My Next Trip

Over the past few months, I’ve had a number of experiences that have shaped how I will be approaching travel in the future.

Seniors are definitely great travelers. It’s what the retirement brochures say you will be doing with your time once you retire – visiting family far away, visiting places you have never seen before, having adventures with like-minded souls and meeting new friends. All hyped up to help you comfortably transition from filling your days with work to filling your days with ???

But I’ve never been a big traveler. There are a number of reasons for that, but mostly because I’m a solo traveler – no regular companion. A number of reasons for that too, but I digress. I was determined to add more travel to my retirement plans and have only modestly achieved that goal. Some trips have been with family, some have been with friends, some have been with groups having a common interest and some have been on my own. I’ve enjoyed some more than others but have learned something from each one.

In the past few months, I’ve looked into 5 separate trips, each one offering something different. Two are now booked, another will likely be booked by the new year, one is complete and the other, well, didn’t happen. Here’s what I’ve learned about me and my travel interests at this stage of my life.

Firstly, trip planning doesn’t excite me. I have friends who love the prospect of browsing print and online offerings, even creating their own itineraries from scratch. I had a situation this year where a choreographed/packaged tour of Norway fell apart, so I tried to replicate the itinerary with a friend and recreated (with cost and availability) every stop, overnight and flight element on a spreadsheet using my own research. I hated every minute of that exercise. But I wanted that lost travel experience and thought I could make it happen. I was able to recreate the event in ways I thought I was even more happy with, but the joy of travel wasn’t there. I wanted to know everything was taken care of, but I didn’t want to manage the details. And frankly, negotiating every detail with someone else didn’t work well either. It didn’t happen. So doing my own detailed trip planning definitely ain’t for me.

Secondly, the type of vacation matters. I’ve looked at traditional tours and cruises or all-inclusive resorts, from all the big companies. Most offer comfortable or luxurious lodging, beautiful locations, ample sight-seeing and tourist shopping experiences, lots of socializing and even amenities like casinos and museums and golf courses and live theatre. All inclusive. You don’t do a thing except enjoy.

For modern families raising kids, including my own relatives, this type of vacation is a god-send. It provides a much needed break and some pampering to folks who are sleep-deprived, overworked and stressed to the nines. That too, ain’t me. The only stress I have now is around medical issues and making sure my cats are fed. So vacations that pamper me aren’t for me either.

You could go to the opposite extreme. There are also vacations that take you away from it all – off grid, off noise, off artificial light, off everything. Wild or free camping – a backpack, all your supplies on your back and nobody around for miles. I’ve done a small amount of that – in my twenties. Can’t see at all doing it in my sixties. Too bad though – since seeing a pure black night sky with no nearby light pollution is something I crave now. As I mentioned in my last blog, I will hopefully find a way to have dark skies and creature comforts onsite at the next star party I attend.

So what is for me? What has worked? And what will work going forward?

The next big trip I’ve booked is a photography workshop – in a hopefully warmer location in the US in the middle of our upcoming winter. If you’ve read this blog regularly, you will find at least one post where I offer more than a bit of criticism of photography workshops, particularly when paying for subject matter “expertise” and getting a glorified “tour guide” instead. So why would I do it again?

Some workshop leaders view their roles differently. They choose not to have or use their own camera while with attendees. They connect with each person as they work, asking questions and making suggestions. They do pre-trip and post-trip sessions to solidify what we might have learned and they provide feedback on images in a meaningful, useful way. But most importantly, they provide an experience for the senses – eyes, ears, brain (ok, not a sense, but part of the mix). If I leave the session with a sense of having seen AND learned something new, I am very happy.

So I research who these folks might be, ask them direct questions about their offerings, try to see them at work themselves and then pull the lever to book. I’m very excited about this one – architectural techniques I admire in a location I will enjoy visiting at a time when I really need to get away. What could be better? More to come on that later.

And there are two other trips on the list. One is a shorter, solo trip to experience fall here in Ontario in all its glory. Last year, there was one week where the colours were more dramatic than anything I have seen before. But I was recovering from surgery and could not get out where I wanted to. Saw the colours from a distance. This year, will try to time it to immerse myself in it completely. It will be grand.

The other is a trip of a lifetime, to a location I have always wanted to visit – Hawaii. Just working on that now. It will be a bit different – a prepackaged tour intended for seniors, to be taken with other senior family members. I’m really looking forward to it. People can move physically further away as their lives change and you suddenly realize that you’ve gotten older but not spent much time together lately. This will remedy that. I will be taking my camera – not just for the Hawaii experience but to photograph them too. But don’t tell them that…

The bottom line is this. Each trip has to give me a learning experience, a sensory experience or a family experience. Otherwise it won’t make the list. Now that I know this, I can’t wait to see where it takes me.