Stuff Your Boss

Even though the economy is bad, we still need a little vacation now and then. I have wondered if you can stay on a tight budget and still get away on a short trip. It seems that there are great travel deals to be found at many of the well-known travel sites if I spend a little time in research.

The choice of travel website should not only include finding the lowest price for car, hotel and air travel, you also want a company with a reputation for arranging a vacation without problems.  Then I was thinking about where to go where it’s easy to find good prices on air travel or where I can drive my car. One obvious choice is Southern California.

One website I found with some great information on Southern California is the SoCal Vacation Guru site.  It presently places most of its attention on Los Angeles and Orange County, with a modest but growing emphasis on San Diego County and San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. But there’s great information at the SoCal Vacation Guru about Universal Studios Hollywood, Disneyland, the beaches, shopping, dining and other activities.

Did you know that there are actually seven world-class theme parks in the area, those being Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Six Flags, Universal Studios Hollywood, Legoland, SeaWorld and Disney’s California Adventure. Of course visiting all of those would not be particularly cheap, but you could fit a lot of vacation fun into a short period of time. The slow economy will be sticking with us for awhile, and the silver lining is that you can look for good resort hotel deals if you have the money for a trip, since there are a lot of motivated hotel operators even in SoCal.

Theme parks are offering some discounts, and the prices might be a bit lower at museums and other activities as well. The price of gasoline has increased and fluctuated a lot, but for many people in the U.S. a driving trip to Southern California could save money compared with flying to other vacation destinations.