Every fall we like to take a Dayhiking Vacation (or dayhikecations as we call it) with our family to get away from our electronics and take a breath from our daily schedules. To be perfectly honest I start to feel cooped up if I don’t leave the house every few months. I slowly go insane…
As I finished planning out our trip to the Smokies I realized we have a set of criteria for planning that we consider makes for a solid dayhikecation trip that I thought would be worth sharing.
1. First answer the question of who is joining you on the trip?
Who is joining you on the trip sets the whole presedent for the vacation. Is family coming so you can expect someone will want to stay behind sometimes and play with the kids (cough cough Grandparents)? Or it just you and the kids? For us, I always try to have Grandparents come along. Think of it as a symbiotic relationship – they get to play with grandchildren, you get to go hiking.
2. Lodging
For lodging, I usually look for a nearby Airbnb/VRBO (not picky on the platform) just a whole house. We like having access to a kitchen and laundry. We use the kitchen for eating-in and also packing various trailfoods and lunch. Laundry is important to us because on occasion we will get rained on and/or muddy and need to run a load. I also look for ample bedrooms/space. Like I mentioned above, we like to take family, and need to have plenty of bedrooms so everyone is a comfortable as possible.
Lodging should be a max of 15-20 min from a normal grocery store, and restaurants are a bonus.
Lastly, the house should be a max of 45 min (with room for exceptions) to the trailheads. There are several reasons for this criteria. One, if we’re renting an Airbnb, then that assumes we’ve already spent several hours traveling and we don’t want to burn most of the trip driving to the trailheads as well. Two, we want to maximize our time on the trails, for us that means getting up early, having plenty of time to complete a long strenous hike, and make it home before dark. If we’re 1+ hours from the trailhead that’s 2 hours of daylight we lose in the fall and makes for a short day. It can be tough to fit in 8-10 mile hikes with that lose of time. Also, we’ve all read how popular hiking has been as a passtime during the pandemic, we prefer be on the trail early and beat the crowds. Super important, beeeat the crowds.
3. Trail types
We usually have family that range in fitness, from toddlers to Grandparents, so I try to mix up the difficulty and have multiple hiking options ready. I’ll try to have hikes for each skill level, easy, moderate, and strenous. For those days when the moderate team is beat up, and the toddler wants to play at the park, we’ll do a strenous hike for those capable. Other days when everyone wants to head out we’ll pick out an easy/moderate hike to do.
Also just maintaining the strategy of pick-your-own-adventure policy works for us and our family. For the entire trip, I’ll have pre-selected trail options, and get a raise of hands on who wants to go. If toddler and grandparents don’t want to go, perfect! Then strenous 10 mile hike it is. If everyone wants to go, sure, we’ve got hikes for those days as well. We really like this pattern because people can just opt in/out as they need, no stress and most importantly no fighting.
4. Playgrounds
If you have small kids, toddlers, infants, playgrounds are a great distraction on days offs or afternoons where there is time to spare. We always look on the map for free parks and playgrounds nearby for the kids to go jump around on.