Your Backyard Staycation: Why a Hammock Beats a Hotel

I'm Paul Ashwell, and for twenty-five years I sold hammocks from a shop in Key West. That meant a quarter of a century spent around people on vacation: families off the cruise ships, couples on a long weekend, and folks who had saved all year for one week somewhere warm. You learn a lot about what people want from a getaway when you watch them try hammocks all day.

You also learn how hard people are working. Over the years I watched more and more customers step away from the hammock display to answer a work call or check their email, on the one week they were supposed to have off. People are putting in longer days, answering messages at night and on weekends, and taking on side work to keep up. Somewhere along the way, being busy became a badge of honor, and resting started to feel like falling behind. And many people now don't even get to take a vacation at all.

According to a YouGov survey taken at the end of August, 47% of American adults didn't take a single leisure trip this summer. Back in the spring, Deloitte found that only 45% of Americans were planning a vacation with a hotel or rental stay. If you stayed home, you had plenty of company.

What a Vacation Is Really For

Here's what all those years behind the counter in Key West taught me: most people on vacation weren't really after the destination. They were after the feeling of having nowhere to be, nothing needed doing, and some time to really relax with family.

That feeling doesn't need a plane ticket or an overpriced hotel. It needs a comfortable place to lie down, a little shade, and permission to do nothing for a while.

Why Your Backyard Makes a Better Getaway Than You Think

It's already paid for. No hotel bill, no airfare, no gas money, no airport parking. The view out your back door costs you nothing extra.

You can take it every day, not once a year. A trip you save up for all year is over in a week or two. A hammock in the yard is there every evening after work and every weekend morning with a cup of coffee. Even twenty minutes in a hammock can do more for you than you'd expect.

Fall is the best season for it. The summer heat breaks, the evenings cool off, and the light turns golden earlier. Summer vacation season may be over, but hammock season isn't.

Making Memories That Last

Some of my favorite conversations in the Key West shop had nothing to do with selling a hammock. Over the years, so many people walked in, saw the hammocks hanging, and stopped in their tracks. Then out came a story about Grandpa's old hammock at the beach house.

More often than not, the story they remembered best was falling out of it, or the day it finally broke with half the family piled in. Decades later, grown adults were standing in my shop laughing about it like they were kids again, because a hammock brought it all back.

That's the thing about a hammock. Nobody remembers the hotel they stayed in, but they remember the hammock where they spent their summers. The kids and grandkids climbing into yours today are making the same kind of memories, and you don't need a beach house to give them that. A backyard will do just fine.

Just make sure they're the good kind of memories. Most of those tumbles came from a hammock hung too tight and flat, which makes it tippy. Hang yours with a slight curve so it stays balanced, and keep the bed about 18 inches or less off the ground with someone lying in it. That way, if someone does roll out, it's a story to laugh about and not a trip to the doctor.

Take the Vacation You Already Have

I've always said I love every hammock, from one made out of old onion sacks up to the Jumbo Caribbean. The best one is the one you actually lie in.

So if this summer got away from you, don't wait for next year. Make the backyard the destination. Hang a hammock, climb in with someone you love, and let the afternoon go by without you.

All you need are two trees about 14 to 18 feet apart, or a hammock stand. Here's how to hang a hammock between two trees, or how to do it with nothing but rope.

Paul Ashwell is the founder of Key West Hammock Company and spent twenty-five years running the company's hammock shop in Key West.