To plan or not to plan

There are basically two ways to vacation. No doubt many of you grew up taking the Military Vacation, where your parents planned every waking moment (and would have planned the nonwaking moments, too, if they could have figured out how), and every day started at 06:00 hours, with a brutal schedule planned of sightseeing, educational experiences, 1 1/2-minute bathroom breaks, etc.

With this type of vacation, your plan for a typical day looks something like this:

1. Tour 152 historical buildings in 4 hours.
2. Learn how each of these buildings was constructed, and why.
3. Try your hand at constructing one of these types of buildings.
4. At the end of the day, write a 6000-word essay on what you have learned that day.

With this method, you end up:
1. Touring 152 buildings in 4 hours.
2. Learning how each of these buildings was constructed, and why.
3. Constructing one of these types of buildings.
4. Writing a 6000-word essay on what you have learned that day.

As you can see, this is a very efficient way of vacationing, although you may be dead by the end of it. The other way to vacation is to make no plans at all, other than to decide to go to a somewhat vague location on a certain day, give or take a few days. This is known as the Spontaneous Vacation, or the Sloth Vacation after the Australian sloths, who are known for doing basically nothing even when not on vacation. With this method, your daily plan looks like this:

1. Wake up naturally, to the sounds of the remains of other guests' room service being collected out in the hallway. Room service for dinner, that is.
2. Ask each other what you want to do today.
3.
4.

Theoretically, this method allows you to take advantage of those serendipitous moments to do something you might miss on the Military Vacation. Practically, the result of the Sloth Vacation is:

1. You spend most of your time at the local Ben & Jerry's.

However, this second method is not all bad. It can even be quite educational, such as learning the difference between Coffee Ice Cream and Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz, or just how much Phish Food Ice Cream can be consumed before one explodes.

This is the type of vacation Joe and I decided upon for Colonial Williamsburg, mainly because we are lazy. We're glad we did, because otherwise we might never have eaten all our meals at fast-food restaurants. We would have made a reservation every night at a different historical tavern, where mouth-watering dishes are served in genteel, inspiring surroundings, patrons learn more about the history of our great nation, and you can sit where George Washington may have sat. Instead we sat where Ronald McDonald sat (or may not have sat). Who could ask for more?

Tomorrow: We begin our Sloth Vacation, which did not take place in Australia, although we hope to someday, serendipitously, visit there too.