my friend & I took a road trip in my Chevette. We drove from the Detroit area to Montreal, where we stayed a few days with a friend from school. We went to cheap bars, danced a lot, and had a great time with native Montrealites. After that, we drove to Maine to stay with another couple friends for a few days at a bare-bones motel in Bar Harbor, Maine - it was late June, not much was open, the water was freezing - but it was cheap & we had fun. We then drove to NH and stopped at Franconia Notch (and a number of waterfalls). We drove up Mt. Washington - had the cheapest thing on the menu at the Mt. Washington Hotel & felt like royalty. Our drive continued through VT, and we splurged on the Lake Champlain Ferry to NY. We stayed in National Parks for a few dollars a night, sleeping on picnic tables or in the car (the seats reclined all the way back, so it wasn’t too uncomfortable). In Lake Placid, we were underwhelmed by what was left of the Olympic site - but the town was lovely, and we had a feast of KFC and cheap wine while watching ET at the local drive-in. We continued on, back to Canada. We stayed in a dorm room at Victoria University, ate at a buffet, walked miles to get some beer at the LCBO, and walked all over town to enjoy music at bars with no cover. The next day, we were pretty much out of money & realized we still needed to pay for the bridge to the U.S. - no credit cards for us in those days! - but we were lucky that it was Canada Day - 10 cent hot dogs in the park! We made it home with just pennies to our names. What a wonderful memory (34 years ago …).
I had put my driver’s license in my jeans pocket the night before we left, and I realized during the trip that I didn’t have any ID (the jeans were in the hamper at home). It was never an issue during the trip. Can you imagine trying to cross the border today without ID?!
One summer, three college friends and I roadtripped from New Haven to Texas. Then we caught the overnight Aztec Eagle train from the Texas border to Mexico City. We had pullman bedrooms for something like $24 fare. Enjoyed Mexico City and Lake Avandaro. Peso exchange rate was so favorable even then (1983) that we called it “Monopoly Money.” Many adventures and good memories and very inexpensive. Alas the Aztec Eagle no longer runs.
Cleveland Zoo. And the Jersey shore, off season, for day trips
Not really a vacation, but we used to go to the beach to fly kites after eating hotdogs or ice cream from a beachside stand .
Smithsonian trips are also great. Free admission , including the zoo.
Backpacking.
We’d get up Friday at 4 am… by 9 be on some spectacular Yosemite trail which we wouldn’t complete until sundown on Sunday. Home around midnight. In class on Monday by 10.
Road trips. I had a large older car that easily fit 6. If we couldn’t find a motel room, we’d sleep in tents on the side of the road, particularly in National Parks. We were routinely busted by park rangers, who’d wake us up and tell us to move on.
Once we had a 4-day weekend and we drove from the Bay Area to Palm Springs in a 70 SuperBeetle. It took 11 hours one way! So we’d drive all day Saturday, spend Sunday & Monday by the pool or hiking in the desert, and then 11 hours back home.
All I can say is: youth!!! There is no way I could do any of these insane trips now.
So many of those road trips were slo mo, compared to today because of the 55 speed limit. When I go west these days, I am amazed at how fast I get from town to town.
I was in school in northern CA and had a classic trip in a boyfriend’s van to Oregon and Washington one summer. We slept in the van, stayed with friends, made driftwood houses on the Washington beaches, cracked oysters off the rocks at low tide for stew.
At times I slept on picnic tables in parks or roadside rests, in wild places in the desert sans a tent. Nature provided an incredible playground, and I still haven’t found a better one.
Wow, remembering the driftwood houses. Back when logs got away from loggers and washed up onshore, I remember running along the coast for half a mile or more jumping from one log to another. All of which took place about 4’ above the sand.
Spring break road trip in a housemates old van from our SF Bay area college to Mulege/Santa Rosalia, Baja California. Slept on the beach, snorkeled and played in the water, drank a little too much tequila. Good times. Many years later still friends with all involved.
I was in college in the late 70s/early80s and the popular Spring Break trip back then was a bunch of kids in an RV driving down the east coast to Fort Lauderdale (aka Party City). I was fairly sure my parents wouldn’t have approved so I neglected to inform them of my plans. Of course, now that I am a parent, I shudder at all the things that could have gone wrong… 
ETA: We did have a great time tho 
I took a spontaneous trip to Niagara Falls with a group of guys and girls from college. It was at least a 9 hour drive and it wasn’t during Spring break. So it must have been a long weekend. Crazy, but I remember it being a lot of fun.
Camping - the tent-and-sleeping-bag variety. My parents were both teachers, so the whole family had summers free. We used to take off for 3-4 weeks at a time visiting far-flung state and national parks, with the occasional distant family member along the way. My childhood smelled of woodsmoke and wet canvas.
I continued to camp as a college student, and we still camp as a family. In fact, I get restless if I go too long without trees and mountains.