I’ve enjoyed a picnic at the beautiful, sacred Newark Indian Burial Mounds in Newark, Ohio. I’ve had a spot-on ice cream sundae at the Cow Palace in Shelbyville, Indiana. I’ve visited the storied Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico.
All wonderful experiences. All asides to trips planned for other reasons.
In other words, none of those was a destination, but each one made me richer in my travel life, in my whole life.
I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately about how best to travel, how smart and cool it is to do non-tourist-y things or how a bucket list reduces places to items to be checked off. There are cases to be made for all these viewpoints and I like how others’ ideas can give rise to our own as we carve out our own style.
It all has me thinking about what I feel is most vital with regard to this in my own personality and, in turn, my travel personality. It boils down to one word – curiosity. OK, maybe two – insatiable curiosity.
I have never been the person who could go on a business trip and only focus on the business. My philosophy is there has to be something else to see or experience no matter where I am. That’s how I approach travel and it has served me well.
Maybe it’s only making sure I eat the local cuisine on a short lunch break or duck into a pocket of lively boutiques instead of taking a much-needed nap. Whenever I hear someone say they went on a work trip and experienced nothing locally, I find it hard to relate. Stepping outside of the work grind, even for an hour, always helps my work shine. It feels vital.
Another chain restaurant or hotel eatery? Oh, please no. Not when some local family is serving up barbecue in a hopping joint nearby. Or there’s a place a short drive away known for its perfectly cooked steaks.
Back in my days being a sports writer for a newspaper, I remember driving a few hours from New Jersey to cover a tournament near Amish Country in Pennsylvania. There was no way I was going to miss that opportunity to sample some shoofly pie. The handful of times I went back to that area, I returned to the same spot for that pie.
The curiosity also extends to impromptu stops or even drives. While covering a tournament in Phoenix one year, I took the opportunity to visit the Arizona State University campus in Tempe and on another day the Desert Botanical Garden. But the best part may have been the drive on the open road, a sublime classic rock station blaring from the speakers of the rental car. That drive stands out more than anything else on that trip, probably because it was my first time in the desert and I found it exhilarating. Not even lost luggage got in the way of my joy.
I love to read about how other people travel. It’s inspiring, regardless of whether I see myself in the piece or it propels me to do the opposite of what the writer espouses.
It’s just another way of letting the world open up before me.
By Nancy Colasurdo
