As much as we all like to travel, life gets in the way. School, jobs, and obligations keep us pretty much immobile while we save like mad to get away on the Big Trip.
Before long, you start to get itchy feet and staying in one place just isn’t good enough anymore. Rather than go completely insane, or blowing all your money on a shorter trip, let me offer a solution.
Weekend travel. Or weekday travel if you work weekends and can only get a couple mid-week days off. Long weekends are better than regular ones, but even a day trip can be a nice break.
Weekend travel doesn’t have to be expensive at all. I’m not talking about those $299 overnight trips to Cancun or three day cruises. Just pack your stuff and head out.
If you have a long weekend, you might consider travelling a day either way. Pick a place that interests you that’s about a day away and go there. Spend the night in a hostel and explore the next day.
Local attractions are often ignored by those who live there. Go to the Tourist Info booth in your town and gather up some brochures. Even if you’ve seen everything before, there could be some interesting new information on them and you might want to check them out again.
If there are any campgrounds in the area, spend a couple nights under the stars. Even if you’re crazy like me and work five jobs that barely give you any time off, you can go camping. Just go to work from the campground. Or stake out a patch of ground in the woods around town. Any kind of change will ease the itchy foot syndrome.
So, you’re not into camping and you only have a regular weekend, now what? Well, you could start by hopping on a bus or a train and going as far as you can Saturday, staying the night wherever you end up and then heading back on Sunday. You’ll feel like you’ve gone somewhere, but you won’t have seen much except fast countryside.
Another option is to pick a town or city nearby, get some friends together and take a whole room in the hostel. You can all wander the town together and have a blast while getting your travel kicks in.
I live in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia and lately, on my extremely rare days off, I grab my pack and head out to check out the other islands in the area. You may not be lucky enough to have a few dozen islands scattered around within a day’s journey, but there’s bound to be something somewhere near you, even if it’s just an interesting rock formation. Get out and enjoy it!
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