Take a look at my article, "I'm Good at Being Old." I practiced elder law for many years, studied gerontology, and helped families arrange long term care. An error children often made was to imagine that an activity or location that made them happy would make their parents happy. They would choose the long term care center that had the amenities the children liked, because they could not imagine any other set of values that their own.

My values change dramatically every twenty years. When I was fifteen my best day was skipping school and skateboarding down the steepest hill in town. If I believed that way twenty years later when I was thirty-five, they would lock me up. When I was thirty-five I thought people should have a career, a house, a vacation house, raise three kids and spend summers in Paraguay. If I thought that when I was fifty-five, they would put me away.

Leave your parents alone. Try not to impose a middle-age value system on them. What you see in them is your future. As a forty-year old that seems bleak, but it will not be bleak when you are seventy. Chances are, your parents are happier than you are.

BTW, my wife says if your mother wants to travel. Take her with you. Men and women can respond differently to retirement and aging.