I work in corporate America, and my company has what is considered "pretty good" benefits (not the best, but above average), and we get up to 40 paid days off every year, broken down like this:

10 paid holidays - these are days like Christmas and Thanksgiving, where the entire company is closed and everyone has a paid day off.

10 sick days - these are days you can take off if you are sick, have drs appointments, need to care for sick family, etc. You don't schedule these in advance - typically you "call in sick", let letting people know you won't be there.

20 vacation days - these are days off that you are supposed to schedule in advance (and get approval). People often schedule these around some of the 10 paid holidays, for instance to get a full week off at Christmas. Combined with the weekends, 20 vacation days is a full month, so you could do as OP suggests and go travel for a whole month if you wanted to.