Travel Tuesday - What have I learned about travel from staying close to home

Over the last two years I have learned, or rediscovered a few things. Let me share:

There are things to do and places to see in our own backyard, that it is easy to overlook in the hustle to travel and see the world.  Being near home I have discovered and rediscovered the wonders near me. 

To really see a place, you need to spend time seeing it.  I made a point of walking the same walk, five or more times a week, for a year.  I got to know it rather well, and was still surprised after months of walking the same steps, that there were things I had not seen, some had been there, some were changes.  When we travel and spend a few days in a place, more often just a day or two, all we really see is a very limited glimpse of the place.  This renews my desire to go stay in one place for a month or two.  Rent an apartment, live among the locals, walk the same sidewalks for a month or more.  22 more moths and I can start doing that.  

I have enjoyed armchair travel.  Reading, blogs and YouTube.  I have traveled the canals of England, had glimpses into life around the world.  There are a couple of great bloggers English bloggers in Japan, the more I see the more I want to visit there.  One of them is constantly being asked to host guided tours for English speaking visitors.  Recently he posted a short video, I suspect after a little too much to drink, about why a tour with Chris would be the worst tour in the history of guided tours. He is funny, creative, and has helped me explore and understand a place I have never been.  A couple of the cruise ships that work the Pacific Coast in the summer season, spend the winters in Asia, I want to take a repositioning cruise from Seattle to Tokyo.  

I have enjoyed a couple of flying channels on YouTube. Going flying with Citation Max reminds me so of flying with my father as a kid.  Now granted Max's daddy bought a much nicer airplane, but flying it is still work - and Max is very professional. I still need to take a private jet flight.  Have I told you I passed on the opportunity once.  I was at the local airport near my parents in Florida and a Learjet pulled up, refueled and loaded a couple of boxes in the back.  I got to talking with pilot, the plane belonged to a boat manufacturer.  They were flying a box of critical parts to Arizona and coming back the same night. He offered me a seat, and I chickened out and didn't say yes.  Assuming that was a box of boat parts and not something else that would have been flying in and out of Florida at the time, it would have been a fun ride.  Might have been a fun ride anyway, as long as it didn't end with gunfire or blue flashing lights. (Florida was a major drug running center at the time.) 

If I hadn't been home, would I have found time, taken time for all of these, probably not.