“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” – Anonymous

I need to start off by saying that I love to travel. I love getting into a car or plane or train with luggage and going someplace and staying for a while. I love learning about new places, meeting new people, and seeing new things.

Travel for Work

In the past, I was fortunate to have had a series of jobs that sent me all around the country. My job as an internal auditor for ADP (based in New Jersey) sent me to Chicago, Kansas, Los Angeles, Orlando, New Orleans, Denver, and Washington DC, as well as a few places closer to home. Trips ranged from one to three weeks in length. The job was 40-50% travel and I was told I’d get tired of it. But I never did.

When I started out as a freelancer, I worked as a hands-on computer trainer for Data Tech Institute. They sent me on numerous trips all over the eastern half of the country, from Milwaukee to Cape Cod to Atlanta. The trips were three days each: a travel day followed by two work days with travel at the end of the second day. I remember one particularly busy month when I visited eight different cities with 20 airplane legs and a round trip train ride. While I was exhausted at the end of that month, I was also ready for more.

Later, my writing work took me to New York, Boston, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, Santa Barbara, and Boulder to speak at conferences, meet with editors, and record video courses. I looked forward to every single trip.

Even my flying work got me traveling. Short trips to tourist destinations like the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Monument Valley, and Las Vegas. Overnight trips for survey and photo flights in northern Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Nevada. Training flights to the Los Angeles area. Long-term trips to Washington (where I later moved) for cherry drying and to California’s Central Valley for frost control. I loved those trips most — probably because someone was paying me to fly my helicopter there.

I simply loved to travel.

Don’t get me wrong — It isn’t because I didn’t like it at home — I did. (Well, I did until my marriage started falling apart.) I just liked to get out and get a new perspective of the world. And to me, that’s what traveling is all about.

The Stay-At-Home Rut

My future wasband and I traveled quite a bit during the first 20 or so years of our relationship. We had some amazing trips: Seattle to San Francisco by car; Shenandoah Parkway, Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the Outer Banks by motorcycle; and a handful of islands in the Caribbean by cruise ship are among the top 10. He even accompanied me on quite a few of my business trips — several times to California and once to Hawaii on my frequent flyer miles — and I went with him on a few of his.

But that ended in the mid 2000s when he started a series of dead-end jobs with limited vacation time. Suddenly, long trips were difficult to arrange and weekends were the only time he could get away. (Unless, of course, he needed to visit his mother; he could always make time for her.) I tried to get him to commit to one three-day weekend trip every month. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But it apparently was.

I fell into in a stay-at-home rut. I wanted to travel — and I did actually make a few trips on my own — but unless it had some connection to my work, it wasn’t easy to do without having to deal with the resultant guilt trip my wasband put me on. You see, it wasn’t fair to leave him behind. Why should I have fun when he couldn’t? So I stayed at home, waiting, eventually looking forward to spring when I could go back to Washington, get a change of scenery, and spend time with friends. By that time, didn’t want to be at home.

Things are different now, of course. I don’t have a ball and chain holding me back. All I have is a 10-12 week period every summer when I’m stuck in the Wenatchee area for cherry drying work and another 8 weeks in early spring when I need to be within a few hours commercial flight time of Sacramento for frost work. I’m pretty much free to travel the rest of the year. Best of all, I don’t have to wait for a weekend to do it.

I got a chance to really stretch my legs in the autumn of 2012 and spring of 2013 with multiple trips from Arizona to California, Las Vegas, Washington, and Florida. I can’t tell you how good it felt to finally be able to go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted.

The Benefit of Traveling Alone

Although I do prefer traveling with a good travel companion, I’ve only managed to find one — and she lives in Colorado with her own set of responsibilities. I thought I’d found another this past summer, but we apparently had different ideas of what “sharing the cost” meant. If I’m going to pay for more than half a trip, I’ll take it by myself so I don’t have to compromise with a “frugal” — his word, not mine — travel companion.

Compromise is only part of the problem when traveling with a companion. The other is spontaneity — the ability to make last minute plans and see them through. When there are two or more people traveling, planning a spur-of-the-moment trip is nearly impossible. Even making changes to travel plans once you’re on a trip is difficult. But when you’re running the show and you don’t have to worry about making someone else happy, you can do whatever you like, whenever you like.

And that’s where I am today. Loving it.

Recent Trips, Upcoming Plans

Since cherry season ended in late July, I’ve gone on several trips:

• Camping in the North Cascades National Park with my then-boyfriend, Kirk.
• Motorcycling to Friday Harbor with my friend Bob.
• Road trip with helicopter return to Portland, OR with my then-boyfriend, Kirk.
• Overnight trip to Idaho to visit friends and check out a tiny house maker.
• Weekend trip to the North Cascades for a mushroom seminar.
• A five day trip to Alaska to visit a friend.
• A two week trip to Florida to visit my sister, some other family members, and some friends.
• A four day cruise to the Bahamas with my sister.

All that in three and a half months! It’s amazing I get anything done around here.

And that doesn’t include day trips to Seattle (for shopping), Woodinville (for wine-tasting), or local hiking trails and mushroom-gathering locations.

Right now, I’m thinking about other trips. I’ve already got an overnight trip to Spokane (yeah, big deal) with a friend planned. If I don’t spend the winter in Arizona, I’ll likely go on my annual cross-country skiing trip to Winthrop. One way or another, I’m sure Arizona will be a January destination — I’m thinking of driving down with my boat and stopping at various lakes along the way. Looks like I’ll spend part of the late winter in the Sacramento area again for frost; if that doesn’t pan out, I’ve got a job offer in Ohio that I’ll try to grab. (Yes, I do work for a living.) I’ll be back in Idaho with my boat to visit friends with a new home on the Spokane River and would love another trip to Alaska in May.

What about big trips, like the one I’d hoped to take with my wasband in late 2012 to Australia? Well, those are on the back burner right now while I finish my home and get my helicopter ready for its overhaul next winter. Once that’s all done and the dust has settled, I’ll be thinking about going way south for the winter of 2017/2018.

A travel companion would be nice, although not required. I’m looking for just the right person to join me.