Summer weekends are the perfect time for family bonding. The kids are out of school and often out of extracurricular activities. The weather is typically gorgeous. Even parents sometimes have a bit more work flexibility during the summer months when lots of people are vacationing.
Add those together and you have weekends of togetherness that just can’t be duplicated elsewhere in the year.
So what can you do to fill those hours of freedom? Our family usually plans some big weekend activities during the summer where we can spend a full weekend day — or even an entire weekend — doing something together.
Of course, since we’re reasonable with our money, most of these activities are pretty cheap. We like activities that we all enjoy — and that don’t destroy our budget.
Here are the six biggies we have planned this summer.
Geocaching. For those unfamiliar, geocaching is a completely free scavenger hunt activity that anyone can try using GPS devices (a smartphone or a Garmin GPS device, for example). There are small “caches” hidden all around the world (probably even in your neighborhood) by volunteers who want to make geocaching fun. The thrill is finding them, and you can start by learning more at geocaching.com.
Geocaching makes for an absolutely wonderful weekend day trip, as it enables travel to the most unexpected of places. Almost every sufficiently large town near you likely has tons of geocaches available for your family to find. Not only that, many state and national parks have them too, making geocaching a great way to explore the outdoors in scavenger-hunt style.
Volunteering. There are countless opportunities to volunteer in your community, from cleaning up the parks and building a Habitat for Humanity house to collecting food for the food pantry and helping out at a soup kitchen. The needs in every community are tremendous, even if you don’t see them on the surface.
The best volunteer opportunities not only help fill your day with the joy of helping others, but can also teach you useful skills. For example, Habitat for Humanity can teach basic carpentry; a soup kitchen can teach food preparation and serving skills; and park work can teach botanical practices.
Festival-hopping. Within an hour or two of your home, you’ll likely find a lot of towns and cities hosting summer community festivals. Spend a day and go to one of them.
Watch the parades and the demonstrations. Take part in the activities, particularly if they’re culturally unusual. Sample different foods. It can all add up to a pretty fun day. If you’re worried about the cost, pack a picnic lunch and just enjoy a small snack or two while there.
Stargazing. A starry night in the country where the city lights aren’t obscuring the sky can be a wonderful experience. Stay up late, go out in the middle of nowhere, eat a late picnic dinner as the sun goes down and then spread out a blanket and look up.
Whether you’re simply enjoying the raw majesty of the night sky or using a stargazing app or a book to identify celestial objects, stargazing can be a wonderful family experience. Enjoy the cool, crisp air and point out objects in the sky that interest you. If you time it well, you should do this during a meteor storm as it brings the night sky to life in an incomparable way.
Hiking. There are few things more refreshing than a hike through the wilderness, whether on trails or far off the beaten path. A good hike offers great exercise, fresh air and lots of nature, along with some unexpected surprises.
Our family often hikes to do things like identify birds and trees, find amazing viewpoints and get ourselves in a little better shape to boot. We love finding unusual places to take photographs and we always find something unusual, like a 200-year-old grave marker or a few Indian arrowheads or the trail of a very large deer. It’s always a great experience.
Camping. Camping can incorporate almost all of the ideas listed above in a single weekend — stargazing, hiking, geocaching and festival-hopping. Camping does have some startup costs — a tent and a sleeping bag or two, if nothing else — but camping can provide endless weekend fun.
Camping gives a ready-made opportunity for things like: exploring wilderness, hiking on trails, building a campfire and making campfire food, enjoying tons of fresh air, fishing and countless other endeavors. It’s also a great social opportunity, perfect for allowing your older children to invite a friend along.
The world offers us so many ways to explore, exercise, learn, and bond with family — all without spending a lot of money. It’s time to take advantage of it.
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6 Ultra-Cheap and Fun Summer Weekend Activities for the Family originally appeared on usnews.com
