our rules for trips (new and improved!)

Before our recent trip, we created the following rules:

• No fast food
• No staying in hotels or motels
• Minimum overnight stay in one location of 3 days
• No pre-planning or scheduling unless absolutely necessary
• No more than 5 hours of travel between places we stay overnight

Happily, I declare the rules to have been a success:

• Avoiding fast food led to just generally feeling better and not having gastro-intestinal problems like we've sometimes had on other trips. I was so hungry at one point and nearly went into a Subway, but I resisted and found a great place that made a delicious crepe for me.
• We stayed only in homestays or cottages which was a great move, allowing us to meet some really nice people and get great advice on things to do.
• The minimum stay idea worked well, but I think I would increase that to 4 days for future trips. We always felt like we wanted at least one more day, even if it was just to relax and do nothing at all.
• We researched a lot of potential activities before the trip, but just took one day at a time and decided on the fly what to do and it worked out very well. 
• The problem with the 5 hours between destinations idea was that there was so much to see on the way that the traveling days were sometimes a bit exhausting. So perhaps I would change that to a less ambitious 3 hours.

And I'd add a couple new rules:

• Stick to within a one hour driving radius of each place we stay overnight. Some days we got too ambitious and drove way too much and then also ended up not getting to see as much cool stuff in the area closer to where we stayed.
• No chain stores or chain restaurants, where possible.