Take a Mini-Vacation

With the price of everything steadily rising, it is important to be smart with recreational fun.

Problem: Expensive hotels and travel expenses

Solution: Stay with friends nearby, but not in our hometown and do their cool local stuff

We stayed with our friends in Newport News, VA this weeks for several days and had a blast. It was just the kids and I...Mike had to work.

The Virginia Living Museum is an excellent local trip. We all enjoyed it. The friends we stayed with only live about 15 minutes away from the museum, and visit it often, so they have annual memberships.

There is currently a dinosaur exhibit, complete with robotic dinosaurs...a big hit!

The exhibit is complete with baby dinosaurs hatching:

The food chain in display:

A "bare bones" robotic dinosaur stripped of his skin. The kids could control the movements of this one and even make him roar. Kind of spooky:

There were plenty of photo opps:
Hands on areas where the kids could get up close and personal with local sea creatures:

A wildlife reserve path outside that includes many fun animals to observe: beavers, otters, pelicans, coyotes, and bobcats (among others):

There were cool "discovery centers" where the kids could learn about geology, archeology, animal tracks-ology, and fossil-ology. I liked the sign that said, "Discovery area: DO TOUCH!":

Our trip concluded with a fashion show in the museum's gift shop:

Although the museum admission was not inexpensive at $15 for me and $12 each for the kiddos, I feel that our little mini vacation was frugal because we kept the travel expenses low: we didn't go very far from home (only 1 hour drive) and had no hotel expenses. We also enjoyed the nearby beach the next day which was a ton of fun and frugal as well, but alas, the camera was left in the car.

Want more frugal ideas? Go here.