Vacationing in the same spots:

Why do it?

Three-generations Prince Edward Island trip

When it comes to vacation, my family is the revisiting sort. My mom spent weeks each summer at her grandparents’ cabin on the wooded banks of Lake Okoboji, Iowa. Her mom and grandmother did the same. And the tradition has continued. For one week each summer when I was growing up, my family would leave the Rocky Mountains (where other people vacation) to drive through the cow-fumed flatlands of I-80 to the same lake, where my extended family would pile into rustic A-frame timeshares with uncomfortable beds and scratchy towels. I love this spot so much I drag David—who is not the revisiting type—back with the extended family at least every few years.

Okoboji isn’t the only place like this for me. I just got back from my third trip in the last decade to an island off the east coast of Canada that takes two flights and a long layover to get to, has no major cities, and isn’t a place where anyone I know is from.

What makes us do this? Why do some of us vacation like migrating birds, returning to the same cabin or lake or island each year, while others are always in search of something new?

Sentiment is part of my answer. Lake Okoboji is associated with the most relaxed times of my childhood, with my favorite water in the world and a kind of independence on the sprawling grass between A-frames that I didn’t experience anywhere else. My joyful associations deepened each year.  

Okoboji last summer

Prince Edward Island—the Canadian island I just returned from—anchored itself in my imagination long before I visited, from the first time I watched Kevin Sullivan’s Anne of Green Gables miniseries set there. My parents, David, and I visited when I began researching After Anne; we visited again last summer when the book came out with the addition of two-year-old Noa; and my mom, Noa, and I returned last week, less than a year later, for a three-generations trip I will never forget.

And instead of seeing different spots each time, like many people would, we kept staying longer in the same spot: Dalvay by the Sea. A family summer house turned small hotel, Dalvay is situated on a boat-less and swimmer-less lake, with Prince Edward Island’s iconic north-shore sandy dunes just on the other side of the road. We stumbled on it during our first trip, sought it out for an afternoon and evening on our second, and stayed for three nights on our third. It’s a place particular enough to feel a sense of belonging quickly. The cottage we stayed in this time made my mom well up in tears, remembering details in her grandparents’ Okoboji cabin that she hadn’t thought of in years.

Dalvay over the years

Sentiment about place is something I’ve written about before. For those of us built this way, returning just makes sense.

I also wonder how much, at least for me, the joy of re-circling is tied up in being a textbook HSP (highly sensitive person). Having a nervous system more easily frayed means that new sights, sounds, and smells are a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I like adventure, and I like visiting new places. But the “vacating” part of vacation? It doesn’t happen for me in places I haven’t been before. Knowing what to expect on these sensory levels helps me sink in. Where others might get bored, I get more engaged in the sights and the company.

There’s also something about returning that is far more universal: We are never quite the same people as we were the next time we visit. The place is never quite the same either. Returning to a dear place after a year away is a bit like catching up with a dear friend after a year apart. It’s a mirror and a marker.

Even if you don’t have a nervous system like mine, a return trip to a favorite spot might be worth a try.