Two summers ago, my wife, my children, my parents and I all traveled to Texas together, in part to visit relatives but also to enjoy the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Because we took some time to plan the trip in advance and involved everyone going on the trip in the planning, we ended up finding quite a few free and frugal things to do on the trip. We were also able to save money on the trip by only taking one vehicle.

However, there were other elements of the trip that weren’t quite as frugal. Our housing wound up being quite costly, for instance, as did our food bill.

This leads us to this winter. Sarah and I often plan the details of the following summer’s family vacation during the preceding winter so that we have plenty of time to find bargains for the upcoming travels.

We’re essentially planning two vacations for 2012, and both of them are going to be quite frugal. What do they have in common? They’re both group vacations.

Here are some of the things we’re doing to maximize fun and minimize cost on these trips by leveraging the fact that we’re traveling as a group.

We’re going with people with a similar mindset. None of the people we’re choosing to travel with next year are heavy spenders. All of them are frugally-minded people. They’re also people that we feel good about spending a significant amount of time with over a week. We want to have a reasonably-priced vacation and they’re on board with the same idea.

We’re splitting costs, looking for deals, and budgeting in advance. For both of these vacations, we’re essentially budgeting costs as a group, looking for deals as a group, and splitting costs as a group. These moves enable us to look at our situation through a lot of different eyes and the net result is reduced costs.

We’re going to visit places that are within a reasonable driving range. One vacation is within our own state. Another is only two states away. On trips this short, it makes a lot of sense to drive, not just based on money, but actually based on time. Not only that, driving means we can bring more of our own supplies, which makes these other options easier.

We’re going to camp for at least some of the vacation. This drastically reduces our housing costs. For us, it also adds to the flavor of the vacation due to the exposure to the outdoors. We’re also considering renting a cabin for our larger group vacation.

Because we’re camping, we’re also going to make most of our own food instead of eating out. Rather than going out to a restaurant, we’ll prepare a meal in our Dutch oven. We can still have something delicious and memorable without spending a ton of money.

The vacations are based on experiences rather than being a tourist. Some of the big things we intend to do on these trips involve going on hikes and fishing, not going to pricy “tourist-y” places. Because of that, our overall budget for vacation is much lower.

In the end, it’s all about people and experiences. Keep that in mind and you’ll find yourself having a great vacation without a great dent in your pocketbook.

Last week, my wife and family and I departed for the Seattle/Tacoma area in order to be present for the wedding of my wife’s younger sister. While we were in the area, we did some wedding setup, but we also visited a lot of sights in the area, including Mount Rainier, Olympia National Forest, and a day trip out to the coast to the ocean.

Naturally, such a trip is an expensive proposition. We have two adults and three young children, which not only means that we’re paying for five, but it also means that some techniques that adults or older children might use to save a bit of money on travel didn’t really apply.

One big area of our travel cost was housing. Our family would need lodging for several days while out there – seven days, to be exact. The least expensive hotel within any reasonable range of the places we were visiting that didn’t have frightening online reviews and pictures was well north of $70 per night for a room that would have been cozy with five people in it.

Another big area of our travel cost is food. Travel typically means that you’re going to be eating out quite a lot. The options for food preparation in a hotel environment are pretty slim, usually resulting in continental breakfasts and sandwiches… or just convincing yourself to eat out somewhere.

Our solution? We talked to other people who were also traveling out for the wedding and rented a house for a week with them.

This simple solution handled all of our problems well. It gave us a location that was reasonably close to the places we wanted to be at, minimizing our gas expenses while out there. It gave us plenty of room, particularly for the dollar. It also gave us a fully-functional kitchen, which enabled us to prepare many of our own meals instead of going out.

Our nightly rate ended up being a bit less than the tiny hotel room, but we significantly cut our fuel costs, significantly cut our food costs, and significantly increased the amount of space we had. We also had the convenience and joy of being able to sit out on the porch every evening with family and friends instead of hanging out in hotel rooms.

Most days, we woke up, ate breakfast together with everyone staying in the house, packed a picnic lunch for the family, and then went out to wherever our destination for the day was – the coast, the mountain, the forest, the sights of Seattle.

In the evenings, we would return home and, many nights, prepare a simple supper at home. We did eat out a few nights at places highly recommended by the locals we knew in the area, but for the most part, we prepped our own food.

The contract was mostly managed by another member of our party who was retired and was willing to set up the contract and everything for the rental. It was quite easy from our end – we simply arrived, entered a code into the keybox that was waiting, pulled out a few keys and distributed them around the party, walked into the house, and unpacked.

Leaving was similarly easy – we just put the keys back into the keybox after locking the house, then called the property manager. From our end, once the contract was set up in advance, the actual checking in and checking out of the house was extremely convenient.

In short, if I ever travel again with a large group of people, I will absolutely suggest this as an option. It reduced all of our costs, gave us plenty of space to spread out, and provided a great environment for hanging out and socializing.

If you’re interested in this type of solution for your vacation, just use Google. Type in “vacation rental” and the location to which you’re traveling and look through the offers you find. I checked several potential vacation destinations that we’re considering over the next few years and found solutions in each of them.

After my recent post on planning summer travel, I received a lot of emails from readers near the places we are planning on traveling to: Seattle, Boston, New Orleans, and Orlando. These helpful readers all offered up some great ideas for inexpensive travel to those areas and I saved all of them for future reference (because all but the Seattle trip is more than a year away).

One big thing I couldn’t help but notice, though, is that many of the emails contained very similar tips for inexpensive vacations in those cities. The specifics were different, but the general ideas were identical.

Here’s what I learned from those emails in terms of general tips for traveling inexpensively to a new city.

Hang out with locals that you know. They’ll almost always guide you straight to great deals, such as the best “bang for the buck” restaurants. Sometimes, they’ll even cover a meal for you while you’re traveling. If I know I’m going to a city where I know people, I’m always sure to contact them well before the trip and set up some sort of event with them, whether it’s meeting for lunch or whatever.

Look for local hotels, not national chains. Generally, these have stellar rates as long as you’re not traveling to the city during a key tourist time, like going to Mardi Gras. Local hotels often have rustic rooms that play on the history of the city, while large chain hotels have rooms that look more or less identical to every hotel in that chain. In Las Vegas, I would take this tip to mean to avoid both chains and hotels directly on the Strip.

Know the mass transit. If you’re staying in a large city, the mass transit system will likely completely take care of your travel needs (aside from perhaps going back and forth to the airport). Buy a seven day pass and let that take care of all of the travel you need within the city. It’s far, far cheaper than renting a car for that long.

Grab the local papers – especially the free ones. They often have huge lists of cultural events and attractions going on in the city. I’ve seen free concerts and gone to free museums in the past due to simply gazing through local free newspapers shortly after my arrival.

Visit areas near universities. In almost every city where a university can be found, the blocks around the university are full of the best “bang for the buck” food you can find, particularly if you like ethnic foods. Not only that, universities often have interesting cultural events going on that you can freely attend.

Take advantage of the staff at the local hotels. They usually know the area quite well and can point you towards options that you probably never considered before arriving. On our trip to Las Vegas in 2005, we stayed at the Artisan, a small hotel off of the strip. The staff was beyond helpful in suggesting things for us to do, even pointing out roadside free things to look at as we drove on to the Grand Canyon.

Do something completely alternate for housing, like camping. For example, if you’re staying in Seattle, consider camping in the Olympia National Forest or on Mount Rainier and then just go into town on days when you want to sight-see. The cost is much lower, particularly if you have someone in the area from which you could borrow a tent and some sleeping bags (like, for instance, the “locals that you know”).

Make a big list of the free sightseeing options. For example, on our Dallas trip, our list included Pioneer Plaza, the Dallas Farmer’s Market, Dealey Plaza, the Fort Worth Stockyards, Jazz Under the Stars, the Crow Collection of Asian Art, the Farmer’s Branch Historical Park, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, and Thanks-Giving Square. We couldn’t possibly make it to all of this worthwhile free stuff, and the sheer size of the list gave us options for spontaneity.

Check out museums, zoos, and other cultural and educational attractions in the city. Museums are almost always a cheap way to spend a day, and it’s often easy to make it cheaper by planning your trip on days with even lower rates – or on free days. Most cities have a noteworthy museum or two and the largest ones (like Chicago and New York) have several.

Search around for tickets for events. If you know you’re going to, say, Disney World, don’t just wait until you’re at the gate to buy tickets. Keep your eyes open for better deals on tickets by buying them early, often through some sort of promotional package. A few years back, my parents were eyeing hugely discounted tickets through their credit union, for example.

This seems rather strange, perhaps, but Sarah and I have our summer plans more or less penciled in through 2015.

That’s right, 2015

This summer, we’re going to Seattle. The following summer is a trip to New Orleans with my family. The summer after that will feature a trip to Boston, with the summer after that featuring some extensive national park camping. The summer after that? Disneyworld.

We’ve even started talking about subsequent vacations, including trips to Norway, Japan, and France by the end of the decade (we want our children to be older before traveling internationally).

Why plan ahead so much, you ask?

It’s simple. Planning ahead on your summer vacations is an enormous money saver. Sure, maybe we’re going over the top a little bit with the advance planning, but having a firm grip on where you’re going at least a year in advance can save a huge amount of money.

Here are some of the reasons such advance planning really helps.

The day of the week you travel on really matters. If you watch airline ticket prices, you’ll quickly see that not all days are created equal. Tickets for flights on Wednesdays and Saturdays are much cheaper than tickets for Mondays or Fridays.

This, of course, means that planning the days you travel in advance can save you a lot of money, and the further in advance that you plan it, the easier it becomes to get the needed vacation time at work and so on.

You have more time to shop around for better rates on plane tickets, lodging, meals, and any other events. I’m not going to get into the mountain of travel sites out there, but suffice it to say that shopping around for tickets can save you quite a lot of money. The further in advance you’ve planned for a vacation, the more time you have to shop for such things.

The more time in advance you have, the more you can focus on banking frequent flyer miles. There are lots of ordinary things you can do that will help you to bank frequent flyer miles, and the more miles you have banked, the fewer tickets you’re going to be buying. Considering that our family’s travel in the air requires five tickets, that’s a fair chunk of change. Thus, for us, sites like TravelHacking actually pay off.

You have plenty of time to make (or re-establish) connections in the city you’re traveling to. Having people in the area means an inside track on things to do, places to see, bargains, lodging, food, and countless other expenses for travel. If you know long in advance that you’re coming to the area, start making contacts and re-establishing old ones. For me, this is easy – I know readers of The Simple Dollar in most of these areas, so I just send them an email. For you, look for any groups that you might be involved in. Put out a notice on Facebook. You might be surprised who pops up.

You have plenty of time to learn about the area you’re traveling to. This doesn’t mean filling your schedule with more stuff to do than you could ever possibly accomplish. It means investigating the area you’re traveling to thoroughly so that you can truly find the best experiences for your dollar and time.

In my own years, I’ve found that it’s rarely the “name” attractions that are worthwhile. My best memories from virtually every vacation I’ve taken have not been the expensive attractions, but the small free things, like walking past Westminster Abbey and Parliament with my wife while in London, her hand in mine, just absorbing the history of the area, or sitting next to my sister-in-law in a park in Canada, taking our shoes and socks off, and splashing our feet in some freezing water.

There is some serendipity in these moments, but the more time you give yourself in advance of leaving, the more likely you are to find things and events that are going to provide a very powerful media for such serendipity to grow in.

But what about spontaneity? Yes, it can be a lot of fun to just jump in the car or on a plane and see what happens. The problem with that, however, is that it tends to be expensive. You’ll often wind up in suboptimal situations. If you’re planning for that, great, but you can have just as much fun for a lot less if you put in some legwork in advance. A second problem is that it’s extremely difficult to go completely unstructured with young children, because while single me would have happily slept in a sleeping bag in a state park, I wouldn’t do that with a one year old and a three year old in tow.

However you decide to travel, good luck on making it cheap and fun!

Like a lot of people this week, our family is traveling by car to a number of Thanksgiving dinners. As I taught the children to sing recently, “On the interstate and across the bridge, to Grandma’s house we go!”

Of course, when you’re traveling during the holiday season, you’re opening the door to some potential challenges. Winter weather, overcrowded roads, long road trips, expensive stops – it all adds up to some serious time, some serious cash, and some risk for much more time and cash as well.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share with you some of the preparations we’re doing for this year’s road travels in order to save money and minimize risk.

Air up tires Take the car to the local refueling station. Use a tire pressure gauge to check the pressure in each of your tires (if you don’t have a gauge, ask inside). If there’s inadequate air, use the air pump there to refill each tire up to the recommended maximum found in your manual. If you’re unsure how to do this, most car manuals offer a very useful step-by-step guide for taking care of it.

Perform any scheduled maintenance If I’m going to significantly surpass a scheduled maintenance on the road trip, I get it done before I leave. This usually involves getting a mileage estimate from Google Maps, adding that to my current odometer, and seeing whether or not that new number exceeds when my next maintenance should occur.

Caravan If you possibly can, travel with others in a “caravan” so that, if one individual vehicle has problems, there’s support all around. Driving in a caravan has helped me out more than once – I remember one awful road trip where my son got extremely ill along the way.

Provide an ETA to your destination This way, if you don’t show up on time, they can be aware of your delay and attempt to contact you. Again, this has helped me in the past, as people at my destination were able to realize something was wrong and eventually offer assistance.

Visit the restroom before you leave It’s the Murphy’s Law of road trips: when you think you’ve got everything covered and are making good time, someone has to use the restroom. Remember, as I mentioned above, the more unnecessary stops you make, the more expensive (and longer) your trip becomes, so make sure everyone has used the restroom before you leave.

Pack blankets, sand, hand warmers, and a shovel This is more important for Christmas travel, but I also do it for this trip. I pack blankets to help with situations where we’re in an accident or trapped in a storm – same with the nad warmers. I pack sand and a shovel to help with situations where we might need to get out of a ditch.

Pack hearty meals We pack meals before we leave so that we can eat in the car without having to stop for expensive fast food. We often pack an abundance of food, particularly healthy snacks like unsalted nuts, raisins, and the like, because these serve the dual purpose of sating hungry children while also providing rations in the result of an accident.

Pack a charged “911 phone” (and charge your phone) A “911 phone” is a cell phone without an active contract that is only able to dial 911. Keeping such a phone in the car with you helps in case of a roadside emergency.

Pack a change of warm clothes After a winter trip in which I had to walk almost a mile in sub-zero temperatures without adequate clothing, I’ve started making sure I have at least one change of very warm clothes, preferably coveralls. This is particularly important if you’re traveling in the country on less well-traveled roads.

Make a map and check road conditions This is a tactic that’s more important around Christmas but can still be relevant at Thanksgiving – we’ve been caught in Turkey Day blizzards in the past. Also, before you leave, make sure you know exactly where you’re going and the route to get there.

Travel when the roads aren’t busy We’re traveling during the morning hours for most of our driving, which will avoid most of the traffic outside of towns. If you can, avoid driving on Wednesday evening and Sunday, which are extremely heavy traffic days.

Gas up This isn’t so much a money-saving technique on gas as it is a method to avoid an unnecessary stop at a roadside gas station where, after being cramped in a car, you’re tempted to run inside and, because you’re a bit hungry, you find yourself buying unnecessary stuff. Just avoid the stop entirely and make better time on the road.

This summer, my wife and I and our three children – a four year old, a two year old, and a baby – are going on at least three different family trips. One will be to downstate Illinois, another will be to northeast Iowa and southwest Wisconsin, and the third will be to northern Minnesota. That doesn’t include multiple graduations we’re going to attend in May, either.

How are we going to do this while simultaneously keeping our sanity (yes, you try traveling for several hours in a vehicle with a four year old, a two year old, and an infant) and keeping our wallets in good shape? Here are seven methods we’re using to provide great experiences for our family while also keeping our finances in mind.

Keep in mind why we’re doing this
Why would we want to travel with a car full of small children? For some people, there may be no rational answer to this question at all. For us, though, there are several reasons.

First and foremost, we want the children to see different places and people. The geography where we live is very flat; this summer, they’re going to visit some very hilly areas. There are no large lakes here, but this summer we’re going to visit Lake Superior. We’re also going to go to areas with at least some cultural differences from home. On top of that, we also want to spend a lot of time outside, as fresh air is one of the best things you can give a child or give yourself.

Those are the reasons we’re traveling. Those reasons have nothing to do with seeing some mind-blowing sites or going to spectacular events. We know why we’re doing this and we let those reasons lead the whole vacation. As long as we follow that lead, we don’t need to pour money on other activities or sojourns.

Stay with family and friends
On each of these trips, either in the middle of a travel leg or near our destination, we’ll be staying with family or with friends.

This provides both a social purpose (seeing people we care about) and a financial purpose (free lodging for a night or two). Usually, in exchange for this, we often will buy dinner when we’re there (or prepare it). We also allow any family and friends who are in our area to stay at our home for free.

This is an exchange that does nothing but build relationships and help out everyone involved.

Camp out
At least once this summer (perhaps twice), we will be camping out for multiple days. Yes, with a baby. We did it with just one baby and we did it with both a toddler and a baby, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem doing it again with two young children and a baby.

In fact, there’s one big advantage to camping: unless there’s a storm, when everyone falls asleep, everyone sleeps really deeply. I actually tend to sleep better when we’re camping because there are no night-time interruptions or other such things.

On top of that, camping can be incredibly inexpensive. We often request camping gear for gift-giving occasions, which makes camping nearly free. Usually, all we pay for is the spot to camp on – $10 to $20 a night unless we find a free option. Our supplies are usually inexpensive, too, especially if we collect or make our own while we’re there. It provides exercise, tons of fresh air, and some wonderful time in the great outdoors with the people I care about most.

Plan for the road trips
Road trips can be a very expensive part of traveling (as can flying, but I’m just simply not going to attempt that with three children under five). Between the gas, the maintenance costs, and the expensive food and beverages along the way, it can really add up.

That’s why I do some advance planning. The goal is to prevent stops, because stops are expensive.

First, I make sure there are plenty of beverages and snacks packed, probably more than we need. I usually pack sandwiches and vegetables and fruits so that we can have a full picnic meal on the road. I also prepare a big bag full of things to do for the children on the trip.

Second, we stop mostly at rest stops and everyone is required to go to the restroom when we stop. This reduces the temptation to spend money on overpriced stuff when we stop and it also reduces the overall number of stops. Another advantage is that many rest stops (particularly in Iowa) have areas for running around in the grass and picnicking, both of which happen on trips.

Use alternative housing
Hostels. College dorms. YMCA lodging. Housesitting. These are all great options for saving money on lodging when you arrive if you’d prefer not to camp. We are actually going to do some housesitting this summer for one of our trips.

Find out what types of alternative housing are available at your destination. This can be done with just a bit of effective internet searching. Reviews of the housing (available on many travel websites) can help you avoid unexpected problems.

Utilize free activities when we’re there
Vacation doesn’t have to be about jumping from high-priced activity to high-priced activity. Most of the best memories from the vacations I’ve taken in my life come from the free things we did: climbing a hillside in Edinburgh, putting my feet in the ocean northwest of Seattle, seeking out petroglyphs on foot in rural Arizona.

Yes, if there’s something your heart is set on that you really want to see that costs money, do it. However, use travel guides that help you identify the free things in the area and use those to fill up your activity schedule. Spend some time doing simple things, like walking in the woods or resting on the beach or building a great campfire.

Be resourceful
Before you go, tell your social network where you’re intending to go and ask if they have any tips or suggestions about traveling there. You might just be shocked at what your receive in return.

Be resourceful when you’re there as well. Don’t buy firewood if you can find it yourself. Don’t buy campfire roasting sticks – use a knife and make them from branches. Don’t buy beverages – carry an empty container and fill up at water fountains. Just by taking a few little steps to avoid buying things, you can save money left and right on your trip without reducing your enjoyment of it one iota.

Good luck!

Whenever people ask me how to save money on vacations, I always encourage them to consider camping instead of staying in a hotel. We do it often – in fact, I have some very fond memories of camping in Olympia National Forest and on Mount Rainier during our Seattle vacation in ’04 and camping near Gooseberry Falls, MN during another vacation in ’06 (perhaps my favorite camping stops ever, which is why I’m mentioing them).

Some people take this advice and run with it. Camping saves a truckload of money over a long trip and it can provide a unique story, too. Yet some people look at camping and see nothing more than the loss of comforts of a hotel, never mind the savings and the incomparable perks of camping.

This tip column is for that latter group. Here are some ways to make camping much more enjoyable without breaking the bank in any way.

Bathrooms, bathrooms, bathrooms Toilet, sink, and shower service are often the thing that separates a good camping trip from a bad one for people who want to use camping as a substitute for hotel visits. A campsite with inadequate areas for personal hygiene will often get a big thumbs down, as it makes it impossible for people to start off their day with the normal hygiene routine, which is key for many (if not most) people.

So how do you solve it? My first recommendation is to start with – and focus heavily on – state and national parks. You can find tons of them at dto.com (short for discover the outdoors). Focus on parks that have a shower house near the destinations you’re visiting. You can also reserve sites with electricity – perfect if you have devices you wish to plug in (like an alarm clock, for example).

Camping after flying What if you’re flying to your destination? My suggestion is to take the tent with you on the flight. Repackage it in a large box along with sleeping bags, pillows, and other essential items for camping – these all compress surprisingly well. For the return flight, you might find that it’s less expensive to shop the tent and camping materials home via UPS or another shipping service.

When you arrive, purchase a small short-term use styrofoam cooler and pack the food items you wish to keep cold in that, as it’s less expensive than shipping a cooler (unless you can find a great way to pack it in your large box). In other words, one of your first stops will be at a grocery store.

Speaking of eating…

Tactics for eating well while camping Most meals can be cooked really well over a campfire by simply putting the ingredients in aluminum foil, tossing them straight on the coals, then retrieving them later with a stick. Thus, all you will need for dining utensils while camping are some paper plates (which can be reused for kindling the next day) and silverware.

Here’s an example. For breakfast, I will often pull out a sheet of aluminum foil, make a bowl out of it, then crack three eggs in it. Then, I’ll add some beans to it and perhaps some chopped-up vegetables, too, and maybe a sprinkling of cheese. I then fold this up tightly in the foil, wrap it again, then toss it straight on hot campfire coals for ten to fifteen minutes. When I’m done, I have scrambled eggs, perfectly hot. You can make toast in a very similar way, though I often use a pair of sticks to hold a few pieces of toast over flame.

You can make all sorts of different meals using the same exact logic. Use your imagination.

Sleeping comfortably This seems to be one of the biggest complaints about camping – it’s hard to sleep comfortably. I have back concerns myself and, quite honestly, they seem to crop up more from hotel beds for me than from camping, so I confess to not fully understanding this complaint. Instead, I’ll share with you my routine for sleeping in a tent.

First, I often gather leaves and sprinkle them in a pretty thick layer in the spot where we’re going to pitch the tent. In the summer, this often means retrieving them from low-hanging branches. This, of course, works well in some parks but not in others.

Second, I’m picky about my sleeping bags. One lesson I learned from my grandmother is that the place you sleep is a place where you don’t skimp, because it forms the successful basis for the rest of your day. Study them carefully and get a well-padded one that works.

Third, I usually use a sleeping bag pad. This is a very small, thin air mattress that rests under the sleeping bag directly on the floor of the tent.

Finally, and this is probably the biggest thing, I sleep with the windows open when camping. The clean night air makes me sleep very deeply and I almost always wake up feeling refreshed, even if getting to sleep took me a little bit. I tend to sleep better when camping than I do any other night.

Finally, camping’s savings really pop up when you’re on a longer trip rather than a shorter one. If you’re just staying for a single night, the time investment of setting up camp probably undoes the savings from camping. However, if the trip is a long one, the time cost per day is reduced and the cash savings per day is increased, making camping progressively more worthwhile. If your trip is short, it might actually be more cost effective to just stay in a reasonably-priced hotel, but over a long trip, few things beat the savings of camping.

One final note about camping when traveling: the aesthetic beauty of our nation’s state and national parks is an enormous perk when camping. There simply is no hotel on earth that can take your breath away like stepping out of your tent in the morning in the middle of a national park.

Good luck.

Over the past week, my wife, my children, my parents and I all went on vacation to the Dallas/Fort Worth area (we had planned a longer road trip, but we made an on-the-fly decision to just stick around DFW). While there, we visited family and saw a large number of sights and events in the area.

Before the trip, I collected suggestions for free things to do in the area from both readers of the site and on Twitter. The response was pretty surprising, with lots of great suggestions thrown our way. I collected all of the ones suggested by multiple people, selected the handful that I was sure would be a hit with my family, and we tried out several of them.

So, here are the great free things to do in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

Free Things We Enjoyed
Here are the four free things we really enjoyed on our trip. We tried several things, but these stood out from the pack.

Pioneer Plaza

Pioneer Plaza is a beautiful park in the middle of Dallas that features a life-size bronzed cattle drive – three cowboys herding a lot of cattle across a stream. The setting is beautiful and the sculptures are fantastic.

We wound up spending almost two hours here, even on a hot summer day. We admired all of the bronze statues, walked across the stream a few times, and my children petted a horse ridden by a Dallas police officer. It would have been a perfect place to have a picnic had we been more prepared.

You can find out more about Pioneer Plaza from the Texas Trees Foundation.

Dallas Farmer’s Market

What can I say? I love farmer’s markets. There are tons of fresh food samples, opportunities to buy delicious produce at a very low price, and almost always a surprise or two. The Dallas Farmers Market, on the quiet Wednesday morning that we were there, was sparsely crowded but had a lot of vendors happy to talk and offer samples of all kinds.

In the picture above, my daughter was discovering that she loves watermelon – she was trying a (free) piece of yellow watermelon. We wound up buying quite a few fruits at the market, which provided afternoon snacks for the family and some breakfast food as well.

You can find out more about the Dallas Farmers Market at their website.

Dealey Plaza
This is the area where President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. You can stand outside the School Book Depository and observe the route that Kennedy took. There’s also a lot of public works projects in the area, built in the 1930s.

Although there is actually a very nice museum nearby in the School Book Depository, I found that the actual setting outside the Depository had much more of an impact. I walked along the route that Kennedy took, absorbed the area, and thought about that tragic moment.

Wikipedia has an excellent entry on Dealey Plaza.

Fort Worth Stockyards

Over in Fort Worth, we visited the Stockyards. While there are a lot of shops in that area, there’s also a ton of free things to see and do – walking around the stockyards themselves, for starters. There are several free special events each day as well.

The highlight, though, was seeing the longhorn steers being leisurely driven down the street by three or four cowboys (pictured above). My son loved this part and kept talking about it for days afterward.

This is a great way to spend most of a day in Fort Worth. You can find out more at the Stockyards website.

Things Recommended By Two or More Readers
Here are five free activities recommended by multiple readers that we simply didn’t have time to make it to on our trip. All of these sounded like quite a bit of fun – and we would have likely done all of them had our trip been a few days longer.

Jazz Under the Stars
Each summer, the Dallas Museum of Art has a free concert series – in 2009, this series is called “Jazz Under the Stars.” Each Thursday at 8 PM, people gather at Ross Avenue Plaza, spread out blankets and picnic baskets, and enjoy a free outdoor concert by some very good jazz ensembles. More information is available at the Dallas Museum of Art website.

Crow Collection of Asian Art
The Crow Collection of Asian Art is a beautiful art museum located in the Dallas Art District that several readers raved about. It’s right in the heart of the city and features a stunning collection of Asian art, both historical and modern. Outside, there’s an extensive sculpture garden, which includes 20 statues from the French masters. Find out more at CrowCollection.org.

Farmer’s Branch Historical Park
This is a large collection of historical buildings from the 19th and early 20th century, maintained in a state as close to the original as possible. For people into folk history, this is apparently an exquisite place to visit. You can find out more about the Farmer’s Branch Historical Park here.

Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center
The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center is a spectacular concert hall with extremely impressive architecture and acoustics. Built by I. M. Pei, the Center also features one of the best pipe organs in the United States. Check it out at MeyersonSymphonyCenter.com.

Thanks-Giving Square
This is an open area in the center of downtown Dallas dedicated to the idea of giving thanks as a universal human value. The location features an interfaith chapel, a stunning courtyard, and an impressive array of nature and art. Find out more about it at ThanksGiving.org.

Believe it or not, our summer vacations for the next five summers are penciled in right now. For each of those trips, I intend to do the same thing: ask around for free things to do, try out as many as I can, and report on the ones we didn’t make it to.