• National parks are full of beauty and marvels.arches national park image by Brett Bouwer from Fotolia.com
  
  Take a vacation to get a change of pace and a break from the every day. You can benefit by getting a new perspective and having time to go to a new place or at a different pace. Vacations can happen without extravagant spending. By exploring your local area as if you were a tourist, camping or visiting a national park or trading places with an out of town friend, you can have an affordable vacation.
  
  

Explore Your Community

• Plan to experience more of your local area. Gather brochures from your local visitor's bureau, or the literature rack of a local motel. Make a list of must-see or to-do items. Plan a day trip each day to do something new you haven't done before. Visit a historical site one day, or a new spa. Fill your days with fun and entertaining things you've always wanted to do but just haven't had the time for. Determine how much you want to spend and budget for the admissions fee you will have to pay. Many areas have special gardens, museums, or games available for a reasonable fee. Maybe you want to play paint ball with your kids, go bowling, or go folk dancing, or check out that new park with a great picnic. What is important is to not just stay home and putter, unless you find that relaxing.
  
  

National and State Parks

• The National Park Service has 383 places to visit in the 50 states and nearly 300 million people visited in 2009. Redwood National Park in northern California, Arches National Park in Utah, Big South Fork National River and Recreation area in Tennessee and Kentucky all offer unique and beautiful plants, landscapes and places to stay. For $80 per year, you can get admission to all the parks, which makes sense if you plan to visit four or more parks in a 365-day period. Campgrounds in many parks have been upgraded due to the Federal Stimulus program. Study the brochures on the National Park Service web site. You'll find full-color two- to eight-page brochures that help you plan what you want to see, and tell you how to make camping reservations. You can make reservations up to 240 days in advance online.
  
  The U.S. Forest Service provides another set of campgrounds all across the country. Often these are more primitive than those of the National Park Service, which means using outhouses and walking a few yards to get the water, but the settings are always in a forest and usually close to a body of water. You will pay $10 to $20 per night for a campsite.
  
  

Trade Places

• When you have friends or relatives out of town in a place you want to visit, arrange to swap houses for a week or two and be a tourist in their town, while they enjoy yours. Ask them to provide you with suggestions for places to visit, or things to do and leave a similar list for them. You will avoid having to pay lodging fees and will benefit from being able to eat in or prepare picnics most of the time. Choose a new hobby to explore or learn in this town. Go to all the toy train stores, or visit all the quilt shops. Time your visit with a local event, concert, theater or sporting event that you normally don't get a chance to attend. If you have enough vacation time available, instead of trading places, visit each other and enjoy being together as you share what you like with your friends or family and they share with you.