Summer Vacation

Have you ever arrived at your summer vacation destination only to find that all of your favorite outfits are miserably wrinkled and that you forgot to pack underwear altogether? While there may be no such thing as a perfect packing job, investing some extra thought into the process can help you travel light and still look outstanding.Follow these 10 simple steps for foolproof packing this summer:1. Start early. Beginning a few days before you leave, you will have time to remove unnecessary items as you go along.

Summer vacation -- whether at a mountain house or a seaside cottage -- is the time to take a break from grocery shopping and the rigors of getting a weeknight meal on the table.But one must still eat, and there are nights that the full day of sunshine and breezes make even going out for dinner seem like a task too arduous to consider.With clever planning (conducted before you leave and while your brain is fully functional), throwing together a couple of meals can be a simple, nontaxing and even pleasant task.

IT IS THE START OF school, and for the first time in a couple of months my kids and I will be doing the same thing every day for longer than one week.That is, for the next nine months, we will be grousing at one another as we stumble out the door at some ungodly hour that qualified as the middle of the night during summer vacation.It will be unpleasant, I'm sure, but at least it will be the same every day.Summer vacation feels more like a sitcom to parents like me - a different script every week.

SUMMER ended last week, astronomically speaking, the autumnal equinox marking the start of fall. Hope you had a good summer vacation.Since you asked, thank you, we didn't have a good one. Actually, it has to rank with the all-time worst. It wasn't the gray skies but the gray ink that did us in.The beach is our family's usual destination. And because that seems to be everyone's favorite vacation spot, we planned early. The reservation was made and the contract signed in March, for a week in an apartment house where we had previously stayed.

150 years ago in The SunAug. 31: OPENING OF THE SCHOOLS -- Close of the Summer Vacation -- The annual period has arrived when parents and guardians are usually in search of schools and academies for their children and wards, and when scholars are prepared, after a term of relaxation from their studies, to renew them with fresh vigor and perseverance.Sept. 1: Yesterday afternoon the body of a man, dressed in the uniform of a United States soldier, was found floating in the river near Fort McHenry, and was brought to the lower end of Bond Street.

Hello, snow. Goodbye, summer.Thanks to the double-whammy of a blizzard Sunday and more snow yesterday, area schools remain closed -- and most are chipping away at summer vacation to make up for lost time.In Baltimore City and the five surrounding counties, officials had planned for two to four days of inclement weather.In hindsight, they now say, most gambled and lost. Some had even used up their scheduled snow days well before the blizzard's arrival.Anne Arundel County is one place where summer vacation remains intact -- and it is threatened there.

Three days in, an inmate threw urine on him. Four months in, someone stabbed him in the back. He never reported the injury, he says, because he had been warned: No matter how young you are, no matter what happens, shut your mouth and keep your head down.Phillip Eugene Moore is 15 years old. He is in the eighth grade. This week, he spoke publicly for the first time about how he spent his summer vacation -- April through October, in fact -- living with adult inmates in the Baltimore City Detention Center.

I COULD HAVE sworn I saw your sons at Marley Station last week -- alone," my friend casually mentioned. "Of course I knew I was mistaken because I know how strongly you feel about gangs of teens left on their own, marauding the mall terrorizing unsuspecting shoppers with post-pubescent bravado and pockets full of quarters for the arcade."

"So how's summer vacation going?" she called above the din of adolescent bickering in the backyard.Glaring, I continued my attempt to extract an unidentified child from a tangled Slip n' Slide. Three weeks into summer vacation and I was actively investigating job prospects in dark factories where there is no employee access to a phone and my children can't find me."I think you're overreacting," she chided. "You just need to rise to the challenge of entertaining young teens. There's so much to do: swimming, crafts, day trips."

The revelation stuck me one evening last week at an amusement park.Here was my seven-year-old niece Elizabeth, twirling around on a spinning contraption called the Tubs o' Fun. She was laughing and waving to her parents, uncles and aunts at an arcade in Rehoboth Beach, Del.That child on the ride could have been me. In fact, I think my sister and I were among that tubs' first paying customers in its inaugural season back when Dwight D. Eisenhower was in...

With most schools closed or closing this week, the summer vacation season moves into full swing for many families. This year, job uncertainty and economic woes seem to have put a lot of travel plans in flux. Some destinations report that visitors are waiting until the last minute to make reservations and when they do, they're bargaining for - and often receiving - lower prices. Good for them. It may be too far a stretch to say the annual rite of summer travel is in danger, but HomeAway.

Kristen and Michael Nevils are planning a summer vacation to Atlanta with their 14-year-old daughter this year. Staying with Kristen's sister, rather than at a hotel, will save money. But the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., family is trying to decide whether it is more economical to fly or drive, or whether they should take the trip at all. "People are so squeezed now with the cost of gas going up. The last thing on their priority list is a vacation, although it's needed because they're stressed," says Nevils, who works in recruiting and is the author of Screw the Joneses, a book of tips on surviving a financial crisis.

With the weak dollar, record gas prices and fears of a recession, it's not surprising that many Americans are rethinking one of life's great pleasures: summer vacation. But once you travel, it's not something you give up easily. As Christine Delise, a spokeswoman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, puts it: "Maybe it means giving up Starbucks or eating on the cheap for a week. People are going to make sacrifices -- but what they are not going to sacrifice is their summer vacation." In celebration of the summer vacation season that officially starts this weekend, here are 20 tips to help you recession-proof your holiday.

SEATTLE --In August, when much of the world is hard at work trying to do nothing, Jeff Hopkins and his wife, Denise, usually take a week to chase fish in Olympic National Park - a ferry ride and two tanks of gas from here with a boat in tow. But this year, their summer vacation is dead, a victim of $3-a-gallon gas and job uncertainty. "This is our vacation," said Hopkins, loading up his drift boat for an evening of fishing in the city just after getting off work at the Boeing plant, where he has been employed for 15 years.

High school athletes need summer off, too As I read David Selig's piece ["Their summer is no vacation," July 25], I could not help but feel displeased at the process of "optional workouts" and sympathy for current high school students who participate in them through the summer. It was not so long ago that I was a high school student (five years, in fact), and I remember dreading preseason training sessions since they cut vacation by two weeks. However, I understood it as part of the process in order to prepare for the upcoming season, since academics would soon consume the majority of our time, leaving precious few hours for physical conditioning and working on tactics.

FOR MOST OF the year, the Jensen family of Timonium runs with the crisp efficiency of an MVA office at lunchtime. Leadership is fractious (the CEO is little more than a figurehead openly mocked by his underlings while the better half is widely seen as, well, the better half). The younger members would doubtless stage a coup if they were not engulfed in a conflict over that most burning of social questions, whose monsters rule, Pokemon's or Yu-Gi-Oh's? But there is a time each year when the otherwise dysfunctional family unit absolutely purrs with productivity.

Ah, summer vacation. Time for college students to take a break, hit the beach, get a job -- and, for more than a few, have their wisdom teeth removed. Though it may not be as anticipated as other summer traditions, college students have for years scheduled wisdom-tooth surgery to coincide with summer break. "It's the busiest time of the year," says Towson oral surgeon Dr. John Emmett. "If I take out two sets of wisdom teeth a day in the dead of winter, I may do five to six of these surgeries a day in the summer.

When my husband and I said we were going to the White Mountains of New Hampshire for a summer vacation, our friends were thrilled. We'd love the natural beauty, one said enthusiastically. We've never seen such waterfalls, gushed another. There are wonderful walking trails, advised a third. And watch out for moose: We were told the half-ton critters tend to meander onto the highways. It all sounded exciting, and different from our typical sit-in-the-sand summer vacation. But all those attractions would just be icing on the cake: Larry and I were driving the 500-plus miles from Baltimore to the edge of the Great North Woods primarily to see our oldest grandchild, Shira, a theater student who was one of 12 interns working for the summer at the Weathervane Theatre, near the small town of Whitefield.

MRS. R HAS lost count of the hangovers she has had this summer. She has eaten out most nights. Ethel & Ramone's, in Mount Washington, two nights in a row, same table, same drinks, same entree. The dog died in April, so she didn't have to rush home to walk him. Foreign films, facials and freedom (within reason). Once, her husband wondered aloud when she would be home to stay. Oh, she's been home. Those nights, she usually wandered over to the neighbors for wine on the porch and leisurely wandered back after dark.

In Gift from the Sea, published in 1955, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote, "By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class." Today, half a century later, that vacationless class has grown. For many Americans, the traditional summer vacation -- an extended holiday from the cares of day-to-day living -- is fading, eroded by social and economic forces. In its place, more families are squeezing weekend escapes to nearby destinations into their busy lives.