RIVER CITY JOURNAL: WHAT DID YOU DO ON VACATION? NOTHING... REALLY... NOTHING

If you take vacations to relax, read on, because here are some guaranteed tips. If you can't sit still, don't bother.

There is an art to taking a successful vacation, and I only regret that it has taken the better part of my life to figure out how to do it.

In the interest of making your vacation days happier and more rewarding, here are some of the best ideas my wife and I have discovered in our 32 years together. (Somehow we always manage to take our vacations at the same time as our wedding anniversaries. That way we can say the trip is an anniversary celebration and get twice the bang for our bucks.)

Here are the tips:

No. 1. Pick your destination carefully. It cannot be said too strongly that where you choose to go will more bearing on the overall success of your trip than any other single factor.

My wife and I have found the perfect solution: We go the same place almost every year.

Sound boring? Not if you stick to some of the other tips below.

In 1972, while living in Idaho, we visited a tiny town called Yachats on the Oregon coast at the suggestion of the then-publisher of the paper where I worked. He told us that he and his wife had been going back to this same town for years, and he thought we would like it.

Sure enough, we fell in love with Yachats, whose population has swollen to a whopping 600. We like the everybody-knows-everybody feel of the place. Clarke still runs the little grocery store. Virgil still mans the post office and figures out who should receive parcels even when there is no name on the address label. Virgil would be a little disappointed if we didn't make our annual visit to buy a box to ship souvenirs and extra clothing home.

"That's a long way, isn't it?" he says every year when he looks at the Missouri destination. "Yes," we reply, "it's a long way away."

That's the total conversation with Virgil. It is the same every year, like a script we are all following just so nothing gets out of kilter to ruin an otherwise pleasant stay. Virgil doesn't pry further, and we don't volunteer anything additional. There's a delicate balance there that is preserved year after year.

Our friends raise their eyebrows when we tell them we've been going to the same town on the Oregon coast almost every year for the past quarter of a century. "Don't you get tired of it?" they ask. No, we say, we just get more comfortable. Besides, who would carry on that crazy banter with Virgil if we didn't show up?

No. 2. Pack lightly. Oh, sure, you think you have packing down to a science. But I mean take only what you need. After years of lugging big, overfilled suitcases to airports and waiting at the luggage carousels coming and going, we finally have it down to a small bag that fits under the airplane seat or in the overhead compartment and a folding hanging bag that also can be carried on board. That's it.

Unless you're going to Monte Carlo or have an appointment for tea with Elizabeth II, you only need one change of clothes and one pair of shoes, preferably comfortable walking shoes. We've found that most vacation destinations expect tourists to dress comfortably. You can go to a pretty swanky restaurant, for example, wearing sneakers and jeans, and no one will bat an eye. If they arch their eyebrows, you're in the wrong place anyway.

No. 3. Choose your vacation activities carefully. For us, that means good books, not great literature. There's a difference. One you do for pleasure. The other you do to impress somebody, although I've never figured out who.

Don't forget to relax. One of the advantages of going to the same spot for 25 years, particularly a town whose idea of progress is repainting the yellow center stripe down the middle of the main road, is you have no urge whatsoever to see the sights. After all, the reason you go to the Oregon coast is to watch the ocean butt heads with the rocky shore. What else is there to do?

My other main activity while on vacation is to do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day. Some days this takes most of the day, on and off. This is time I don't have at home to devote to a crossword puzzle. On vacation, though, there's plenty of time during those hours when you aren't sleeping, napping, dozing or nodding off, not to mention eating, snacking or munching on this or that.

I would give you reasons No. 4 and No. 5 just to round out the list, but it would clutter an otherwise uncomplicated vacation formula that has been carefully tested and proven to be successful.

If you are one of those Type A personalities and are driven to do things -- lots of things -- while on vacation, I can only tell you what you already know: When you come home, you are bedraggled and touchy, and you look forward to going back to work so you can relax.

Too bad.

You could have had a vacation instead.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.