Vacation ideas? Simple, right? No.

My parents want to take the family on a vacation next summer for about a week. It has to be in summer due to the kid's school year. Finding something everyone can enjoy is the problem. Everyone is on the East Coast. Here are the parties involved:

Group 1 - Me, my wife and my two kids - ages 13 (boy) and almost 4 (girl). All but the youngster love outdoor activities - hiking, whitewater rafting, caverns and so forth. We like cooler weather and hate to sit and swelter. We like little eclectic shops, don't care too much about being pampered. We prefer to eat casual, eat early and don't go out for a ton of nightlife. We're not heavy drinkers. With the 4 year old, we're limited on what we can do. We're not very fussy, but we don't want to sit in some posh resort for a week or sit on a sweltering cruise ship in the Caribbean. Been there, done that, hated it. So we like places like Estes Park, Santa Fe, Chattanooga, Jackson Hole, etc. The only other vacation my wife and I hated was in New Orleans - I hate that place. My son and I got back from a San Fran/Yosemite/Tuolumne River vacation a couple of months ago and loved it - 3 days of good whitewater, 3 days in Yosemite and 3 days in SF eating great food.

Group 2 - My parents. They're in their 70s. They're more limited in what they can do, especially my father - but he still wants to go do something. Whitewater rafting is good because he can sit. Mom's open to anything. They live in FL and don't want to go to Disney in mid-summer (neither do I). They've been all around the world, so they've probably already "done that". Dad doesn't want to go to a major city (I suggested NYC).

Group 3 - My sister and her friend. Polar opposites of us. Want to get up late and stay up late. Like to gamble, see shows, get pampered, sit on a beach and drink. The cruise we didn't like, they loved. Why not? Beaches, pools, nightlife and being pampered...they ate it up. My sis is usually unwilling to compromise. They turned down a vacation to Yellowstone/Tetons because it "wasn't their thing". She said she'd rather stay in Tampa and at the beach.

Yeah. You see the problem. It's nigh impossible. But I bring this to you, the geniuses of FOFC, because if there's a solution, ya'll can probably come up with it.

I was thinking about possibly a cruise to Alaska with some shore excursions or Hawaii, but both are very expensive and require a ton of travel. Other ideas were trying to find some resort in the Rockies, Santa Fe or on one of the Great Lakes, but I have no idea what fits the bill.

Ideas?

Oh, and if you mention something and I knock it down, please don't be offended. I just know about the parties involved and don't want to write any more of a book than I already have.

Eastern Tennessee?

Sadly, with those constraints, you've really boxed yourself into a no win situation. No offense, but the easy answer seems to be "you're all too damn picky". If no one's willing to compromise then they can all go on their own vacations. That said, I'll try to come up with what I have since I've done most every US vacation short of Seattle, New England, Vegas, Alaska, and Hawaii.

So let me see if I have your giant stumbling blocks:
-You want outdoors but your sister hates outdoors and your parents only want mild versions of each. One of you is going to have to relax this constraint because it's hard to find any of that.
-You parents have been everywhere. Sorry, mom and dad- if you want a family vacation, you might have to go somewhere else again. Either that or mom and dad have to pick somewhere they haven't and it's their job to politic and have the kids fall in line, regardless of what they want.
-One week is going to be really tough to do Alaska or Hawaii. You're eating up a day minimum each way for travel and if you're spending that much, don't short yourself by only being there 5 days.
-I hate to say it, but your sister is going to be impossible to match up with your other wants. Let her and your parents slug it out and deal with it. That said, I care nothing for those things your sister cares about so I'm a bad gauge of those and my suggestions will be hardest to match up with them just because I don't comprehend what she wants. In short, it's not that I don't understand the problem but being a polar opposite of that, every trip I've been on involves nightlife that she couldn't care less about, short of maybe NYC and Broadway. Our typical evenings away involve going to a baseball game or other sporting event, something outdoors to see nature at night, staying wherever we are (like an amusement park or the DC Mall) until close, or just relaxing after a busy day.
-Minor note: I've only been whitewater rafting once but is that something your parents could do? I don't think I'd take my parents. My sister and I went when we were in our teens and they were 50ish and they wanted nothing to do with it.

Ok, so here's what I see even remotely fits:

DC/Virginia area - there's all the DC stuff you can shake a stick at- museums, landmarks, etc; Virginia Beach, Busch Gardens, and Colonial Wiliamsburg are within 3 hour drives as is a day in Shenandoah for some quality outdoors time; sister gets the city and night life of DC and Virginia Beach but also has to go off the beaten path for stuff they think is boring, parents have to deal with the city part of the time and have probably been there before

Denver/Colorado Springs - Rocky Mountain National Park to the North; Colorado Springs has Pikes Peak Cog Railway (for those who can't hike 14K feet- I know I can't), lots of little downtown-y shops in Manitou Springs, Air Force Academy chapel; Royal Gorge is a bit south of there; Denver has the city and all that a mid-sized city entails without anything really iconic- I dunno Coors brewery, Mount Evans, assorted standard museums and sporting events; I don't see a lot of nightlife for either city: Denver has a downtown and I kindof liked Seven Falls in the evening, cheesy as it is
but if you've done Estes Park, you've probably already seen this

San Fransisco - This was the first thing that came to mind until you said you had just done it. Iconic landmarks: Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz (tour at night is cool), Muir Woods for excellent outdoors activities; Great city both for day and nightlife; Yosemite not too far away and neither is Monterrey with an excellent aquarium. But you just went and I'm sure your parents are been there, done that. In fact, I'm just going to assume that anything I suggest your parents have already done so they can suck it up.

New England - We've never done this trip as we keep moving and plans change. Our plan was to spend a week and hit every state north of New York as I have never been and I want to visit all 50 states. It was going to be a couple of days in Boston (Freedom Trail, Fenway Park, and the like), find something to do in Connecticut and Rhode Island- I'm sure there's something in each worth visiting for a few hours anyways: we hadn't gotten that far in planning other than visit a friend who lived in CT at the time; Vermont was going to be a food extravaganza with visits to the Ben and Jerry's factory, a cheese factory, and a maple syrup tree farm; Visit White Mountain in New Hampshire and eat Maine lobster; mix in a bed and breakfast, some leafing (this was going to be in fall), and it sounded like a relaxing trip; I see a plethora of problems for this group, unfortunately- your sister would (again) find it incredibly boring and so might all of you outside of Boston; It's more a fall activity

Vegas - I've never done Vegas but many others can speak to it, I'm sure, and I'm guessing all 3 of your groups already have thoughts about it one way or another- it's an optional part to possibly get your sister onboard if you and your parents are cool with visiting; To get it tolerable for you, you can add on parts of the following trip

New Mexico/Arizona - The Grand Canyon is about a 6 hour drive away from Vegas, as the Google Map flies; You have Phoenix for any city needs and Albuquerque and Santa Fe are both smaller cities with their charms; All sorts of outdoors activities from Saguaro National Park to Painted Desert/Petrified Forest to Carlsbad Caverns to White Sands; There are some oddball sites like Roswell and I really liked the nuclear museum in Los Alamos when I was younger along with the Natural History museum in Albuquerque which has quite a few dinosaurs but I haven't been back to either in 2 decades so this may be through too much of a lens of being a kid; The downsides: It's spread out over a large area so it will take some driving patience; And really, your sister will absolutely hate it

Pacific Northwest - Never been anywhere except Boise and the surrounding environs; Seattle has the Space Needle, lots of mountains, a music scene, and a bunch of rain; Vancouver and/or Portland are supposed to be nice; It hasn't really been popular until the last 20 or so years so maybe your parents haven't been before; It's a shot in the dark and I know nothing about it but it has potential

Caribbean - Again, never been so I'm just blue skying at this point. Could you do a resort there where you'd get to do all the ocean activities you'd want like snorkeling, seeing reefs, watching dolphins, etc while your sister could just stay behind and be pampered? and, ultimately, this brings on a big philosophical question here: if you're in roughly the same location geographically but not doing the same things, is it really a family vacation or is it more like a bunch of unrelated people spatially in the same location like me and that annoying coworker down the hall I don't want to interact with

There's really very few areas where cities and natural beauty converge and you want both while putting it under even more constraints.

SI

What about a cruise? Pick the right ship and destination and everybody can get what's on their list.

edit: missed your hatred of cruises. Cancel the above.

FYI: Looks like the bulk of the discussion happened in another thread and this was a double post:
Need the FOFC Braintrust - Vacation Ideas (Hard!) - Front Office Football Central (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=84903)

SI