Oooh! This is my kind of thread. Thanks for starting it @SneakyPete!
I think everyone vacations differently, so before I start blathering on, let me say that we prefer the outdoors, but with some “luxury” accommodations. Meaning, when we do longer than a night or two, we want to be in a cabin or hotel, not in a camper/tent. We like hiking, but then being able to come back for a nice restaurant for dinner, for example.
For National Parks, we LOVED Glacier and Acadia best. Those are the only two trips (besides Disney) that we’d choose to do again. We also enjoyed the 3 in Florida, but they were less immersive for us. Just a day or two at each one. We did Puerto Rico this last March, and it was excellent - Vieques was our favorite. Ireland was amazing, but not cheap.
For shorter vacations, we enjoyed Chicago, St Louis, the “North Shore” in MN (so, north shore of Lake Superior), Door County in WI, Boston. A long weekend, for us, in any of those destinations was enough.
On our to-do list is Asheville NC, New Orleans, some of the national parks in CA (We’ll do Yosemite, Sequoia and King’s Canyon next June). The wish list includes Vancouver, Portland, the Grand Canyon, Mexico, a train trip through the Rockies, Banff.
You’d asked about Hawaii - I did some research before last spring break and would want to do Kauai, but it’s pretty expensive and we weren’t ready for that long of a plane trip with our kids.
My kids have dreams of Europe, and while I’d also enjoy travel further away from home, work and school schedules, cost, and logistics just get in the way of that right now.