Adam and I are in the midst of planning a 10-day or shorter trip for the end of this month. You’d think two young people with 10 days off work and enough cash to get them somewhere decent would have a fairly easy time deciding on a locale, right? Well in our case, not at all.

Being we’re in Calgary our flying options are quite limited, as we have to get ourselves to Toronto and back if we want to go to Europe, which is $800CND or more, almost half of our budget. Canadian destinations are limited as well, since we were just on the west coast back in June and I was just in the major destinations Ontario and Quebec have to offer. Saskatchewan and Manitoba…let’s just not even go there.

We’ve been toying with the idea of a road trip to Las Vegas, which I wouldn’t mind since we’d be able to get to Bad Water in Death Valley and see Old Faithful on the way, both of which are on my list. It just seems like 20 hours of driving on either side for a few nights in Las Vegas. We could fly, but 10 days in Las Vegas would probably kill me, and we wouldn’t have access to a car besides.

Mexico or some Southern destination seemed like a worthy choice, laying on the beach, and taking in all the all-inclusive fun we could handle. The only problem with this is we want to go to Mexico in December when it’s cold and we both have some more time off, and why pay to go to Mexico twice within five months?

We are running short on time to decide. I’m at the point where I just want to say “let’s go to Edmonton!” and admit defeat. Who knew planning a 10 days trip could be this hard. At times like this I truly wished I was living in Europe and there were 10 countries on either side you could easily get to for a short get away. For the time being I’m going to try and not focus on the deadline for decisions wearing closer and closer. I might also suggest throwing Tofino into the mix as an option, though I was just on the West Coast. Sitting on the Pacific beaches and sleeping in cabins doesn’t seem quite so bad when it comes down to it, I think I could handle it.