traveling

My husband and I have perfected the art of road tripping—at least from our perspective. Over the course of several years and dozens of week-long trips around the United States and Canada, we figured out exactly how not to car camp by experiencing it once and vowing never to go back. Sleeping in cramped cars, forgoing fresh food for convenience, and failing to plan ahead are quick ways to make enemies of your traveling partner and your vehicle of choice.

Traveling can be a popular and much-needed way to destress, especially as the days start to turn warmer in southern locales and spring breaks come around—but vacation time can conflict with those recently set New Year’s resolutions.

Your taxi is late and the flight is about ready to depart; you’re hungry but the only thing on the way to the gate is a fast food frenzy of unhealthy options. Stressed and out of options, you board the plane.

If you have ever been in the backseat of a car on a winding road and started to feel nauseated, dizzy, and just plain awful, you have experienced motion sickness. We often feel symptoms of motion sickness when we are on a boat, a train, and even when flying on a plane. Children can sometimes get motion sick when playing on swings at the playground or when on rides at the fair, such as a spinning ride, or one that has you hanging upside down. 

Having a fear of flying isn’t fun. I can tell you this firsthand as it’s something I’ve struggled with for the past 12 years. I don’t know exactly when or why I started to panic during takeoff or turbulence, my hands gripping the armrests, my palms sweaty.

Travel is a beautiful mix of exhilarating and exhausting. Our curiosity guides us to faraway places, foreign lands, new relationships, rituals unknown, food we’ve never tasted, novelty experiences…you name it.

If you’ve ever found yourself watching Tiny House Nation with a trace of envy, you may be wondering if tiny house living is right for your family. Although tiny houses may seem like practical dwellings for only singles or couples, there are growing numbers of families living in tiny houses with children. Ours is one of them.

Traveling, whether for enjoyment or for work, can disrupt sleeping schedules and eating habits, and create more stress than we bargained for. I’ve been in airports where the only food to eat was a greasy Chinese buffet, and gone for two days straight without sleep due to cancelled and delayed flights; likewise, I’ve been on trips where I’ve had the opportunity to indulge in fresh, organic, local cuisine and slept for 12 hours at a time.

In these economically shaky times, traveling is a luxury few can afford and yet a holiday is the best bet to bust away the blues. Traveling can add so much to your life – from learning new things, expanding your inner vision, making you more appreciative and spiritual and basically making you connect with the beauty of the humanscape, as well as Mother Earth.

For some of us, being stuck in the same place all the time is a little boring. There’s a big world out there waiting to be explored, and while travel is certainly fun, it’s also necessary for the overall improvement of one’s life. Here are five benefits of “globe-trotting.”