Have you ever just wanted to get away?  But when you look in your wallet and dust comes out?  Just because money is tight doesn’t mean you have to stay home.  All you have to do is look in your backyard.  No.. not that backyard!  Just look around your own city…state…anything within driving distance.  A great vacation is just a tank of gas away!

We were excited when Holiday Inn gave us the chance to do our own State-cation!  Holiday Inn provided us with a $50 gas card, $100 for food and a room at the Holiday Inn in Irving,TX.  So after a short drive we started our Holiday Inn State-cation!

I must say the directions we got off the internet were not the best (not from the Holiday Inn website!).  But as a true man I did not want to admit we were lost!  As it grew more evident that I was not heading the right way, my lovely wife called the Holiday Inn.  The gentleman who answered the phone was very helpful and I think he went above and beyond to help us.  My wife put him on speaker phone and he talked to us until we literally pulled into the parking lot!

As you can imagine my man pride was hurt and all I really wanted to do is go up to the room so the nice guy didn’t have a chance to laugh at me!  I had to do a double take when I walked into the entry way.  This wasn’t the Holiday Inn I remember.  And after a quick and painless check inn we went up to our room.  When I opened the door, I was nice and held the door for my wife.  All I heard when she walked past me was “HOLY COW!’  I was thinking the room was dirty,someone was already in the room and a few other things I won’t post.  I turned in and said “HOLY COW’!  First they upgraded our room to a suite as a surprise!  Second, this suite was alot nicer than our suite on our Honeymoon and I paid alot more for that suite!  It was amazing!  They had beautiful flowers, champagne and chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us! (Be sure to check out our Whrrl story for pics!)

The next part of the State-Cation is finding something to do that’s interesting but still close enough to drive to.  We went to this HUGE MALL.  I know there are malls in every community but nothing like this one.  This mall has a bunch of Outlet stores in it.  And if you are married to my wife you go to mall with outlet stores in them!  It was what we chose to do on our State-cation.  It is something we don’t do every week.  I did check around and if you wanted to do other things close to Irving.  There is a Wax museum close, Ft Worth has an amazing downtown, Dallas has the West End to walk around and there is a lot more that simple call to the state tourism dept. will solve!  The main goal, IMO, for a State-cation is to go somewhere close to home that either you hadn’t been to or to just go somewhere close to home to just get away.  You don’t have to make air travel plans for a vacation.  It as easy as getting your state map and picking a new city to check out.  Holiday Inn has made State-cations easy! If you just want to get away from the house to relax…they provide a great room for that to!      Be sure to check out our Whrrl story for pics of the Holiday Inn and of our great deals we got while we were there!

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