I don’t know how good your local library is, but ours has many free things. Museum passes (you have to reserve them though), ‘adventure’ kits (pasta making, karaoke, metal detecting, etc), a streaming stick with their Netflix & movies anywhere account - plus they have a WiFi hotspot you can borrow if you don’t have internet, and yard games. Of course they also have events you can sign up for in the library as well.
This time of the year we like to take a drive to look at the decorated houses.
On our anniversary cruise we stopped in Cork, Ireland so we went to Blarney Castle, which we did on our honeymoon too but at 28 it was easy. At 58, well I did it and I didn't cry at all. LOL I skipped kissing the Blarney Stone. No need to do that twice.
This is the way we travel also. We even have a cooler that we take on the plane with us! Previously we would buy one wherever we were and donate it on the way to the airport. Now, I use it to pack our hiking shoes in. It has a sticker on it for each state it has traveled to. We will have occasional eat out meal but I remind myself if we eat out of the cooler we can travel more. It also helps with over eating because we never sit down starving.We're starting to get better about packing food or grocery shopping when we get there to help keep costs down while staying somewhere. Our last trip (a week at GWL in Houston) we bought several of the fully cooked microwave reheatable meals and took a cooler that we refilled with bags of ice from the ice machine. The meals cost about $25 for all 5 of us to eat on and we're pretty tasty! We bought fruit and veggie trays to snack on, donuts/pastries from the grocery store, a case of water and flavor packets and soda for us adults, other snacks, and several different microwave meals and I think spent $150 for everything. Meanwhile, we decided to do pizza and wings and cheese fries from the lodge one night (kiddos birthday) and it was $83!
Happy birthday.
It was closed to the public when I was there in 1990. So when I went with dh and the kids in 2013, I was very determined to climb it. It was similar to climbing Barnegat Lighthouse at the shore but there's no handrails. Sometimes the leaning makes you lean back, sometimes you're leaning forward. It was wild.
My father is of Italian descent and all my life I pleaded for him (and my grandmother) to visit Italy. I feel like everyone should explore their roots. They both resisted due to the long flight. We finally got him there in 2013 on our Med cruise. The saddest part is that now with his dementia, he doesn't even remember it.
I never did get my grandmother there. I told her after my first trip I'd do my Perillo tour all over again just to spend it with her but she would never fly. 
