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14 NEW Vacation Ideas in USA [NOT JUST A LIST OF DESTINATIONS…]
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Jan 6, 2023
Just released, our new Travel Planner + Organizer ebook - check it out today at https://bit.ly/3e9wqoJ Now that Americans are (temporarily) confined to the USA due to COVID 19 spikes, we wanted to bring you some new ideas for traveling in 'merica. Today I'm sharing 14 new vacation ideas in USA, places and modes of travel you may not have considered yet. If you are seeking corona vacations USA you are in the right place. We'll be covering unique ways of traveling, inspiration for new places to go, and some new vacation ideas to consider. And don't forget to download the free resource guide to get all of the links (plus some we didn't talk about here). Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:07 Google Explore Tool for Inspiration 4:24 New Camping Options 8:03 Houseboat Options 9:48 Roadtrip Unique Experience 11:37 Train Vacation Ideas 14:33 Unique Lodging Options 17:22 Wine Tasting Locations In the US 19:09 Bike Tours 21:00 Horseback Riding Tours 22:10 Motorcycle Vacations 23:03 Volunteering Vacations
View Video Transcript
0:00
So we are in, or I am in America. And as you know, with COVID, we are kicked out of almost everywhere
0:09
Nobody wants us in any of their countries. So as far as vacations go, we Americans are, for the most part, restricted to America
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And even within that, we may or may not be restricted further depending on where you live
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So I wanted to bring you some new, unique ideas for vacations in the U.S
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that you may not have heard of before or that you may not have considered
0:36
I'm going to cover 14 of my top ideas for traveling in the United States
0:42
Are you ready? Let's go ahead and get started. Really quick before we get started, I have created a special list that goes over all 14 of the ideas I'm covering today
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as well as links to all of the resources that we're talking about. including some that I am not covering here today
0:57
And you can get that for free by clicking the link in the description below
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And you'll be able to download it anytime you want. So don't forget
1:06
So the first place I want to show you is a place that if you've seen any of my videos
1:11
you know I go to quite often. And that is Google flights. The reason I like this to get started when I'm planning just about any vacation is it is a great way to get inspiration and ideas for places to go
1:24
So let me show you what I mean. We're on the Google Flights homepage. And if you scroll down here to explore destinations, what it does is it allows you to put in your home airport. In my case, I'm going to put in Los Angeles. And then what it does is it tells you what the prices are across the whole entire country. You could spread it out to the world, but for our purposes today, we're only talking about American vacations. And the cool thing about it is you can restrict it to time
1:54
So you can say, yes, let's go ahead and search the next six months
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I just, I don't know when I'm going to go, but I know it'll be in the next six months. You can also search by duration
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So you can say, I'm going to be gone for a weekend, a week, two weeks, because then it helps to, you know, if you're only gone for a week, it helps you pair this flight and this flight are the best options or this flight in this flight
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So it's good to know what, what duration that you're looking for
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The cool other thing is, if you know exactly when you want to go, you can also put in specific dates
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if you happen to know, okay, I'm only going on this week or this week. For our purposes, I'm just going to keep it open, so I can show you what I mean
2:30
And then what you can also do is restrict it. So say you have a budget and you know you want to only spend, say, $200 tops for your flights
2:40
then you can restrict it by that. And then you get this lovely little map that gives you some ideas of places to go within the $200 budget limit that you've created
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One of the other cool things is it gives you some highlights of places that have. have some good prices. Now, be cautious when you see these prices of $75, those are great pricing
3:00
But for instance, if you wanted to go to D.C., you see that this round trip is, this price is indeed
3:06
round trip, but it's on Spirit. Spirit is an okay airline, but if you can afford to maybe go on
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United, in this case, United instead, I maybe would go on United instead. Spirit is the
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cheapest of the cheapest of the cheap. And if you're budget conscious and that's something that you want to do
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absolutely go for it to spirit. But it's one of those places that will nickel and dime you for everything
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no frills, nothing. But it'll get you to D.C. for 75 bucks
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So that's up to you to decide if you want to do that. But basically, I just wanted to show you kind of an idea of how this works and how you can get inspired
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So you can go through and say, oh, you know what? I never considered going to Norlands
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or, hey, I've always wanted to go to Chicago or whatever the case may be, this is an excellent
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place that you can go to get started and get some great inspiration for your future United States
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travel. Okay, so the next thing that I want to talk about in something that you probably
4:07
have already considered, but I want to give you maybe some more options and some resources that
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you can use in order to maybe expand that idea and see if there might be something new that
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you haven't thought of, which would be a great vacation for you in the U.S
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United States. And that is camping and all things camping. So as we all know, because of COVID
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we have a lot of us don't like to fly because we're worried about that. And so we have decided to do
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a lot of camping and avoiding the hotels and things of that nature, which of course is still an idea
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But how about we expand on that and maybe consider a few more options? Let me show you what I mean
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Okay. So the first thing I want to talk about, and you probably already know this, but in case you don't
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If you aren't a big camper, you haven't camped before, I wanted to share this resource
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with you, which is a overview of all of the campsites in America
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Well, in the world, but for our purposes, we're just going to be talking about America
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So you can easily look through here and scroll and get some ideas of campsites that might
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work for how far you want to travel and what you want to see and do. Once you go ahead and scroll into these and say you want to go to this Pinnacles
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it gives you the link to the website where you can go and get more information and you can reserve your campsite
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Okay, so I just wanted to share this website and on my handout that you can download below
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I'll give you all of the links to this information as well as a few other campsite booking engines
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so that you can explore all the different campsites if that is something that you would like to do for your vacation
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But I want to take it a step further. If camping sounds great, but you're really more of a hotel kind of person and you're not really sure
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if you want to do full camping, have you ever considered glamping
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And yes, glamping. So this is going to be a more upscale camping
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And what it's going to be is they have it all over this particular company
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glamping.com. I'm going to go ahead and link in that handout as well, as well as a few other links
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But what it is is it's an upscale camping. It's glamorous camping is what it is, if you've never heard of it before
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But they have locations all over the country. And usually it is still camping, but with
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some more amenities As you can see here actual furniture A lot of times there bathrooms A lot of times there good food and great surroundings It actually really fun If you not quite the let go full camping
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person, but you're wanting to avoid those hotels, this might be a fantastic option for you
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And what you'd simply do here is you can sort by state or by city or by region and you can
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get an idea of, you know, if you want a farm, if you want a countryside, if you want the mountains
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if you want the beach and really narrow it down on all of your options and find an excellent glamping
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location for your next vacation. Okay. And then on that camping theme, how about RVs? Now, if you've never
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if you don't own an RV, then you can always rent RVs. And there are a ton of RV rental places
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available right now because everybody is wanting to camp. Nobody wants to stay in hotels or fly. So this is one
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particular rental company that I will link in my handout, but I'll also link a few others as well
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And this is more for private owners that are sharing. So it's kind of an Airbnb for RVs
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And I'm just here. This is my city where I'm at. But you can search through here and you can
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look at where they're located so you know where you have to pick them up. You can search pricing
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instant book or not. It's just like as if you were looking through Airbnb, you would search
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through, decide which one you want, and then you rent it and figure out whether or not you need to
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pick it up, drop it off, what you need to do. So that is the next idea. Okay, sticking with camping
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let's go ahead, move on to the water. So the next idea is houseboats. So there's a lot of really great
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houseboat options as well. And there are even some in the ocean that you can rent. If somebody has
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for instance, I want to say yacht, but they aren't always yacht. Sometimes they're just boats with
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sleeping compartments that are docked at certain marinas, and you can rent those and be able to
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possibly spend the night in those. That might be a neat option. The other option is on our lakes in
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America. We have a ton of lakes, and a lot of them have houseboats. For this purpose right here
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I'm just showing you Lake Mead, which is in Nevada next to Las Vegas, really close to Las Vegas
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So if you wanted to go stay in a houseboat and then have Vegas nearby if you wanted to go into town
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to gamble or whatever you wanted to do, this might be an option. But basically, all you have to do
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is search whatever lake you're looking to go to and houseboats and see if there are any houseboat
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rentals available. The same thing holds true with this. You can simply search through based on how
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many people will be coming and get an idea of, you know, how many bathrooms and things like that
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And then when you click into it, you can get more details about it. You can request more information
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and you can go ahead and move forward with renting that for your next vacation. So houseboating
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is really fun because a lot of times what you can do is, as you can see here, you're on the lake in the middle of the lake. And even if it's a really hot day when they're in the middle of the lake, it's usually a little cooler. Not always, but a lot of times it's a little cooler. And then you can also add on rentals like boat rentals and jet ski rentals and really make it a really cool vacation. I've not had the pleasure of doing this before, but I have friends that do this every year and they swear by it. It's a lot of fun. Okay, moving on from camping
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Kind of. The next idea is a road trip, which could be road trip to camp or it could be road trip to stay in hotels
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But the piece I want to focus on right now is the actual car that you take. Of course, you can take your own car, but have you considered renting a car and giving yourself a unique experience in the type of car that you're taking on your road trip
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For instance, I am on the Turo website, which Turo is the Airbnb of cars. So personal
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owners of cars can rent it out to you and you can rent their car and take it around and that's
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kind of how that works but you can also do this with other rental companies as well and like I said
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I'll link those in the handout also but the thing that I wanted to show you with Turro is you might
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be able to do something a little special for instance what about renting a classic car if have
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you always wanted to drive a classic car up the coast of California or a cross-root 66 do you have
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a convertible. If not, maybe rents a convertible if you're going to be going in nice weather and you want to
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have that. Or how about a sports car? You want to rent something that's a little bit more sporty and
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fun as you're going on your road trip. The other option obviously is exotic and luxury cars
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And then the other thing is, is if you a don't have a car or you have a small car but you're wanting to
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take a lot of people, maybe it's just simply getting a minivan so that you can accommodate more people
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or even better, if you are traveling all over the country and you want to do it as cheap as possible
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maybe getting an electric car so that you can not have to worry about gas
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but you would have to plan obviously plug-in stations, or you can do a hybrid, something that will save you gas as you're traveling across the country
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So this is my other idea as far as road trips is potentially renting a different car
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to add a unique experience to your road trip. Okay, moving along to the road trip
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kind of touring across America idea. And even if it's just going city to city
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have you considered the train and taking Amtrak? Now, this is something that I do quite often
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where I'm at a lot of times if we're going, I live in Orange County and sometimes when we're going to San Diego
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I prefer to take the train and bypass the traffic. And it's nice and relaxing
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It takes about the same amount of time. But I get to relax, have a drink, have some snacks
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watch the beautiful ocean go by, and arrive in my destination without the store
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stress of sitting in traffic the entire way down. Now, this still holds true for just about
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anywhere you want to go. You could use Amtrak because they do have some trains that have sleeper
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cabins available where you can actually take a longer trip, perhaps across the country or
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midway across the country or up the coast and be able to spend the night on the train and make a
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vacation out of your Amtrak experience. The other thing is in certain areas, I know on the East
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Coast, I want to say from D.C. to Florida, they have an auto train where you can actually put your car on the train start in one location get it down to where you ultimately going to be road tripping without having to spend all of the gas on the whole way down So that is something that is also an option with Amtrak And then the other thing that I wanted to show you is they actually also have vacation
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packages where you can, they've packaged together tours. Like for instance, I've seen some from, say, Los Angeles to Chicago
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And along the way, you'll stop in certain locations. And then you have part of your vacation on the train, part of your vacation in a hotel
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and they have entire mapped out vacations that you could do. I'm going to link that in my handout as well
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and it's a totally separate website from this website, but it's a really great way to
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if you want to explore and incorporate train travel, in addition to your road trip, it's a really neat way to go
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Okay, now moving into lodging options. So we've already covered camping and all of those type of lodging options that you have
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Let's go ahead and move into a little bit different. Of course, you can stay in a hotel
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A lot of hotels, in fact, I've been doing some research for clients lately and a lot of hotels are open
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They usually will have, you need to call ahead, though, to double check what is actually open in their hotel
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So a lot of them are open, but the restaurant is either closed if they don't have a patio option or an outdoor option or they're open, but only for, you know, takeout or room service or they're fully open
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So you have to call ahead and just to see what it is. a lot of them have their pools open, but you have to have a reservation
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Same thing with the dinner. You have to have reservations for dining. Gems may or may not be open
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So anyway, a lot of hotels are all open. You just need to call ahead to find it exactly what components are available and what aren't
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and then you can make your decision based on that. But on that note, if you want to perhaps do something a little more special or a little more
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unique than just a regular hotel, have you considered Airbnb and not just any Airbnb
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but some some of the more unique options available. And I wanted to show you what I mean by that
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So here's Airbnb and it's just the cover, the front, but they have a lot of places that are unique and special
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So if you come down here to unique stays, you can actually take a look across the U.S
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I mean, you could really actually take a look across the world, but for our purposes, we're sticking to the U.S
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and you can get it of some really neat different things that you haven't perhaps thought of
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Maybe a treehouse, maybe staying on a farm or in a yurt
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Maybe it is staying in a barn. There's so many different things
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You can even, you can do castles. I don't know that we have that many castles in America that you might be able to stay
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And these are more internationally. But as you can see, these are all different types of unique special stays that might make your next vacation pretty special
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even boats, as I was mentioning before. You can even see all the different boats that you can rent
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Again, these, a lot of them are international. So you would want to restrict it, add your location right here
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So you can restrict it to just the U.S. But this is a great way, Airbnb under unique stays
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This is a great way to find something really special for your next vacation
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So even though you're staying in America, you can make it really feel like you're in someplace new and special and different
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and make it extraordinary. On that note, there is another website, and this is only one of them
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I'll go ahead and link a few others that I have in that handout. This one is called quirkyacom.com
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And this is all of the unique, weird, funky hotels that are available
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I believe it's all over the world, but they also have it for certain places in America
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As you can see, there's some pretty cool lighthouses that you could stay at
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other lighthouses, different glamping type of options, the ship, Queen Mary in Long Beach, you can actually, it's a hotel now so you can stay on the ship
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Tree houses, let's see, what else do they have that are, it's pretty cool
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A cave that you can stay in. And that's in New Mexico. Here's a floating houseboat options, trains
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Anyway, this website is really cool. And the other websites that I have found that I'll link as well
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These are really cool for getting, again, some really great, unique, cool options that you can stay for your next vacation
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turn it into a road trip and hit several of these perhaps or make your entire stay about one of these locations
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Either way you do it, it's going to be a really special cool vacation
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Okay, so now we're going to move into not just lodging and transportation options, but types of vacation overall
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So one of the places I want to start because this is one of my personal favorites is wine tasting
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So if you are interested in wine or if you would like to get interested in wine, touring wine
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going wine tasting and incorporating wine tasting tours into your vacation is a fantastic way to go
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This is something that my husband and I like to do a lot of times for our anniversary. We explore different wine regions and we'll stay in the area usually in a bed and breakfast or
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maybe a special hotel that's in the winery or on the winery. And then you spend the day touring wineries and tasting wine and having great food
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And it's just a really cool fun experience. And I'm going to go ahead and link this website as well
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but this shows you all of the wine regions or vineyards in America
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So you can look and even though maybe you don't live anywhere near California or don't want to go to California
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there are a lot of wine regions in other parts of the country as well. So you can take a look at this to get inspired
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and get some ideas of maybe some really cool wine regions that you can go to
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Once you've decided on a particular region that you want to see, simply Google that area and vacations or tours
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and you'll be able to come up with lots of different options for your next wine tour
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Now, one of the things I recommend is if you are doing a wine tour or going wine tasting
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I recommend trying not to drive to the wine tasting, either take a bike tour, court
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They have it where you can take horseback riding and tour all of the wineries or have somebody drive you, have an actual tour where people guide you through
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That way you can enjoy all the wine you would like and not have to worry about having to drive back to your hotel when you're done
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Because trust me, it sneaks. up on you Okay speaking of types of vacations the next one I want to share with you is biking Have you considered a bike tour and actually biking across anywhere that you would like to go So this particular website and there are several again that I will link in the handout
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but this one is a place where you can go and they actually set up your bike tour
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So you literally bicycle across wherever destinations that you're going to. And for instance, you could say here in North America, let's just pick California because that's
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where I'm near and it makes it easy. So for instance, this one, a California wine country bike tour
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So it is, let's see, does it tell me more about it? Okay, so as you find one that you like and you click into it, you can get more details
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This one is six days. It is a, you don't have to go street bike
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You're not on a necessarily, you know, a street bike. You could be on a more comfortable bike and even electric bikes
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But you spend the time going through the region and different places
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that you go and you tour around. And it's not just in California. They have it all over the place
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And this might be a different, special, unique way for you to see other places in America
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And as you can see here in North America, they have actually quite a lot of places in a lot of
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different states that you can explore and choose. Also travel styles. So you can decide whether you
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want to do a self-guided. So I'm sure they give you the equipment and the maps and you do it yourself
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or if it's guided or if you want to do, you know, in groups or private or whatever you want to do
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they have all different kinds of things that you can do, national parks, e-bikes, if you don't actually
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want to physically have to worry about trekking it across on your bike. Anyway, this is a fantastic place to go if you want to consider having a bike tour as part of your next vacation
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On that note, have you considered horseback riding tours? Yes, horse tours
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Now, this is a certain website that I found and there are others, but this website that is a combination of
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things. You can have some that are tours, so you literally horseback ride to different locations
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and it's several nights and you ride the whole way. Some of them also are where you just simply go
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and you learn riding, so you would go stay at the ranch or the farm or the barn and learn a
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specific style of writing. But this can tell you exactly what kind of trip styles there are and
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type of activities. So you could do a beach riding trip, a camping trip. You could do a
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you know, for advanced or beginner riders so they can customize it. You could do things where you are a stationary vacation
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so that's where you would stay at the farm or the ranch or whatever and learn how to ride on that particular location
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or it's point to point or off the beaten path. As you can see, there's a lot of different options
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If you love horses, this might be a great way to spend your next vacation
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where it's not simply going on a trail ride for two hours at sunset
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You actually incorporate your horseback riding through the entire vacation. And again, on style of vacation is motorcycle tours
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If you've ever wanted to take your motorcycle or a motorcycle up the coast, across the country, anywhere you want to go
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this is one of the websites that I found that has a lot of information and a lot of trips available for bicycling
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for actually taking your bike ride across the country or anywhere that you want to go
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So as you can see here, just some of the destinations that you're able to go
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They also have packages in tours, self-guided, as well as guided tours where they would actually take you across
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It includes all of the equipment. It includes a lot of different things. So if taking a motorcycle is something that you've always wanted to do, this might be the perfect opportunity to incorporate it in your next vacation
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Okay. And my 14th and final idea for American vacations is volunteering
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And this is a great way that if you want to do something where you can give back
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where you can feel like you're involved and you're a part of something, this might be an excellent way to take your next vacation
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And this particular, and there are several websites, but this particular website is a link to a lot of different volunteer vacation opportunities
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I've narrowed it down to the U.S. So I can give you a sampling of what they have
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And so they have, for instance, this Wild West Wildlife, part of your vacation is learning about wildlife
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preservation and care and taking care of the wildlife while you're vacationing in Arizona
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Other ones, wolf care, which is in New Hampshire, where you get to go and spend time and you learn
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about the wolves and coyotes and how to take care of them, all different kinds of wildlife horse rescue
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I believe this one is in Idaho, where you go and actually work with the horses and help take care of the
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horses, where you can incorporate that. This might be a great way for you to spend your vacation, where you're
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actually learning and caring for these different animals, helping to take care of them in different
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rescue and preservation capacities, and really add some interest in meaning and something special
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to your vacation. Whether it's just a piece of your vacation or your entire vacation
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this might be a great way to go. Okay, so those were my 14 ideas, new kind of hopefully
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different ideas to inspire you for your next vacation. Since us, Americans are not allowed to travel out of the country for the most part. This might be a great way
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for you to explore your country further. And I hope that I've inspired you with some maybe some really
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special unique places that you might be able to go for your next vacation. So as I mentioned before
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I put them all into the handout, which you can download below. There are all 14 tips, including
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all of the resources I covered here, as well as some of the extended resources that I found that
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I didn't want to cover and make this video three hours long. I'll include all of that into the handout as well
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And if you would like to learn more about vacation options, but maybe you don't want to go anywhere
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maybe you have some health concerns and you don't feel comfortable going anywhere
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and you would like to explore perhaps staycation ideas, then go ahead and take a look at this video here
25:28
This covers a lot of different staycation ideas if you don't want to go really anywhere
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if you want to be able to stay home, but still have that experience of a vacation
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And if you've enjoyed this video, please think about subscribing. We'd love to have you join us
25:41
And other than that, I hope to see you on the next video. Thanks so much and have a great day
25:45
Bye-bye
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