If you're staycationing this summer, you can take a vicarious road trip by following Mary Logan Barmeyer -- National Geographic Green Guide research specialist -- and her cousin, Trish Harris via their blog, Two Green Girls on the Road.

I've been doing pretty good on my...Not really a diet, diet. Basically, I have lost most of the weight I had gained since last year's BlogHer conference. It's really amazing how easy it is to gain twenty pounds when you're not looking. I blame it on the whole love/hate relationship with my scale thing. Anyway, now I am faced with a dilemma...To diet, or not to diet, at the BlogHer conference?

Summer is consistent for me in as many ways as it is not, it turns out. Jobs, schedules and styles all change, but from year to year, I know a few things for sure. I'll complain about the D.C. humidity, but never as much as I complain about ice falling from the sky in the winter. I'll fall in love with fresh white corn and tomatoes all over again (go away, Salmonella, go away.) And every July, I'm likely to be in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for a weeklong family beach vacation that is much a ritual as a getaway.

When you give up that big trip because 4 bucks a gallon puts an uncomfortable crimp in your wallet or airfares are too ridiculous or that unexpected stint of unemployment took a bite out of your travel budget, it is not a staycation or a holistay, it's staying home. It's the chick flicks and ice cream bandage of financially wounded travelers, a day trip to the water park instead of a cabin at the beach for a week. Staycation? Holistay? Meh.

I had a dream once, I remember it quite well. I was living on barge with my sweetheart. It’s what we did for a living - he was a river barge captain, we delivered freight via the canals of Europe. It's funny that my subconscious should settle me with so much contentment on a boat - after all, I get seasick and am a little claustrophobic. But on the barge of my dreams, I was supremely comfortable. It was roomy and conditions were seldom rough. We had a nice cabin and a good kitchen and there were lots of windows.

For some, the Family Vacation is as American as apple pie. And with rising fuel prices, vacations are becoming more elusive for many -- economic options for getting away are in short supply. Today's announcement that American Airlines will now charge for any checked baggage was yet another in a long string of unwelcome travel news:

Surprise, American Taxpayer!