The Brief

What’s your ideal vacation?

For many it includes traveling to a popular destination for a once in a lifetime experience. While there, they try to cram in every tourist hotspot and activity into one week, because otherwise, they’d have no other time in the year to do it.

But for a growing number of people, their ideal vacation is one cut off from other people, typically secluded in nature, with little to no tourist activities or distractions.

This new trend in travel is called the “quiet vacation”.

A picture of a rock arch in Bohemian Switzerland, Czech Republic De Vore visited

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Courtesy Sahara Rose De Vore

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A post-pandemic search to restore ourselves

These vacations are often characterized by spending time alone, in off-the-beaten-path locations, predominantly surrounded by nature. Wi-fi is sparse, if available at all, and distractions from the everyday are left at home.

“There's a concept in emotion research called ideal affect, which is this measure we can take of how do you want to feel, what's your ideal?” said Sarah Pressman, professor of psychological science at UC Irvine. “And in the US and in a lot of Western countries, the ideal is high energy. Excitement.”

So why are so many people moving away from high energy vacations?

Pressman suggests it may be due to increasing stress levels, potentially exacerbated by the pandemic.

“What this is probably evidence of is that we are not restoring right now in a way that maybe we used to be able to,” Pressman said. The pandemic work structure, the post-pandemic hybrid work model, and even our constant use of phones, has made it so that people never truly feel that they are off from work.

Pressman also noted the mental health toll that social media and the constant news cycle can have, adding to feelings of constant stress.

“Even when you're at home, you're not actually resting,” she said.

The health benefits of a “quiet vacation”

Respite from daily life has many different physical, mental, and spiritual benefits.

Pressman has studied the benefits of vacations and leisure, with one study showing that people who take more time off have overall better health, with those people showing signs of having decreases in metabolic syndrome, a cluster of physical symptoms tied to worse health. Vacations can also reduce people’s risk of cardiovascular events, according to Pressman.

“We've even seen reduced stress reactivity, reduced heart rate and blood pressure after taking vacations,” she said.

The trend of quiet vacations in particular, can offer unique benefits to one’s mental health and emotional well-being. Their focus on nature and emphasis on solitude can lend people space and time to self-reflect and de-stress.

A giant sequoia tree dwarfs the surrounding forest along the Trail of the 100 Giants in the Sequoia National Monument in Northern California. It's among these massive trees that President Clinton proclaimed the monument.

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David McNew

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Studies have shown that spending time in nature not only reduces stress but can change stress hormones, and improve people’s cognitive functions, such as attention, said Pressman.

“I think the benefit there is twofold from these quiet vacations, because if you go there and you get the benefits of nature, but you're also cutting off the source of your stress by not checking your emails, worrying about work, worrying about what you're missing, and you're actually able to disengage,” Pressman said.

A growing industry for quiet vacationers

Disengaging into nature is exactly what Jon Staff had in mind when he created Getaway, which offers small cabins outside major cities across the United States for these types of quiet vacations.

“Our need, as a people, is to have more balance in our lives,” Staff said. “To get away from the noisy city, to get away from our stressful jobs, to be free even of our messy apartments.”

Staff said quiet vacations also offer people an opportunity to reflect on their lives. Away from distractions, people finally have time to check-in on themselves.

At Getaway, visitors put their phones in lock boxes and are encouraged to immerse themselves in the surrounding nature.

“It's really hard in our modern world with bosses constantly pushing new deadlines on us, with digital distractions interrupting almost every moment of the day,” Staff said. “It is very difficult in that context to stop, take a breath, and really check in with ourselves and what we need.”

Staff said even carving out a day or two of free time to pull ourselves away from distractions of daily life can have so much power in helping us appreciate our lives more.

Sahara Rose De Vore, founder and CEO of the Travel Coach Network, said that travel, especially solo travel, is a “powerful tool for things like self discovery, transformation, healing, and personal development.”

She thinks the rising trend in people using vacations to disconnect from the world and reconnect with themselves is part of a larger pattern of people being more intentional with their vacation time.

How to plan a quiet vacation alone

For those interested in taking a quiet vacation, De Vore recommended looking at smaller cities or towns just outside of major hubs. If seeking a quiet vacation abroad, this allows you to fly into a major airport and then take an inexpensive bus or train ride to your more remote location. The same goes for locations in your own state.

De Vore also suggested picking places that have a nature feature.

“I personally like places where there's bodies of water, so lots of nature, whether there is hiking or there is a lake or a pond,” said De Vore. “The beach is very healing for me, just the power of blue spaces.”

A picture of Lake Orhid in Macedonia from De Vore's trip there

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Courtesy Sahara Rose De Vore

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When traveling alone, it’s important to remain aware of your surroundings, De Vore said. Solo travelers should keep an eye on their valuables and essentials. De Vore said to always keep your ID, phone, and charger on you — in case your luggage is stolen you have the necessities.

Although part of quiet vacations is to disconnect, De Vore recommended, at least when traveling to a new location, to update a family member or friend and give them estimated times of arrival or departure.

If you're planning a quiet vacation with a partner, De Vore said to make sure you discuss what you want to get out of the vacation as individuals.

“Finding a balance within there so that when you do go on this quiet vacation, there's not the stress or the expectations or the pressure of having to sacrifice what you want to do or not do what you want to do all the time just because someone else has another activity in mind,” De Vore said. ”But it starts with you really understanding one another's needs and desires and your intentions for this trip.”

But what if you don’t have time for a full vacation or even a long weekend?

Pressman said that the practices and effects of “quiet vacations” can be achieved even in everyday leisure time. The idea of removing the source of your stress or disconnecting from social media or work, can apply no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

“Mindfulness and other forms of meditation are huge benefits to reducing stress and improving your health, and just giving our brains a break from the constant multitasking and noise,” Pressman said.

The killing of another protester by immigration agents in Minneapolis and President Trump's ongoing threats against Greenland have fueled calls to boycott World Cup matches held in the U.S. this summer — including in Los Angeles.

The suggestion from a former FIFA president and others led some in City Hall to worry that the coming 2028 Olympics could also get the cold shoulder.

"We have a national government who is setting the stage for an environment where we could have a serious boycott," Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said during a committee meeting on the Olympic Games Monday.

John Harper, an executive with private Olympics organizing committee LA28, said that the organization had not discussed the possibility with the International Olympic Committee and that he was not concerned a boycott would take place in 2028.

City Council members did not seem convinced.

"This conversation around FIFA, that's just a forewarning," said Councilmember Monica Rodriguez. "We need to have a Plan B."

The city of Los Angeles stands to lose if spectators or countries opt out of the 2028 Olympics. L.A. is the financial guarantor of the Games, along with the state of California, and a significant boycott could affect the financial success of the massive sporting event.

"We could be talking about a lot more irreparable harm, financially," Rodriguez said.

Fresh concerns about a boycott also come as anxiety in City Hall has been growing about the role the federal government will play at the Games.

The City Council recently passed a motion requesting that LA28 provide more details on the federal Olympics task force on security that Trump announced last year, citing the ICE agents who have descended on the streets of Los Angeles and other U.S. cities

The Olympics have been a frequent arena of political protest over the decades, including in Los Angeles in 1984 when the Soviet Union led a boycott of the Games.

"We never talk about the boycott of '84, but there was a significant boycott," Dawson-Harris said on Monday. "It doesn't mean that you can't figure it out, but it also means we have to face it and face it directly."

The Orange County District Attorney dropped murder charges in a decades-old case tainted by the so-called jailhouse snitch scandal, instead accepting a lesser guilty plea of voluntary manslaughter.

Why it matters

A decade ago, in the wake of the county’s biggest mass murder, the O.C. Public Defender’s Office discovered that local law enforcement had been illegally using informants — sometimes called snitches — to get information and confessions from defendants in jail. The discovery has unraveled close to 60 criminal convictions to date and tainted the reputations of the O.C. District Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Department.

What's the backstory?

Paul Smith was convicted of murder in 2010 for stabbing his childhood friend Robert Haugen to death in 1988 and then setting the body on fire in the victim’s Sunset Beach apartment. A decade later it came to light that O.C. law enforcement illegally used jailhouse informants to bolster their case against Haugen, and then hid that from the defense, ultimately leading a judge to throw out the conviction and order a new trial.

Now that trial won’t happen. Under a plea deal struck with the current District Attorney’s ffice, Smith pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Monday and will serve another five years in prison before being released.

‘Reprehensible’ behavior from prosecutors

In a ruling last year, a San Diego judge overseeing Smith’s case said Orange County prosecutors had shown “reprehensible” behavior in pursuit of convicting Smith. He also said Ebrahim Baytieh, a former prosecutor and, now, Superior Court judge, was “not truthful” during court proceedings.

The takeaway?

Current District Attorney Todd Spitzer has repeatedly said his office has implemented reforms to ensure the rights of criminal defendants to a fair trial. He released a statement saying his office has taken steps to reverse the "cheat to win" missteps of an earlier administration and lamented that a murder defendant will now have an easier path to release:

What does the defense say?

Scott Sanders, Smith’s attorney and the former assistant public defender who uncovered the so-called “snitch scandal,” says not enough has been done to reexamine cases in which tainted evidence may have been used to convict people.

Go deeper:

• Judge rips into OC prosecutors and calls their misconduct 'reprehensible'
• Is the OC snitch scandal over? Why there’s no easy answer
• OC Snitch Case: An Orange County judge is accused of a criminal cover-up
• Jailhouse informants: Has Orange County reformed its ways?