Why do you have to go hundreds of miles from home to call it a vacation?

Help me on this...pleeeease! Why can't you just go up the street to a motel and call it a vacation. Or better yet, why does a "vacation home" have to be hours and hours away from your domicile in order for it to be your "home away from home"?
For the last several weeks, whenever I get some time off, I plead, well not actually plead, Pattye would do anything I ask, but I suggest to Pattye if we could make a day-trip to one of the numerous lakes in our area.
I've recently gottin an itch that I can't seem to scratch and it concerns finding this little lake house where I can just go and sit. That's it, sit.
Now I have never been one to just sit. I'm really not sure I actually know how.
Sittin, I think, takes years of practice, and it probably takes the right kind of person. But I think I might like to try it.
We didn't take many vacations when I was young but I do remember this little lake just over the Ohio border outside Sturgis, Michigan. Klinger Lake it was called. Nothin fancy, just Klinger Lake.
We stayed in this 10 or 12 unit motel that had a pier out front. A kind of like little bayou, although in Michigan I am sure it wasn't called a bayou, ran behind the motel and was full of frogs and turtles.
I guess we may have gone up there 3 or 4 times and probably only stayed for the weekend.
After my older brother Rick and I got settled in (David never went for some reason) we ran to the lake and spent the day floating on rubber tubes and digging in the 2-foot wide beach and Mom and Dad just sat.
It's the only time I can remember Mom and Dad just sittin.
I don't think they liked sittin, but that was all there was to do . Just sit.
And that's what I'm looking for now. A good sittin place.
We have tried to keep our search within about 2 hours from home. Anything more would be a vacation and we don't have time for that. But if we could get there maybe after work and just go and sit for a couple hours, I think that would do right well for me.
Pattye and several friends don't think I could sit for probably more than an hour. I bet I could prove them wrong.
I bet if I put my mind to it, I could even sit and maybe do some whittlin.
Yep, I can see me now, just sittin and whittlin.
We even have 3 lakes within an hour from here and I have considered trying to find my little dream lake house at these locations but for some reason you have to make it a trip in order to get away from it all.
I wonder where the people come from who make the drive to the lakes near me in order to just come and sit. I guess they figure they have to make it at least a trip in order to sit.
Well, we have a few lakes left on our list before we either have to expand our search or I am going to have to find comfort in my own backyard.
Yep, just sittin. That's what I dream about.