A vacation from your vacation? Seriously?

This summer, from July 1 through the end of September, Americans will take about 580 million trips, and spend about $700 per person, per trip, according to Shane Norton, a director at IHS Global Insight, a Lexington-based economic consulting firm.

We will take off our shoes and belts for the TSA, and endure long layovers with small children. We will deplete our savings, cash in our hard-earned vacation time, spend hours online trying to make our frequent flier miles work. We will go into a frenzy of pre-trip busyness, making arrangements to have the mail held, prescriptions filled, the plants watered, the dog boarded. As President Kennedy said, albeit about a somewhat longer trip, “We choose to go to the moon … not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard.’’

And yet, as J. Courtney Sullivan, the author of the new bestseller “Maine,’’ a novel about three generations of women at a summer home, explained, vacationing with family or friends can be like “an immersion course’’ in other people. “When you’re all under one roof, it brings out the best - and worst.’’

That’s especially true now, said Bryan Robinson, a professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and author of “Chained to the Desk.’’ “A lot of people are afraid to take vacations because of the economy, and when they do go on vacation, they take that worry with them. That’s increasing every year.’’

Given the pressure, it’s little surprise that only 45 percent of Americans return to work from a vacation feeling rested and rejuvenated, according to a 2010 study by the travel site Expedia, or that 40 percent of workers in the UK return to work more stressed than before their vacations, according to a 2010 study by the London-based Institute of Leadership & Management.

In Boston, Jill Parker, a graphic designer just back from a two-week trip to visit her mother-in-law in England, summed up the situation like this: “Sometimes you need a vacation from your vacation.’’