Active duty Military leave is 30 days a year which sounds great, but is complicated in practice because it's tricky to combine with weekends, holidays and "passes." This is mainly because active duty are considered to be on duty 24/7, and any scheduled weekends or holidays are issued as passes which do not combine additively with leave.
For one, I have to testify that I begin and end any leave in the "local duty area" which means the place I live and commute to work on a daily basis. So if I have a weekend, and I want to take Monday off to go somewhere for a three day weekend, then I have to burn all three days as leave (if I'm just taking a blow and staying at home, then I only need to take Monday off, though anytime you request one day off adjacent to a weekend it tends to raise eyebrows). It works a little more favorably if I take Friday off on the front of the weekend, because if you return from leave on a non-duty day (like Sunday or other day that you don't have scheduled work) then you don't have to burn that as a leave day. So I take lots of weekends where I blast out of work on Thursday afternoon then charge Friday and Saturday as leave, though not Sunday. As long as you work 51% of your day on a particular day, then you don't have to burn that day.
Big holidays (like Thanksgiving) are especially shitty if you need to travel, because they are already granted as "96 hour passes" which do not require leave to be taken. However, if you want to add even one extra day (say Wednesday before Thanksgiving, to beat the travel rush a little bit) then you have to burn the entire period as leave. So you can get 4 days off for the price of 0, or 5 days off for the price of 4 (the return Sunday is free). So in general, it pays to take the passes and holidays as-is, instead of combining them with leave; and taking leave elsewhere during times when there are not a lot of federal holidays (like March, April, or August).
It also pays to work a half-day on Monday, then blast away, return late Saturday evening and only burn four days.
Also, if you accrue more than 60 days of leave saved up, then you lose the excess every year on Oct 1. Many squadrons are conspicuously empty in late September as people use up their use/lose leave. The only exception is if you are deployed at the time and cannot physically take the leave. Though sometimes you have to file paperwork to get it reinstated.
Any leave earned while deployed to a tax free location is itself "tax free". So when you later take this leave stateside, you don't pay tax on your base pay for that duration. It's weird to understand, but generally comes out correct on the W2.
So to end a long ass post.... I take lots of short leaves throughout the year, and 1 or 2 big 10-day or 17-day trips.
The rules get even more complicated if I try to combine leave with official travel (I travel my ass off for work), though I have cracked most of the code on that one.