Family Takes Epic One-Hour Road Trip to Avoid Being Too Tired

KEY POINTS

•The family faced a busy spring with a college graduation, high school graduation, and wedding in Connecticut.
•They rented a vacation house one hour away, deliberately avoiding tourist spots and complicated plans to rest.
•Their days involved simple pleasures like burgers, watermelon, fishing, shuffleboard, and a nostalgic calzone picnic at a UConn horse farm.

After surviving a spring packed with a college graduation, a high school graduation, and a wedding (no big deal, just three of the main family events in Connecticut), this family decided to flip the vacation script. Instead of jetting off to Bermuda or fleeing to Maine, they rented a vacation home exactly one hour from home — yes, Connecticut again. Their perfectly revolutionary plan: zero itinerary, seven people plus a girlfriend crammed in beds, grills constantly sizzling burgers, watermelon like it’s their last fruit on Earth, and more shuffleboard games than probably needed. They even pulled off the ancient art of scheduling sleep arrangements over text to avoid modern drama. No bucket-list thrills, just bass fishing, pool volleyball, afternoon naps, and a bonfire s’more-fest with zero deep chats, because why get philosophical on rest? The climax was take-out calzones at a rickety picnic table by a horse farm linked to a husband’s college memories at UConn — obviously the height of luxury. After all that, everyone said: yes, let’s do this boringly perfect one-hour getaway again.