The Vacation Circle

Back to posting after this year's late Labor Day. I read this recently about the holiday, on the CNN web site: "More than 39 million Americans will be traveling on vacation -- at least 50 miles from home -- this Labor Day weekend, slightly more than the 37.1 million who traveled on the Fourth of July weekend, according to AAA. July Fourth is typically the busiest automobile travel holiday of the year."

Reading that got me in a literal-minded mood: Vacations start at 50 miles. Less than that and it's what -- an excursion? According to my beat-up Rand McNally road atlas, one inch represents about 19 miles on the Illinois page, so that's roughly two-and-a-half inches to achieve a AAA-defined vacation.

So when we visit our friends in Grundy County, as we did a week and a half ago, that's just about enough to technically be on vacation. Likewise, we could go about 50 miles are reach the following places: Rockford, Rochelle; Paw Paw; the Norwegian Settlers State Monument (LaSalle County); Wilmington (home of the Gemini Giant). All those are places in Illinois. We could also reach metro Hammond-Gary in Indiana, or Kenosha, Wisconsin. Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, a resort area, is too close to count.

No plans this long weekend to drive past that imaginary circle with a 50-mile radius, however. Luckily many interesting things to see lie well within the circle.