top favorite quick weekend get-aways in the midwest

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Like the majority of us, I work a regular 50+ hour per week job and I’m always DYING to get away for a few days. The itch to get away has been ESPECIALLY bad the past year, with the pandemic putting a damper on most travel. But – there are SO MANY places within our gorgeous country and would you believe, most of them are drivable? At least if you’re insane, like we are. If you don’t believe me – I’m here to share with you my top favorite quick weekend get-aways in the Midwest.

The Smoky Mountains in Tennessee

This is a new place for us, but it almost instantly became one of our favorite places on the planet. I absolutely love the mountains, but I LOVE Tennessee, so the mountains IN Tennessee is the ultimate place for me. My dream is to someday build a beautiful farmhouse in a holler somewhere in the Smokeys and live happily ever after.

We rented a beautiful, studio style cabin through “Cabins for You,” and had an awesome experience. The cabin was clean and we had a spectacular view of the Smokies. It was so easy to turn everything off, sip coffee and just enjoy each other. Not to mention, we drank a TON of beer in our hot tub, overlooking the mountains. We did make the trip to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park for some hiking. It was absolutely breathtaking.

Bonus pro-tip: don’t get caught in a tourist trap about goats on a roof. There are zero goats on any roofs.

San Antonio, Texas

Quite a bit of a longer haul, but easily do-able in a day. We make this trip fairly often, as Greg’s BFF from the Marines lives in Texas with his wife. I love Texas and damn near everything about it. San Antonio and near-by New Braunfels has an amazing food + beer scene, amazing deep Texas Country music (Randy Rogers Band ((*aff link*)) – thank me later), beautiful art and tons of cool places to visit. Check out the Guadalupe River and float down it, if you can!

Gulf Shores, Alabama

I always remember hearing about so many people going here as I was growing up, but I never went – we didn’t really travel much as kids. Greg’s mom and step dad took the entire family at the end of last summer and we had a FREAKING BLAST. It’s absolutely gorgeous at this beach!!

We didn’t do much of anything with the pandemic and what not, but even just staying at our rental house, we had so much fun. We spent most of our time there drinking beer, cooking, laying on the beach, hanging out in the pool or driving around looking at the houses around town. One night, we watched the storms before the hurricane come across the Gulf and ordered over $150 in Dominos. Tell me we don’t know how to party.

Pro-Fitness Tip: Don’t go for a long walk or run barefoot on the beach. You will get blistered AF and be sad about it.

Golden, Colorado

We drove to Boulder for my sister’s wedding two years ago in January and even though we didn’t get a whole lot of time to explore, we still had a great time. It was a fairly long drive, but it could be an easy long weekend trip.

We’re both big beer drinkers so duh, we had to visit the Coors Brewery. And we also discovered that people put honey on pizza crust! WILD. We were extremely lucky with the weather as we had beautiful, spring-like weather one day and had an insane blizzard the following day. I went for a run at the crazy high altitude, in the falling snow, with the Rockies overlooking me. Super worth the drive! We can’t wait to go back and do some more exploring.

This is a #tbt of sorts, kind of reminiscing on better days when we could go play in public and the weather was warmer. I hope you’ve enjoyed this list of some of my top favorite quick weekend get-aways in the Midwest.

As always, I hope you will share some of your favorite places to visit so I can add them to our list!

Happy (& safe) road-tripping! 🙂