Pondering With A Purpose - Getting Away

Thanks to Brenda for hosting this thought-provoking hop.  As a hospitality and tourism professor, this topic is near and dear to my heart.  It is about:
Getting Away?
I am a perfect example of that old say, "physician heal thyself."  I have studied and come to have a pretty good understand of why and how people choose to travel.  I have spent countless hours pondering the ingredients to a great trip experience.  The thing about it though, is that this has ruined vacations for me.  When I am in a hotel, I am thinking about how I could improve their customer services levels.  When I am at a festival, I am thinking about how they manage their sponsorship.  I start thinking about how they must be managing their budgets and profit margins.  In summary, vacations are really not that fun for me.  I know too much inside info that I actually care about and can not really turn off as a result.  My vacation then can easily turn into my work.  

The question is how do I get away?  In addition to my work problem, we also live in the number one vacation spot in the USA (according to Conde Naste).  There are very few times when I can not find what I want here as a result.  We have a ton of choices of beaches, restaurants and festivals.  We have beautiful landscape as well as a historic downtown that is simply gorgeous.  Heck, in the AM I am two minutes from watching the sun rise over the ocean and at night I get to see it set over a fabulous marsh.  I have all kinds of wild life that people pay big money to see within steps of my house.  Further, the customer service levels in this city are so good that I am often disappointed when I do travel in the service I do receive.  I am indeed spoiled.

The last component is that I have three kids.  Traveling with a sullen teenager, a five year old child with Autism and a nearly two year old bundle of energy is not fun in the least.  Someone is always crying (and it is usually me).  As a single income family, we do not have a lot of cash.  When we travel, it costs of six meals at restaurants, a suite room (if we do not want dead children on our hands) and stops at places that involve staff in costumes (cringe).  I can not in good conscious classify that as fun.  Now, if one of you wants to volunteer to give my wife and I a weekend getaway, we might be onto something, but as reality currently stands I will enjoy a Stay-cation thank you very much.