What’s your travel style? Are you itinerary and schedule driven, needing to have every step mapped out in advance or are you content to arrive without a plan and let happenstance be your guide?

I’ve always been terrible at planning – simply because it kills whatever sense of adventure I might have started out with.   I understand how important it is, of course, to at least plan something and I’ll go as far as learning about the places I’m going to via blogs and websites, and then kinda mapping out the loose plan (subject to change, of course) and then make my way there.  Once there, I like to take it as I see it.  If I want to just hang out for awhile, open a beer or a bottle of wine and enjoy the view, or even without a view, just the fact that I’ve gotten away somewhere, I want the freedom to do it.

If I had one, I’d like to just hitch an Airstream Bambi to the back of my car and then go off somewhere.  Maybe the Sierra Nevadas, or maybe Yosemite.  Or even all the way cross-country to New York, taking my sweet time in every place I happen to find interesting, always making sure my cooler is stocked with water and drinks and food.  And music.  I love driving music.

I like to BE in the place I get to, and really feel it.  I like to linger, browse its shops and book shops, sit and have a cuppa at the local watering hole, even talk to the locals and learn a new language while I’m at it.  Maybe pull out my journal and write out my thoughts, and draw what I see before me.  I don’t mind missing five tourist destinations that I could have seen if I had had an itinerary.  There’s always tomorrow.  And if my time has run out for that vacation, there’s always a next time.  But at least, wherever I find myself at, I’m there.

Really there.

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