Why Local Travel is Still Travel

photo credit: Aivar Ruukel via photopin cc

I get asked all the time how and why we travel so much.  I always pause and want to respond “We don’t travel that often.”  But, we do travel, really often, at least twice a month.  Like many people I often presume that travel needs to be far, that it needs to be a journey to get there.  Whether it be a plane, a train or a road trip I used to think that this was a key element to travel. 

And it is, but at the same time it isn’t. 

Travel doesn’t have to be a great distance; it can be a new location or a great imagination.  For us, we feel like we have traveled when we go somewhere new, or a place we haven’t been to in a long time.  The traveler loves the adventure, the journey and the experience – no one said it had to take hours to get there!

This weekend our family visited a local zoo.  It was the best part of the week.  Not only was it not too far away, but it was a place I forgot how much I loved.  The boys had a blast and with only a morning free we got out of our house and had a mini adventure.

One of my favorite travel quotes says that “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move” by Robert Louis Stevenson.  With this in mind, grab a picnic, your hiking shoes and/or a camera and find a local spot that you haven’t been to before.  Explore it with the eyes of a visitor to your area.  Take it in, savior it.  You won’t be exhausted by the journey but exhilarated by the exploration of somewhere new.

Kerrie blogs at Family Food and Travel.  She is a mom of twin boys (born March 2010) who she often refers to as the ‘twinado’.  Kerrie loves, writing, travel, photography, and fabulous food.  Prior to kids, Kerrie was an avid reader and scrapbooker and hopes to one day return to those activities.  Kerrie once considered herself successful, that was until she attempted toilet training twins.