Don’t Just Plan: Prepare for Your Vacation

When it comes to vacations, I take seriously the belief that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, as I’ve been a victim of this phenomenon several times. (My car, for example, has a tendency to revolt against our vacations—once we’re halfway to our destination.) I do my best to plan and prepare, but any outside help is welcome, such as another pair of eyes to go over my list of items to pack, or the “Resources” page (under “Area Info”) on the Gulf Shores Plantation website.

This page actually saved us from a huge problem once. It provides recommendations of things to bring and consider when going on a trip, and one of the items mentioned is a spare set of car keys. This jogged my memory that we only had one set of keys to our family car, and though we had planned to have another set made, it never happened—until I saw this recommendation on the website. By the time we left on our vacation, we had that second set. So when I left the car keys in a shopping bag on the second day of vacation and then lost the shopping bag somewhere I still don’t remember, we simply took a cab back to the Plantation and retrieved the second set (which my husband held onto for the remainder of the vacation).

It’s a good resource to glance at when making preparations to visit the Gulf—you never know what you might’ve overlooked! And while some stuff can certainly be replaced once you arrive and realize what you forgot (the “Shopping” link is my other favorite page), others are simply irreplaceable—like the time we forgot my daughter’s favorite bear when she was very young. That might’ve been a worse mistake than losing the car keys.