Secrets of the Best Family Vacations

Nobody wants a vacation spot to feel too much like their own house -- after all, you left that vacuum cleaner and the stack of bills behind for a reason. But sometimes you want to settle in one place, with no need to pack or plan (or even move!) until your trip's over. That's why the Huth family of Tampa loved their quaint rented bungalow in Indian Shores, Florida. Fully stocked with necessities, it allowed everyone to tend to the important business of doing, well, nothing: grown-ups found the hammock to be a cozy spot for reading, while Kayla, age seven, and Tyler, three, splashed between the pool and the Gulf of Mexico, a mere 50 feet away. Of course, it wasn't too much like home. Says mom Amy, "It was a time to breathe, to stare at the ocean, and play marbles with the kids."

A Smoky Mountains cabin complete with hot tub and pool table made the Deitz family from Greenwood, Indiana, feel perfectly at home -- in the best possible sense. "We enjoyed being together and yet having enough room to spread out," explains mom Stephanie. Since wrangling the kids in and out of restaurants is what they do at home when they're too busy to cook, here they took turns fixing dishes that were just a bit exotic, such as tandoori chicken or chocolate fondue.

The Hughes family of Olney, Maryland, took homeyness to new highs -- or is that lows? -- in a friend's rustic cottage in Bethany Beach, Delaware. The lack of creature comforts such as a dishwasher, a TV, and -- the kicker -- an indoor shower seemed less than ideal, but aside from "glorious unrushed days on the beach," that alfresco shower turned out to be the hit of the trip, says mom Karen: "I never heard one child object to washing up all week." Short on modern-day conveniences, the kids grew long on inventiveness: Karen and her husband checked on them one night after bedtime to find 8-year-old Brian entertaining his two siblings with a shadow puppet show. "Hoyt and I were invited to sit in the audience. As they say in the commercials: priceless!"