Do Something. New. Today

When people are asked about their New Year’s resolutions or what they’d put highest on their “Bucket List,” they often list TRAVEL.  But what keeps us from it?  Money?  Time?  Convenience?  A travel buddy?

Years ago, I wanted to travel but we could never really afford it, or thought we couldn’t.  Later, we had small children, and that seemed to be a good excuse not to travel much.  I mean, just think of loading strollers and playpens and hauling small kids through customs!  But you know what?  We didn’t do any of those things when we didn’t have kids, or at least not very often.  We didn’t just take off to the mountains to go camping for a long weekend or even to a terrific historical site or tourist site two hours away for a long Saturday or enjoy a bed and breakfast in mid-winter one town over.  There were always reasons not to or reasons to put such trips off.  Many trips could have been rather cheap and over a weekend, yet we rarely ventured out. 

 The first time I visited England, I was impressed by how much younger I was than my campanions on a bus to Stonehenge.  Many of them could barely hobble to an archeological site, let alone climb it, but they’d waited until retirement to see the world.  I knew then that I wanted to travel more for enjoyment and while I was young enough to climb and walk and endure the journey without extreme physical stress.

Since my divorce, I’ve taken my girls on several trips, including Disney for a long weekend, writers’ conferences in Daytona on the ocean for  a week,  a couple of pagan festivals where I slept in bunks at a campsite,  a long weekend for my mom in the gardens she’d always wanted to visit.  But this past year, I found myself really wanting to explore more and realized in late spring that travel really was more possible than I’d thought.  Technology and liberating some of my workload helped to open up this door so that I’m not chained to my desk and can actually be at a different location with family or friends.

I decided that I wanted to visit Central America, specifically the Belize/Costa Rica/Yucatan area and the Mayan temples there.  It had always seemed unrealistically expensive in the past.   Airfare out of this remote area to Mexico?   For three?  Cost prohibitive.  BUT the cruise line now in the port of Mobile provided transportation, food, and lodging at a reasonable price for three of us and to Central American ports near archeological sites we were interested in.  This was also ideal because my daughters didn’t have passports and passports aren’t (at this moment) required for cruise passengers to Mexico.  We selected day-long and half-day excursions for the areas where we were in port, with friendly tour guides and everything we wanted.  The total bill for three “adults” to spend 5 days seeing off-the-beaten-track archeological sites, indulging in another culture, and climbing Mayan pyramids on Christmas Day was around $2,000–and it would have been significantly less if the girls had been able to schedule time off from school at any time other than Christmas.

 So here’s one of my intentions for this new year:  At least once every 4 to 6 weeks, I will make at least a short trip, most likely with the girls.  This may be a long weekend to visit Jillian and her waterfalls or check out the caverns or remote beaches or the Castillo de San Marcos or just go camping.  Or maybe to enjoy a lover’s cottage or beach house.  Who knows?  But I’m open to it and actively inviting those opportunities into my life by setting aside a little money specifically to travel to unusual places and scheduling time off.