We had one week in Switzerland. Jet lag ate most of the first day. So by the time we got moving, I was running the math in my head. Six days left. Every hour had a job.

Marissa and I went with Ben and Michelle, two of our closest friends. No kids on this one. Just four adults in a country that looks fake in pictures.

One morning we drove 30 minutes to a mountain town built around exactly one thing. You take the gondola up, then you come back down the slope. Bikes, carts, or a toboggan run. That was the plan. That was the entire reason to be in that town.

Sold out. All of it. Every trip up, every way down, gone for the day.

So the four of us are standing there with four hours to kill in a town that did not have much else going on.

Somebody pulled up a hike about 90 minutes away. Three hours of driving round trip, plus another 30 back to where we were staying. Rain was in the forecast. There was a real chance we would burn half the day driving and then stand in a downpour looking at a trailhead.

And I said the thing that sucks the air out of a room on vacation.

What if we just stay here. Get something sweet. Walk around a little. Then head back to the Airbnb and recharge.

I got outvoted 3 to 1.

What I was pitching has a name in our family: Low-hanging fruit.

Where it usually starts to go wrong

Here is what I think is actually going on when a trip starts to sour.

You saved for this. You took the time off. You may not get back here. So every hour feels like it owes you something, and the only way to get paid is to fill it.

That works for about three days.

Then somewhere around day four or five you notice you are short with your kids. You are annoyed at your spouse over the parking situation. You are sitting at dinner in one of the best places you have ever been, and you are not really there, because you are already worried about tomorrow’s schedule.

The trip did not go wrong. You just ran out of gas and kept driving.

So we push harder

We add the extra stop. We take the detour because somebody online said it was worth it. We wake up earlier to fit one more thing in. We treat exhaustion as a discipline problem instead of information.

The reason is FOMO. Plain and simple.

Somebody posted a photo from the top of that mountain and it looked incredible, so now the trip feels like a failure if you do not get there too.

But the photo only shows you what they got. It does not show you what getting it cost them.

FOMO does not protect you from missing out. It guarantees it.

Nobody gets it all. So if the goal is to never miss anything, you have already lost, and in the process of chasing everything you miss the thing you are actually standing in.

Say yes to the three hour drive and the maybe-rained-out hike, and you are saying no to the afternoon you were already standing in. You are saying no to being pleasant to be around at dinner. You are saying no to sleep.

Stop climbing for the fruit at the top

You still have a plan. You still know what you came for. But when you are running low, you take what is already in reach instead.

Sometimes that is the town you are already standing in. Sometimes it is the coffee shop across the street. Sometimes it is letting the kids play at the campground for an afternoon instead of loading everybody back into the truck for a scenic overlook that is 40 minutes away.

The low-hanging fruit rarely looks like the thing you will remember while you are choosing it.

Almost every friendship we have made in 11 years on the road came out of an unplanned afternoon.

We met Stewart and Lindsey at a playground. Not on the itinerary. Some of my favorite memories are sitting around a fire with Corey and Jessie, or trying to skip rocks left-handed on a river in Alaska.

None of that shows up on a list. None of it happens when you are hyper-focused on the interstate and the checklist.

What we did with those four hours

The group kept talking. The clouds started moving in. The odds of that hike being any good dropped by the minute.

So we stayed.

And I will be honest with you. For a while it felt like the wrong call.

There was not a lot to do. We ate something sweet. We wandered through a few shops. Then we drove back and sat around the Airbnb for a couple of hours.

That is the whole story. It was not secretly magical. We did not stumble onto a hidden gem.

Nothing happened that afternoon. That was the win.

We went back out that evening rested, and it was a great night.

I am not going to tell you that one afternoon made the trip. It was a day out of seven. But I know how the other version of that day usually goes, because we have lived it plenty of times, and nobody comes back from it in a good mood.

Now, you might be thinking: easy for you, Nathan, you live on the road. You will get another shot.

We had one week, same as anybody. And we are just as unlikely to get back to Switzerland as those of you reading this. That is exactly the pressure I am describing. It did not make the three hour drive a better idea. It made it a worse one, because there was more riding on how the rest of the week went.

Eleven years on the road and we still have not gotten this balance right. We still catch ourselves running the math, adding the stop, pushing for one more thing.

But I have stopped treating exhaustion like a character flaw. When I am snapping at the people I love the most, that is not weakness. That is the pace talking.

And I have quit pretending I am ever going to get it all. I am not. Neither is anybody else, no matter what their pictures look like.

So when I feel that pull to climb now, I try to ask myself what it is going to cost, and whether there is already something good enough sitting right in front of me.

Most days there is.

The trick is taking the low-hanging fruit before you are too worn out to enjoy any of it.

Until next time, see you down the road!
- Nathan