Summer Vacation Ideas

At the Water Park of America, you can hop on board a raft and float down this incredibly fun family raft ride. This ride is ten stories high and over a mile long! Your family will love it! For those thrill seekers, there are a multitude of fast moving tubes that will shoot you out like a cannon and leave your running back up to the top to get more! For those less adventurous types (and for children too small or young to go down the fast moving tubes), there are plenty of activity pools to easily fill up your days. There are balls and hoops for a game of indoor water polo or water basketball as well as small wading pools for toddlers and children who do not know how to swim yet. In the Fort Snelling play area there is a huge adventure park for kids with a 500 gallon bucket that dumps the water on the kids every two and a half minutes! This play area is full of climbing nets and slides for hours of fun and entertainment on this summer vacation with kids.

Nothing screams FUN more than water and a summer vacation with kids to the Water Park of America will be an action packed, memory filled vacation that your kids will not soon forget! Located inside the Radisson Hotel Bloomington near the Mall of America in Minnesota, it is the largest indoor water park. You will be able to “surf” on the indoor Flow Rider Surf Simulator and pretend like you are riding the waves in Hawaii. You will spend hours body surfing the waves in the Lake Superior Wave Pool. This water park is geared for all ages and can easily accommodate and entertain toddlers as well as adults with the greatest of ease. This will be a summer vacation you will not soon forget!

Activities about at the Ahwahnee Lodge and your summer vacation with kids will be a full of non stop adventure both at the lodge and the surrounding area as well. There is an incredible history to learn about the lodge with its amazing architecture and Native American lessons all around that will keep your children occupied for hours. Venturing out to the park, your kids will have a blast at any age. There are wilderness programs available for very age group. The Wee Wild Ones group is geared for kids’ ages 3 years and younger and fills its days with fun stories, animals, games and arts and crafts all geared towards Yosemite. This is free, so it’s a great deal! The Junior Rangers Club is for the 7-13 year age group and teaches the group valuable lessons about our environment while making the course fun! The group will go on a nature walk, picking up litter along the way. At the end of the course, if they have completed their ranger handbook, they will earn their official Junior Ranger Badge. This course is also free with exception of the $3.50 activity book.

There is no place more beautiful for a summer vacation with kids than Yosemite National Park. This infamous forest is filled with majestic trees, gorgeous rivers and incredible scenery. And, while there are plenty of spots available to camp, you can go one step up and stay in the luxurious gorgeous Ahwahnee Lodge. This 4 star hotel has served the average Joe as well as royalty, presidents and celebrities alike over the years. They boast on being a perfect balance of history, hospitality and elegance. Completed in 1927, the Ahwahnee Lodge is a mixture of Native American, art deco and Middle Eastern design. There are several different gathering rooms at the lodge dedicated to providing guests with the utmost in luxury and relaxation. The lodge boasts beautiful windows which allow you to take in all of the breathtaking scenery around you.

No summer vacation to the United States Capital should be complete without a visit to the home of George Washington in Mt. Vernon. His home is a short 20 minute drive from our nation’s capital and is worth the drive. In Mt. Vernon you will be able to walk through and explore the home of our first president. You will see the bed where he died, the table where he dined in and where his children slept and played. You will also be able to explore the grounds that he took such incredible pride in and the slave quarters that were impeccable compared to other slave quarters of that time. You will see such historic artifacts on display as his clothes, famous white wig and even his dentures white were made out of wood! This is a true lesson in history that should not be missed

In the tough economic times that most everyone is facing in one way or another, it is hard to imagine planning or saving for a vacation, but for the lucky few whose pocketbooks have not been affected by these tough financial times, you can give your kids the vacation of a lifetime that they won’t soon forget! Summer vacations with kids used to only include packing up a tent and a sleeping bag and going for a weekend to a national park. While those vacations were fun, they did not include the activity packed vacation that may stick in your kid’s memories forever. If your still want to have your kids have a taste of nature without having to rough it out in the middle of nowhere, there are plenty of options available…you just have to know where to look!

If you want to give your kids a true history lesson on a summer vacation to the United States capital, the National Holocaust museum should not be avoided. This museum, though not a part of the Smithsonian group, it is simply remarkable. Older children will appreciate this museum more than younger ones, so keep that in mind. You will read and witness stories from Holocaust survivors. You will see artifacts such as concentration camp uniforms and bunk beds from Auschwitz that will leave an indelible impression in your mind. The most moving aspect of this museum is the shoes. Thousands and thousands of pairs of shoes from victims of the Holocaust are piled stories high in this presentation. To see these shoes that were once worn by innocent people who died in a horrible bloodshed will not soon leave your memory.

The Smithsonian museums should not be missed on your summer vacation to the United States capital. What many people do not realize is that the Smithsonian is not just one museum, but a collection of museums each specializing in a certain era or factor of American history. The most popular and most often visited Smithsonian is the American History Museum. This museum houses such historic artifacts as President Lincoln’s infamous top hat, Archie Bunker’s easy chair, and Judy Garland’s ruby red slippers from the Wizard of Oz as well as the awe inspiring Old Glory original American flag. You can easily spend the entire day exploring these walls. There is something new and exciting around every corner.

The Air and Space Museum is another interesting Smithsonian to explore on your summer vacation to the United States capital, especially if you have children who are fascinated with space ships, astronauts and aircrafts. In this museum, you will find airplanes flown by the Wright Brothers and Amelia Earhardt. You will also find out everything you needed and wanted to know about space exploration including flight plan information and space artifacts gathered from several space missions taken by astronauts in our nation. This is a truly incredible museum that should not be missed. Allow yourself at least half a day to visit this museum, although if you are an air and space nut, you may want to spend a little more time here.

If you wish to give your kids the gift of a vacation where they will learn a huge amount about our nation’s history, no place is better than a summer vacation to the United States capitol of Washington DC. No where else in the country will you find more history than in this small city. In Washington DC, you will find an endless supply of Smithsonian museums and historical monuments, not to mention the White House and the Capitol building. You can easily spend a week here and still not see everything, so it is important to have a schedule and plan so you can fit in the key sites to the city.