Wandering. Thoughts. Let the Trip Take You

Travel is a journey, not a destination.

You’ve got a fourteen hour drive to grind out before reaching your vacation destination. Eight hundred miles of bland interstate to endure with hurried gas stops at cookie-cutter off-ramp convenience stores where the only noticeable changes from one stop to the next are the accent of the cashier, the images on the postcards, and the mileage to your destination. The food you eat is lifeless and served cold, in paper. The line at the cashier is long and you are losing time. Everyone around you is a stranger to each other and to the area. It doesn't’t have to be so.

I learned to begin my trips at my front door, not at the entrance to Disney World, or when camp is finally pitched in the Black Hills, or when my feet enter the salt water of the Gulf of Mexico. And they end at my front door as well, not when its time to turn for home. The hours spent on the road (or in the air) provide me time to think, to wonder, to observe and to experience without concern for making good time. This has freed me to stop and explore the interesting and unexpected, and to get away from the interstate and experience what lies between me and my destination. I experience life, not just geography.

Rethink what it means to take a trip…let the trip take you.