The President is coming to town for a vacation. Get ready.

Santa Barbara, California – Presidents also have to take vacations. But what is a vacation for the commander in chief means a lot of work for the people in the places where the president rests.

Hotels are quickly booked up by the president's entourage – secret service, staff and press. Restaurant reservations are impossible. The traffic caused by the presidential convoy leads to the closure of local roads.

Almost every president is associated in people’s imagination with his favorite vacation spot: President Biden and Rehoboth Beach; former President Donald Trump and Mar-a-Lago; former President Barack Obama and Martha's Vineyard; former President George W. Bush and Crawford, Texas; and former President Bill Clinton and the Hamptons.

This week, Mr Biden is vacationing in Santa Ynez, California – a small town in southern California in the heart of the Santa Barbara wine country. But as the world watches tensions in the Middle East and The Democratic Party Convention takes place in Chicagothe president can never truly be disconnected from the network.

“There is no such thing as a presidential vacation,” says Russell Riley, co-chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program and author of “Inside the Clinton White House: An Oral History.” “It's certainly true that they're leaving and that there's a different dynamic and that the change can be refreshing. But they're still in action.”

And when the President is on duty, his team is on duty too. Wherever the President goes, a temporary situation room must be set up and ready to deploy if needed.

One town more accustomed to the president's presence is Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where the Bidens own a vacation home and often visit in the summer.

Biden was often seen there at a brunch restaurant called Egg. Hope Snider, a manager at Egg, said she was nervous at first about serving the First Family, but she and the Secret Service were consistently friendly and relaxed.

“We're excited that they're eating at our restaurant,” Snider said. “It creates a buzz around town. They hear that the president was here last weekend. That definitely brings some people to the restaurant.”

Before such a seemingly casual breakfast, Secret Service agents scout the area days in advance, checking every entrance and exit and every potential security threat.

“Especially now, when every intelligence agent already has to expect an assassination attempt, I am very sure that they are very worried about this security area, despite the fact that the president is in office,” says Johanna Maska, former White House press secretary for President Obama. “Because the president is still the person who makes all the decisions when it comes to our biggest global problems, and he always has the codes for the nuclear bomb with him when he goes there.”

Maska said Obama, like other presidents, would restrict his movements while on vacation, especially on holidays, if it would cause too much disruption to the city. But regardless, any potential stop, be it a beach or a cafe, would have to be vetted by the Secret Service in advance.

One of the worst effects of a presidential visit on a city is hours of traffic congestion.

When the Clintons took a trip to the Hamptons on Long Island in 1998, locals feared it would take 10 to 12 hours to get there and back. Archives of the local newspaper Sag Harbor Express show that residents stocked up on groceries the Thursday before the president's arrival. But fear of traffic was so great that many people simply didn't go out that weekend, resulting in streets that were quieter than a typical summer day in the Hamptons.

The appearance of a vacation spot can also be a consideration for White House teams.

Clinton reportedly conducted polls in 1997 to find out what vacation activities “married people with children” approved of in order to improve his image. According to political consultant Dick Morris, the results favored fishing and hiking in the mountains, so the Clinton family traveled to Wyoming for a quintessentially American vacation in the West rather than a fancy East Coast hotspot.

“There was a feeling that a visit to Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons was supposed to teach Americans a lesson that this was not a small-scale Democratic vacation. So they went there, but Clinton had allergies and I don't think that trip went particularly well,” Riley says.

So while Biden is vacationing in wine country, another city will be working hard to accommodate the White House guests accompanying the President of the United States on his trip.