T-Minus 8 days

When I told Amber—my only full-time employee, and an intensely scheduled mom to two hockey-playing teenagers—of our plans to take two weeks in July to walk 100 miles across Northern England, she didn’t really hold back. “That sounds like the worst vacation ever.” We laughed at that, of course. We both understand the allure of spending a week on a tropical patch of sand with nothing but a book and an ice-cold beverage to keep us company. But, even so, I was surprised that a trip like the one Steve and I had just spent weeks planning wouldn’t be universally appealing. I mean, right?