Travel – Page 2 – Maps and Meanderings

The 5 Stages of Trip Planning

Published on June 16, 2020November 16, 2020 by Meaghan Elizabeth

This summer I was supposed to be taking a two week trip to Newfoundland and Labrador. Unfortunately, it has become clear that our trip is not going to happen. Newfoundland is not currently accepting visitors from outside the province, and it doesn’t look like that is gong to change any time soon. Even if it were to change by mid-summer, chances are that not everything will be open, and it wouldn’t be the trip we want. Because of this, we have decided that it is time to accept the inevitable and cancel. Our much anticipated Newfoundland trip will now be postponed until summer 2021.

As we’ve started thinking about cancelling everything that’s already been booked, I thought it would be a good time to write about the planning process. This may seem odd, especially as there’s not a lot of travel happening right now, but I suspect that though people aren’t travelling, many are dreaming of future travel or thinking about planning future trips. If we can’t travel, we can still think about and dream about planning travel.

I’ve mentioned before that I love planning trips. I love everything about the process of researching, building the itinerary, and picking out accommodations. But trip planning doesn’t start with the research and itinerary planning. The trip planning starts long before you get to that stage. So today I am going to look at the stages of planning a trip in general, using my Newfoundland trip as the example. In future posts I will hopefully dive into some of these stages in more detail.

Phase #1: Inspiration and that Initial Spark

In my experience, trip planning begins with that initial spark of inspiration. It’s the thing that makes you think, “I’d love to go there someday.” This spark might come from a book you read, a show or movie you watched, or hearing someone else talk, or write, about the destination. Whatever it is, there’s always something that makes you start thinking about how you might like to visit that location someday.

There’s nothing concrete in this stage. There’s not even much day dreaming – that comes later. Most trips and destinations never move beyond this stage. Many of our travels sparks fade away without much further thought. Maybe we know that the location would be much too expensive, or impractical, or not feasible for one reason or another. Or maybe the location just doesn’t hold our imagination as much as some other location or as much as we thought initially. For whatever reason, many ideas never move beyond a spark.

I have wanted to go to Newfoundland for so long that I can’t remember the initial spark. I can remember one of the things that fanned that spark into a flame and moved me into the next stage, though. It was the Newfoundland tourism commercials. Every single time I see one of these commercials, it makes me want to go to Newfoundland even more. Their tourism department definitely knows how to do it’s job.

Stage 2: Dreaming and Moving Towards a Plan

Stage 2 is the dreaming phase. This stage is reserved for those trips that have captured our imagination enough to stick around. They are the trips that never really seem to leave our minds as “some days.” If ever anyone were to ask us places we’d like to travel to, these are the trips that immediately spring to mind.

In this stage you possibly talk to others who have been to your dream destination and you learn more about the things they recommend doing and seeing while there. Maybe you start visiting tourism websites, or seeking out blog posts from those who have travelled there. Maybe you start reading books about the destination. Whatever dreaming looks like for you, you find yourself returning to the idea of planning a trip to that location more and more often.

I have long wanted to travel to all the provinces in Canada. I love exploring this country, so Newfoundland has been a spark in my mind for years. The idea of visiting Newfoundland got a hold of my mind and heart, and I found myself revisiting it over and over again. Eventually it was the “next trip” that we were planning if anyone asked. The idea worked it’s way from a dream to a plan, and before we knew it, we had moved into stage 3 of the trip planning process.

Stage #3: From a Dream to a Plan

Eventually some trips take up so much place in our minds that we move from dreaming to planning. At this stage, you are still technically in the idea phase, but you are starting to figure out if you could turn the idea into a concrete plan. Unfortunately, this is where some trips are forced to fade away or move into the background when we start to figure out whether we will be able to come up with enough time and budget to make the trip happen.

In this stage you start to look more seriously into how much the trip would cost and the length of the trip you would like to take. You might also start to figure out the questions of transportation. Would the trip involve air travel? Or is it a road trip? These, and more, are the things you start to seriously consider in this stage. These decisions will help you develop a timeline and an idea for when, and if, this trip might actually happen.

For our Newfoundland trip, some of the primary considerations for this stage were budget, length of trip, and type of transportation. We decided fairly early that we would be flying from Ontario to Newfoundland. While it’s possible to drive out and take a ferry, the travel time for that option is considerable. Since vacation time is not infinite, and we knew we would have at most two weeks, we decided it would be more than worth it to fly.

Another transportation consideration was whether we would take a bus tour or rent a car. Bus tours are a popular option for Newfoundland, and we gave them serious consideration, but ultimately ended up deciding to put together our own trip. Not only did this give us more flexibility over our budget, but also over our itinerary. I wasn’t sure that a bus trip would let us do and see everything we wanted (and I have travel planning control issues).

Making these decisions helped us put in place a timeline for when we were going to take the trip. We had a general idea of the type of budget we would be looking at and how long we would need to save. It was roughly two years ago that we decided we would aim for 2020 for our trip. This gave us the time we needed to save, as well as an idea for when we would need to start seriously planning and booking. Knowing these things prepared us to move into the next stage.

Cat looking at a map — Trip planning. I was going to find a stock photo But couldn’t resist using this.

Stage #4: Research and Itinerary Building

By this stage, you’ve moved well beyond the vague dreams and into concrete planning. This is no longer a trip you might take someday, it’s now a trip you are going to take in x amount of time, even if you don’t know the exact dates yet. Now it’s the time to get down to the business of planning.

Don’t get me wrong, you are still dreaming in this phase, but now it’s paired with research and the reality of logistics. You need to dream about the things you might like to do, but also figure out what you can realistically fit into the time you have. You need to think about things such as whether your trip will be spent mostly in one city or resort, or many different places. Will your schedule be relaxed and filled with a lot of downtime or will your itinerary be tightly scheduled and filled with activity?

As you research and figure out all these things, you can start to build your itinerary. The one downside of this stage for me always seems to be the gradual realization that there is no way we can possibly fit in everything that we want to do in the time that we have. This happened to me in spades while planning our Newfoundland trip.

Newfoundland is a big place with so much to see and do – especially when you know that you won’t soon be returning. Trying to fit everything into a roughly two-week period begins to feel like trying to cram a bear into a breadbox… an impossible task. It doesn’t help when so much of the advice on visiting Newfoundland is to slow down and enjoy the scenery. How do you take it slow when you want to see and do absolutely everything?

It took me a long time to research and plan and build what I hope is a functional itinerary for our trip. I eventually decided that our trip was going to involve a lot of driving and be quite a bit busier than might work for others. We want to see as much of Newfoundland as possible in our short time, which requires a busier trip. Maybe someday I can travel to Newfoundland and enjoy that relaxed pace of life, but this trip is not going to be that.

Different trips will require different amounts of time and effort in this stage, but eventually you will get the trip details and itinerary worked out and be able to move into the next – and final – stage of trip planning.

Stage #5 – Booking, and Fine Tuning, and Other tasks.

Some elements of this stage may also occur in the previous stages. You might need to book flights, for instance, before you’ve fully worked out the itinerary. But generally, by this stage, all the big planning is done and it’s time to book your accommodations and book/buy tickets for any events or attractions you are planning on attending. This stage may take place over a number of months depending on your timeline. Some things need to be booked early, and some need to be booked closer to the travel dates or even while travelling.

For me, this stage generally involves fine tuning and completing the itinerary. For our Newfoundland trip, for instance, there are a number of days that even now require fine tuning and filling out. I know the general shape of the days, but the details still need to be finalized. We still need to determine where we want to eat, for instance, and which walking tours and hikes might we want to take. This the level of detailed planning that happens during this stage.

This stage may also include figuring out a packing list. I hadn’t got anywhere close to planning out a packing list for Newfoundland yet. I probably would have been starting that list around now, actually. The packing list step involves figuring out what the weather might be like, and what types of things you might need for specific activities. Some of our accommodations for Newfoundland, for instance, required us to bring blankets and sheets. These are the types of things you migh consider in this stage.

This stage can continue right up until just before the trip depending on how you plan and prepare, and it ends once you transition into the prep stage when you’re starting to pack and get ready to go. I didn’t include that stage here, because I consider it more part of the travel stage and less a part of the planning stage.

Each trip brings with it unique planning approaches even when you work within the same general framework. These are the typical stages of planning that I have noticed in all the trips I have planned and taken. What about you? Do you agree with these stages? Have I missed any? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time,

Planning to Travel Pt 2 – Being Intentional About Saving

Published on June 9, 2020November 16, 2020 by Meaghan Elizabeth

Last week I talked about how travel doesn’t just happen. It takes planning, and intentionality. I shared a bit about how I learned about the importance of being intentional in planning and saving for travel if it is something that you are interested in doing. If you missed that post, I would recommend checking it out here before you continue.

Today I want to look at 6 steps I’ve used to make regular travel saving a part of my budget. I’m not a financial expert in anyway, and these steps are in no way exhaustive, or the only way to go about creating a plan. But I hope that these steps might help you to find the time and money to include travel in your life.

Books on a Map — Books on a map. Image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay

Step #1: Do you actually want to Travel?

I can already hear you saying “Of course I want to travel, I’m here aren’t I?” But before you skip past this step, I want you to take a few minutes to really think about it. Do you really want to make the time and save the funds required for travel? Or do you just think that you want to travel, or that you should want to travel?

These days it can seem like travel is something that everyone does, or wishes they were doing. But it is okay for travel to not be one of your priorities. It is okay to read travel blogs, and follow travel pages on instagram or Pinterest, and not want to travel yourself. Maybe there are other things you would prefer to spend your resources on, and that is okay.

We don’t have unlimited resources. And this means we need to prioritize and make decisions about where we want to spend the resources we have. And this applies just as much to non-monetary resources such as time and energy. If travel isn’t something you want to prioritize, then you won’t follow through on the changes you would need to make to save and plan for travel. So take the time to truly think about this step. And keep reading, because you can use the following tips to save for and explore your preferred activities.

Step #2 – Take a look at your Time

It’s important to recognize that time is as much, or more, of a limited resource as money. Think about how much time you could set aside for travel or exploration, as well has how much time you want to set aside for travel. You might be lucky enough to have 5 weeks of vacation time, but that doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily want to spend all that time on travel. Consider also how you may be able to make use of long weekends for travel and exploring.

While you’re looking at your potential vacation time and long weekends, you’ll also need to consider other activities or obligations already slotted into those times. Christmas, for instance, might be a time of year where you have time off, but it may not be time that is free to dedicate to travel.

Also keep in mind that you’re going to need to consider your time and money alongside each other to determine how much you can travel. Quitting your job might give you seemingly infinite time to travel, but it’s going to seriously reduce the budget you have for travel.

Step #3: Take a look at your Budget

I will admit, this is typically the least exciting part of the process, but it is also one of the most necessary steps. And it’s important that you take the time to do it with care. You need to have a complete understanding of your budget before you can decide whether some of it can be put aside for travel savings. I’m not going to go into detail here about setting up a general budget, but if you have not done this before, there are many good articles and tips only a Google search away.

For our purposes you will be looking at the money you have in miscellaneous, or more discretionary fund categories. Your landlord isn’t going to like it if you decide to slash your rent budget by $100 a month, for instance. I want you to figure out how much money you have in these categories and then write down exactly where that money goes every month. You need to be precise. This won’t work if you just write down $200 for miscellaneous spending.

Write down everything from clothes shopping, to Netflix, to your morning coffee purchases. If your miscellaneous category varies, then maybe track it for a couple months. Write down exactly how you spend the money that’s not going directly into non-negotiable bills or long-term savings and emergency funds. This step is tedious, but it’s what will allow you to figure out where you can save in the next step.

Step # 4: Find places where you can save

Okay, so you’ve analyzed your budget and figured out exactly where your money is going, now you can start to figure out where you can cut expenses to start to save for your future travels. How much you can save regularly will determine what types of trips you can take and how often, along with how long it will take you to save for each trip.

What if you made your coffee at home everyday? How much could you save? Write it down. How much would you save if you only buy one coffee out a week? You might be surprised at how much you can save just making this one change. Maybe you spend $50 on dining out each week. If you were to cut that back to every other week, you could save $100 a month. That’s $1200 a year! Think of the travel you could put that towards.

Continue going through your list until you’ve written down all the possible places you could save. Is this number higher or lower than you expected? If this number is more than you want to save for travel, then go ahead and add some of those things you cut back into your budget. If it’s lower than you would like, then you can try to go back in and cut more things, but make sure you’re realistic here. It’s better to save at a slower pace than to make cuts that aren’t going to work for you.

It’s one thing to say that you’re going to cut out all dining, but if that’s something you love, you aren’t going to be happy cutting it out completely. The goal here is not to make saving for travel painful. You have to figure out what saving plan is going to work for you. If you can’t imagine cutting out your daily coffee, then don’t cut out your coffee budget! I’m not kidding. Find the things to cut back that work for you.

Pennies out of a jar. Image by Olya Adamovich from Pixabay

Step #5: Set up your Travel Savings Bucket

Once you have a monthly figure, break it down into the frequency of your pay schedule. In general, it’s easier to save consistently if you put aside the amount immediately off your pay. Personally, I work within a looser budget, and my spending categories aren’t always strictly regulated. But I took the time to figure out how to make this work for me, and how much I could save per pay. And I make sure to put that money into my travel savings as soon as I get paid.

You need to have somewhere to put this money you’re saving. My bank has a savings account type that’s free to setup and free of expenses and I have two of them – one of which is dedicated to travel. Maybe for you this means envelopes of cash, or a travel jar. My only suggestion would be that this should be separate from your regular, daily banking account. Because if it stays in your main account, you’re going to spend it.

If, after a couple months, you find that your new budget cuts aren’t working, then reduce your savings amount. It’s better to find something you can stick with consistently then to constantly dip into it because you’re putting aside more than you can handle. And if something comes up one month and you really can’t afford to save for travel, that’s okay too. It makes no sense to go into debt to “save” for travel.

Step #5(b): Alternative Option

If putting aside a set amount of money from each pay doesn’t work for you, that doesn’t mean you can’t save for travel. Another option might be to have a monthly budget category for your discretionary expenses and roll any leftover money at the end of the month into your travel savings. Or maybe you use a “loose change” method, where you dump all loose change into a jar each week.

Neither of these methods have worked that well for me, but the point is to find the money to travel in a way that works for you. The key is to be intentional. If you’re intentional about your approach, then you’ll see your travel budget start to grow over time.

Step #6: Start to Dream

You might think that this step should be higher on the list, but hear me out. In my experience, dreaming about a big trip and then seeing the price tag for it before you’ve established your travel savings plan, is just as likely to make you overwhelmed as it is to encourage you to save. You’ll see the price tag and your immediate reaction will be that there’s no way you’ll be able to come up with that kind of money in this lifetime.

But, if you’ve gone through all the previous steps, you now have a realistic idea of how much you can save in a month, a year, or 5 years. You can now look at that big ticket trip with a better understanding of how long it would take to save for it. You might still decide it’s too expensive, but you’ll be making an informed decision. And maybe you’ll discover that your dream trip is actually possible. Saving for 3, or even 5 years, might not seem like that long if you thought it would never be possible.

That’s why, in my opinion, it is better to have a full understanding of your potential for saving before you start to dream of the trips you want to take. Remember, you can always go back and increase or decrease your savings goals as you figure out your travel dreams. Maybe the trips that you want to take cost less than you imagined, and you can take more trips on your budget than you thought, or lower your monthly savings. Or maybe you decide that your dream trip is worth packed lunches for a year.

(Side Note: I am a big fan of dreaming and planning trips that I know I probably won’t ever be able to take. So I am 100% not saying to stop thinking about dream trips… but you don’t need a budget when you’re fantasy travelling.)

Step #7 (Bonus Step) – Brainstorm new ways to find money

I hesitated to include this step, because I want this to be a post about finding the resources to travel with in the budget that you already have. I don’t know about you, but I’m inclined to believe that I’m already busy enough without needing to find an additional stream of income to be able to travel.

But I decided to put it out there as something to consider.

Perhaps you have found that what you can save is not going to get you on the trips you want to go on in the time period that you want. If this is the case, you might consider brainstorming an additional income stream. Perhaps you can pick up a part time job. I had a colleague once who picked up shifts at a movie theatre so that he and his wife could afford to go on a cruise. Or maybe you’re crafty and can start to sell some of your creations. There are many ways that you could pad out your travel budget if you so choose.

Final Thoughts

If you have ever been frustrated with thoughts that travel isn’t possible for you, I hope that what you take away from this post is that budgeting and planning to travel doesn’t just happen. It takes planning, and intentionality. It might take time and patience, but if it’s something you really want to do, it is may be more possible than you initially thought.

And if travel saving isn’t possible for you right now, I hope you’ll still stick around. You can enjoy reading travel posts, and dreaming about travel, even if you never plan to travel. And, as I mentioned in my travel story, travel and exploring isn’t just about the “big” trips. Sometimes it’s about a tank of gas and a bit of research into free, or low cost destinations close to home. I’m just as interested in exploring that type of travel here.

How do you budget for travel? How do you fit travel and exploring into your life?

Until next time,

I Would Love to Travel But… Being intentional about Travelling

Published on June 3, 2020November 16, 2020 by Meaghan Elizabeth

You work a full time job, have family obligations, and participate in community events, how do you find the time to travel? And then, if you do find the time, how do you afford it? Between rent, food and bills, you really don’t have any extra money for travel. So when someone talks about their trip you sigh and say, “I wish I could travel, but…”

I used to think that there was no way I could afford any type of travel. And, at a certain point of my life, that was probably true. But I have learned that sometimes the reasons we come up with for why we can’t travel – money, time – aren’t as big of hurdles as we make them to be in our minds. Yes, both money and time are required for travel, and they can be hurdles to overcome, but I have learned that they can often be overcome with a little bit (or a lot) of planning and intentionality.

I know that travel is not possible for everyone. Both money and time, not to mention life circumstances, can be very real barriers, and I don’t want to discount or ignore that. Those of us that are able to fit travel into our lives, even if it is through careful budgeting and planning like I am going to talk about here, are in a privileged position. I am not going to say that everyone can afford to travel, because I know that’s not true. Being able to fit travel into our lives is a blessing and a privilege that I am thankful for and don’t ever want to take forgranted.

In this series, I want to suggest that there are times when the things that we think of as hurdles to our travel can be overcome with planning and intentional saving. Sometimes, if we want to travel, we have to become a bit more creative in our approach to our travel budgets. Because one of the things that I have learned over the past years is that travel rarely “just happens.” You have to plan for it, and that means planning to save. Even supposed “last minute” or “spontaneous” trips more often than not include intentional saving before hand to make them possible.

Woman sitting in road looking at map — Image by Lorri Lang from Pixabay

Overcoming my Own Hurdles

Prior to moving to England I had the idea, whether conscious or unconscious, that I probably wouldn’t be able to afford any travel other than camping until I had a “good” job that was making me “good” money. I certainly couldn’t afford to do much while working part time – or even full time – retail. Because that was in the back of my mind, I didn’t think too much about the possibility of planning trips.

And then I got the idea that I wanted to move to England, and I became very determined to save and make it possible. When I finished grad school, I went back to working retail and in the year of saving, I worked a mixture of full time and part time. I lived at home to save on rent, and put away as much as I could to save for my trip. I had to pay careful attention to my budget that year in order to make it possible, but I was determined.

And I did it. I saved enough for the Visa application fee, the plane ticket, the first few weeks of accommodation and I think just over the minimum amount I needed to demonstrate in order to enter the country – approximately £1,900 or I think it was around $3,000 CAD at the time. There were also all the miscellaneous things I needed to buy for the trip.

And then I moved to London, England (a not inexpensive city) with give or take £2,000 in my bank account. Now, if could go back and give myself one piece of advice, I would highly recommend saving more than that, because it would have made life much easier in those first few months. But then I probably wouldn’t have learned as much about myself as I did.

It wasn’t perfect, and I will admit that in the first couple months I used my credit card to pay for some of it (partially because I was afraid of running out of money), but it worked out. And once I got a job, I was able to pay it all off. Were there were things I could have done differently? Probably. But I’m not sure I would have changed it.

I found a job that paid well, and was so much more flexible for travel and exploring than I ever could have imagined or hoped for, and I was able to live in a very central part of London that I loved. My dorm style room was small, but it was private. I had my own bathroom and a shared kitchen, and I loved it. And I managed to fit in a lot of travel and exploring in that year. Not as much as I would have liked, of course, but more than I have ever managed in a single year since.

Learning to Budget Time and Money

The job I had in London was very flexible, and I essentially had the ability to dictate how much work I took on. It was a bit more complicated than that, but I had a lot of flexibility to fit in travel when I wanted. But I still had to balance work and travel. After all, I still had to pay bills and living expenses. I mentioned that living in London isn’t cheap right? And I loved being close to central London so much that I just couldn’t imagine living further out.

So I learned how to balance living expenses and saving for travel, along with balancing time for both work and travel. I took advantage of weeks where there was a lot of work available to pick up extra work, and school holiday weeks when work was slower to travel and explore. If there were specific dates I wanted to travel, I was able to take that time off easily and, in some cases I took extra long weekends. I was also able to take advantage of unplanned days off to explore London. It’s difficult to explain how my job was set up, but it wasn’t a typical 9-5, Monday – Friday.

Though my situation in London was unique, I brought a lot of what I learned back home with me. It’s more difficult to find the time to travel when we’re restricted to a certain number of vacation weeks and long weekends throughout the year. It’s hard when we know that we don’t have the time to travel the amount we would like. While I can’t turn your two weeks vacation into 5, I have learned that it’s possible to fit travel and exploring into long weekends. Not all travel has to be long distance or longer in length.

When you’re close enough to take a long weekend trip to Paris, or Scotland, you learn that a trip doesn’t have to be long to be impactful. Sure, I would have loved to spend more time in Paris, but that didn’t take away from the time I was there – and short trips can spark interest to save and plan for a longer, return visit. Or perhaps you’ll learn that a short trip was exactly the right length for the destination you chose.

Not all places are as easy to travel from as London, England. In many places, Canada in particular, distances are so much greater and a bigger factor in travel. It can make it difficult to imagine being able to take meaningful long weekend trips. But it’s not impossible. It just takes more creativity and out of the box thinking. And it takes the willingness to accept that a larger portion of your trip will be spent travelling to get there.

In the years since I’ve been home, I’ve found that the Family Day long weekend in February has been one of my favourites for travel and exploring. I started adding on an extra day to make it a 4 day weekend, but it works with 3 days as well. We’ve done 2 trips to Ottawa for Winterlude and two trips to Point Pelee National Park – which has fast become one of my favourite places – to stay in the oTentiks. (I promise to post one day about the oTentiks and winter camping in them at Pelee.) Both of these are travel I may never have done if not for being willing to travel on a long weekend.

I don’t get to travel as much as I would like. I’m not sure if I would want to travel full time, even if I could, but I would definitely travel more than I currently do if it was possible. And I would almost certainly spend more time camping in the summer months! But I have learned that I can fit more travel in than I once thought possible. And I can afford more travel as well by carefully planning, saving and balancing smaller, less expensive travel and exploration with less frequent, bigger trips.

There are lots of ways to plan to work more travel into your life, and to plan to save for travel. Today I talked mostly about my story, and the time aspect of fitting in travel. Next week, I’m going to tell you a bit about my approach to being intentional in working travel into your life through budgeting in particular, and the steps and considerations that I have found useful.

How do you work travel into your life? Do you have any tips and tricks that have worked for you? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time,

Catching the Travel Bug: My Travel Story

Published on May 19, 2020November 16, 2020 by Meaghan Elizabeth

A few weeks ago, I wrote about starting a travel blog in the time of a Pandemic. In that post, I talked a bit about why I wanted to start a travel blog, but didn’t really talk about how I discovered my love for travel. In my post about the connection between books and travel, I touched a bit more on why I chose those two topics. But how did I realize I loved travel? I figured that this was a good time to share with you my travel story – how I got into travel, and why I keep travelling and exploring.

Phase One: Camping

Two tents on a campsite — A camping trip Summer 2019

I love camping. I love both trips that are mainly about camping, as well as being able to camp as part of other travel. I grew up camping with my family every summer. My parents first took me when I was two weeks old, and I have loved camping ever since. We’ve mostly done tent trailer camping, though we’ve also done some tent camping, especially in recent years. Sometimes a tent is easier for a road trip when you’re staying at a site for only one night.

Incorporating camping into trips can be a great way to bring down accommodation costs. Camp sites are generally very reasonably priced, especially as compared to hotel rooms. I think that no matter what I do, camping will always be part of my life. We recently began the process of purchasing a new trailer. We’re transitioning into something that’s still small and relatively simple, but fully contained. I can’t wait to start planning close to home camping trips and longer road trips once we get our new trailer next summer.

Phase Two: Exploring Canada

In addition to camping trips, my family also went on various other trips. Mostly we stayed in Ontario, but we also went out to Eastern Canada, and even to Washington DC on year. Each of these trips helped spark my love of travel, but I think the most influential trip of this phase was our trip to Prince Edward Island. In my books and travel post, I talked about how our PEI trip was an example of how reading and travel overlapped for me.

I loved that trip. I loved seeing the places that inspired one of my favourite book series’ and I loved experiencing the beauty of Eastern Canada. The East Coast will always have a special place in my heart. I also learned through this trip that even if things don’t go exactly as planned, it can still be amazing and memorable. We had a few twists and turns that meant we had to adapt and modify our plans, but it worked out.

These trips showed me how wonderful travel can be, but they didn’t fully ignite my love of travel.

Phase Three: Finding the Working Holiday Visa

I have mentioned before that I lived in England for a year, but I haven’t talked about how that came about. I first got the idea to live in England while I was in grad school. I might have thought about living abroad before that, but never seriously enough to look into it all that deeply. And the idea always faded one in favour of other things. Until that one night in grad school.

I’m not entirely sure what led me down the rabbit trail of researching living abroad. I’m fairly certain it was extremely late at night (me and 2 a.m. were intimately acquainted during grad school) and I was almost certainly procrastinating whatever it was that I was supposed to be working on. In grad school it’s always a good bet that there’s something you should be working on at all times.

I think it’s also necessary to note that I was watching A LOT of British television that year. I had just gotten into Doctor Who, and BBC Sherlock was in it’s prime. So England was on my mind fairly regularly. Whatever the reason, I got the idea “what if I lived in England?” And that sparked a dive into Google to see if it was even possible outside of a study abroad plan.

During this research, I stumbled across the concept of a Working Holiday Visa, or Youth Mobility Visa as it is sometimes called. If you’ve never heard of this, as I hadn’t at that point, I’ll give a quick explanation. Essentially, these are Visas that exist through partnerships between various countries that allow young people to get short term work Visas. The age limit for qualifying depends on both the country you’re from and the one you’re looking to move to, as does the length of the Visa you can get. At the time, to get a one time, 2-year Visa as a Canadian to work in the United Kingdom, you had to be under 30 at the time of application. Which I was.

Since I met the age qualification, I started looking into it more. And before I knew it, this passing idea had become something that I really wanted to do. I started thinking about it more seriously, and it soon became clear that this wasn’t an idea that was going to fade away. I was going to move to England.

Before I knew it, I was planning, picking out dates, and filling out application forms. There was a lot of research and planning. I research and plan because I love it, but also because it lets me feel, accurately or not, like I have a handle on something that’s not only new, but as terrifying as it is exciting. Before England, I had never lived further than a short car ride from my family. And I’d never been on a plane before. Not only was my first airplane trip going to be across an ocean, but it would take me to live an ocean away from my family and friends. Exciting? Yes. Terrifying? Definitely.

Phase Four – England

London Parliament buildings as seen from the London Eye

It was the fall of 2014. All the planning was done. My bags were packed and I was ready to board a plane to London. I was doing it! I had accommodation planned for the first few week or so, and an interview lined up at Windsor Castle (more about that in a future post). I had a list of a million places that I wanted to visit or travel to, and I also had the idea firmly in mind that if it was terrible I could book the next flight home.

I ended up living in London for about 13 months. It was a long time and not enough time all at once. It was a long time away from my friends and family, but not enough time in the city I love. Even living right in London, there’s so much of that city that I didn’t get to see. Not to mention all the other places I didn’t have the time or opportunity to travel to within the UK and Europe. A part of my heart will always live in London, and I hope I will get to go back. It is the far off future trip I am always looking forward to.

This trip, and all of the smaller trips that were part of that year, fanned the travel flame for me. I learned that I loved travelling and planning trips. And I knew that I was going to keep doing it. Whether it was big trips, or small trips, I knew that I wanted to keep exploring. I learned that there’s so much more to travel than just the big experiences, and I was excited to take that understanding home with me.

Beyond London to the Present

It’s been 5.5 years since I got on the plane that took me to London. To this point, I have not travelled as much in one year as I was able to do during that year, but I have kept travelling and planning trips. Due to size and distance, it’s not as easy to do long weekend trips within Canada, but I’ve tried to maintain the principle through planning a mix of small, medium and big trips as time and budget permits.

Some years we focus our trips within a relatively short distance around Ontario. There is so much to explore within Ontario, and even within a couple hours drive from home. We’ve done camping trips and weekend trips to places we’ve been before and new places. We’ve discovered a few new favourite places in Ontario that we plan on going back to many times in the future. And there are still so many places on the list to still explore within this province.

We’ve only done one bigger trip so far, but the plan is to do a bigger trip every few years where possible. The first trip of this type was a couple years ago when my mom and I took a road trip East to Nova Scotia. Even in working to keep expenses down, these types of trips are always bigger budget – either in time or money. Which is why they happen less frequently.

This year was supposed to be a bigger trip year. My mom I and had our trip to Newfoundland almost completely planned… but it’s looking like that’s going to be postponed until next year. It’ll cause a bit of a shuffle to our longer term travel plans, since next year was going to be devoted to exploring with our new trailer, but I’m sure we’ll figure out how to balance the two.

At this point in my life, travel and exploration consists of fitting it around a full time job and “normal” life. Though this sometimes means planning smaller trips, it also means finding ways to explore close to home. I love discovering new restaurants and new places to visit in my city, and exploring your own city can be a form of travel when you can’t actually get away. I wish that I had the time (and money) to fit more trips in, but I’ll continue to work with what I have, and appreciate the travel that I am able to do.

How did you get started with travel? Do you prefer big trips or smaller, closer to home trips? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time,

The Thing About Fear – Acknowledging the Fears that Stop Us

Published on May 5, 2020November 16, 2020 by Meaghan Elizabeth

Fear. There is a lot of fear in the world right now surrounding Covid-19. There are direct fears related to the illness itself, as well as fears that have arisen as a by-product of the pandemic. The economy. Jobs. People’s mental health and emotional well-being. Education. Toilet paper, yeast, and hair cuts. And the list of fears goes on. It can feel like we are trapped in a hamster wheel of fear with no apparent way to escape.

In thinking about these fears, I started thinking about the other fears that we face throughout our lives, and the ways that those fears can impact our lives. Some fears are big, and life changing in big, immediately apparent ways. Others are small, and we can learn how to move past them in a relatively short amount of time. Most fall somewhere in between. And sometimes it’s the fears that are easy to overlook, or easiest to justify, that have the greatest potential to keep us from moving forward.

Fear is a natural response to something that we see as dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. At it’s most basic, fear is an emotion that exists to keep us safe. It’s what tells us that we should be careful near that cliff, and that we shouldn’t get too close to that bear. But I think that sometimes fear gets it wrong. Our fears don’t always tell the whole truth. Sometimes our fear overacts to the situation. And sometimes our fears tell outright lies.

How do you define “Safe”

Sarah Rhea Werner, the host of the Write Now podcast has a recent episode about fear that I found to be very helpful. In this episode, she passes along information and advice about fear that she received. She talks about fear being a response intended to keep us safe, but she suggests that sometimes the trouble comes from the way in which our fear defines “safe.” Sometimes fear defines safe as comfortable.

Writing that blog post. Starting that Podcast. Going out for that promotion. Pursuing your “big” dream. These are all things that require us to move out of our comfort zone. They require us to face risks and yes, they can cause us to face the potential of pain. But these things do not typically put us at risk of actual harm. (I acknowledge that there are situations where these things might put us at risk of harm and still be good things, but I am going to focus on the general here).

The risks we face in these situations are more along the lines of the risk of failure. Or of being criticized, or ridiculed. There are risks in opening ourselves up and being vulnerable. There is risk in stepping out of our comfort zone to pursue the thing that simultaneously excites and terrifies us. Chances are that writing that blog post is not going to cause me actual harm. But our fear wants to keep us safe and comfortable. And that means sticking with what we know.

This type of fear is easy to give in to and accept. Because of that, these fears have a great deal of potential to hold us back and stop us from trying new things. And here’s the thing. Sometimes when fear stops us from doing something, it can actually cause us pain or lead to us being hurt in a different way. Fear of stepping out in relationships can save us from being hurt by other people, but can cause us loneliness and sadness.

I have let fear stop me from doing many things over the course of my life. Fear has stopped me from talking to people I wanted to meet. It has stopped me from going out for the worship team at my church. It has stopped me from applying to jobs that I wanted and was qualified for, but that felt too big and scary.

Fear has stopped me from pursuing my writing dreams. I am afraid of failing. I am afraid that people won’t like what I create. I am afraid that I’m actually a terrible writer. I am afraid that it will be hard, and that I’ll give up. And if I’m going to give up eventually anyway… why bother even starting? I also fear that it will work out. What if I succeed? Success brings with it a whole new level and category of fear. It is much easier to stay within my comfort zone.

The Comfort Zone

As much as I might wish otherwise, I have choosen to stay within my comfort zone, and let fear stop me from doing things, on many occasions. The majority of risks that we face in this zone are ones that are already known. We can handle them. They don’t stretch us, they don’t grow us. They leave us exactly where we are. There’s a reason it’s called the comfort zone.

But consider this. Our comfort zone is not static. It’s not surrounded by an impenetrable stone wall. It can, and should, change and grow as we move through life. If a baby stayed within its comfort zone, it would never move to solid foods, never learn to walk, or talk, or play. It would lie in one place forever. As we grow and try new things, our comfort zone can expand to incorporate that new thing.

Not everything we try becomes part of our comfort zone. Some things will always scare us, and we will decide they’re not for us. At some point in my childhood, trampolines moved outside of my comfort zone. I don’t like jumping on them, and I especially don’t like watching others jump on them. I can’t imagine that they will ever become part of my comfort zone. And that’s okay. We don’t have to be comfortable with everything. But sometimes we step out despite our fear and the sky doesn’t fall. So we try it again. And again. And eventually we can’t remember why we were afraid of it in the first place. We might discover new fears related to the original thing, but we have made progress, and our comfort zone has grown.

Many things we do fall into the grey area between our comfort zone and our fear zone. These are the things that scare us every single time, but we decide that they are worth it enough to keep doing them. Travel can be one of these grey areas for me.

If I hadn’t taken a BIG step out of my comfort zone, I would never have gotten on a plane and moved to England for a year. There’s a lot of travel that I wouldn’t have done had I not stepped out despite my fears. I love travelling. But there are fears that I face before and during each trip. Road trips can make me anxious about car accidents. I worry about illnesses and injuries. I worry about travelling alone and travelling with someone else. I worry that I will plan a bad trip.

But I do it anyway. I keep planning and booking trips because, for me, it’s worth it. I remind myself that accidents can happen close to home, as can injuries and illnesses. Sure, travel brings with it certain risks that are outside of our daily norms, but I work hard at not letting that stop me. And I have people who help me get past my worries and point out when I am being extreme.

Standing on the top of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh — Climbing up to the top of Arthur’s Seat was outside of my comfort zone. But if I hadn’t done it, I would have missed this amazing view.

Acknowledging our Fears

Another thing in the episode that I found helpful, was the concept of acknowledging our fears and thanking them for keeping us safe before we then put them aside and move forward with the thing that scares us. It reminds me of the Marie Kondo method of purging and cleaning, where you thank an item before getting rid of it. The thanking does nothing for the item, or the fear, itself. But acknowledging that something has served it’s purpose, can help us move past it.

It’s not about ignoring our fears, or pretending they don’t exist. Sweeping something under the rug, or hiding it in the back of the closet, doesn’t make it go away. I have found that the more we hide our fears and ignore them, the more those fears tend to fester and grow. And often, while we’re ignoring our fears, we aren’t pursuing the thing that scares us. That big dream gets tucked away in the closet alongside the fear. When we acknowledge the fear, and bring it out into the light, we can begin the process of moving past it or learning how to live with it.

We are going to face many fears over the course of our lives. Some of them will be really big, and no one will question these fears. Some will be small, or unique to us, and it will seem like no one else will understand them. Is anyone else out there afraid before a big event, like say a Tuesday, that they are going to fall up the stairs and completely destroy their face? Or is that just me?

The important thing, I think, is that we acknowledge our fears and we make a decision about what we’re going to do with them. Are we going to walk away from the thing that scares us? Or are we going decide that the thing we want to do is more important than the fear. Sometimes walking away is the best decision, either forever or for right now. But sometimes we decide to move forward and walk down the scary path. Maybe we’ll get hurt. And maybe it won’t work out. But maybe it does work out. And maybe deciding to move forward on the thing that scares you will make all the difference in the world.

What about you? Is there something that fear is stopping you from doing right now? Is there something that you are currently doing in-spite of your fears? I would love to hear about it in the comments!

Until Next Time,

Books And Travel? What’s The Connection?

Published on April 30, 2020November 16, 2020 by Meaghan Elizabeth

In both my first post (which you can read here if you missed it), and on my About page, I have mentioned that my intention is for this blog to be focused around both travel and books. But I haven’t really talked about the reasons why I think that those two topics can be combined in one place.

When I was trying to decide on what type of blog I wanted to start up this time, I kept getting hung up because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write about just travel. Don’t get me wrong, travel is a great topic on it’s own, and there is so much that can fall under the travel umbrella. My concern wasn’t about having a shortage of things to write about. The main stumbling block was that I didn’t know if I was ready to give up on the idea of writing about books and reading.

The last blog that I started was focused on books and stories. I didn’t get very far with that blog for a variety of reasons, but in trying to decide on my next project, the topic was persistent in popping up in my mind. Reading, books, and stories more generally, are such a big part of my life that I wasn’t ready to give up the idea of writing about the topic.

On the other hand, I knew I didn’t want to work on a blog that was exclusively about books and reading. I wanted to write about other things, and more specifically, I wanted to explore the world of travel blogging. Mixed into all of these considerations was the blogging advice that stress how you should keep your topic narrow. It might seem like a good idea to write about anything and everything, but in practice it’s very hard to pull off. So, what was a girl to do?

After thinking about it for a long while, and working through all of the reasons why it wasn’t a good idea, I finally decided that despite all those reasons, I was going to write about both. I know, I know, shocker. But I kept coming back to the idea that travel and reading might actually work as partner topics. I started thinking about how for me, travel and reading are connected in a lot of different ways. And the more I thought about it, the more I started thinking that, if they’re connected for me, they might be connected for others too.

Not yet convinced of the connections? Let me explain the main points of my thought process.

Image of a book lying open on an open map — Exploring the world through books and travel

1. Books can be a major source of Travel Inspiration

I don’t know if you can relate, but at least a portion of my travel inspiration comes from books that I have read, either directly or indirectly. Have you ever read a book that described a place so well you couldn’t help but wish you were there? Have you ever then gone and researched that place afterwards to see what it might be like to travel there? Have you ever loved a place in a book so much that you booked a trip to that place – maybe not right away – but at some point after you read the book?

When I was a child I fell completely in love with the Anne of Green Gables series, and then in turn with all of L.M. Montgomery’s works. Each additional book that I read made me want to visit Prince Edward Island more. Eventually, I talked about wanting to go so much, that we decided to travel there as a family one summer. Now, my obsession with the Green Gables series obviously wasn’t the only deciding factor, but I know for a fact that if we hadn’t gone that summer, my love for the Anne and Emily books would have driven me to the Island sometime in my life.

2. Travel can be a major source of Reading Inspiration

On the flip side, sometimes travelling to, or being interested in a place in real life, can influence the books that we choose to read. Reading about places that we love can make us feel like we’re back there. I will always love reading books set in London, England, for example, because they remind me of the year I lived there.

We might also pick up books because they are set in a place that we would love to go someday. Sometimes a place grabs hold of our imagination in such a way that even if we never travel there in person, we find ourselves gravitating towards books or movies set in that location. I can’t say when it happened exactly, but at some point in my childhood, I became fascinated with Russia. I will probably never travel to Russia, but I have read many a book primarily because of that setting.

3. Reading can be a form of Travel

Apart from providing us with the inspiration to travel, reading can be a form of travel all on its own. Obviously, books can’t physically transport us to different places (though I think we can all agree that it would be pretty cool if they could), but they do transport us to different worlds while we are reading them. While this might be most apparent within the Fantasy genre, with books that are quite literally set in different worlds, I think it can be true for all genres. A really good book will make you feel like you were living in the world within it’s pages.

Narnia. Middle Earth. Hogwarts. A little house on an unforgiving prairie. All of these, and more, are places that I have travelled to through the pages of books. I am certain that, if you’re a reader of fiction, you have a list like this of your own. I would argue that Non-Fiction also does this in it’s own way, even though the world within the pages is familiar to us. I thought it would be really fun to explore reading from this angle.

4. Books travel with us

This last point may be a stretch, but I think it’s still valid. For people who read, books are an important part of our travel packing. Tablets, phones and e-readers have made travelling with books infinitely more easier, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone on a trip where I didn’t bring at least one book along with me, even before these technologies were an option. I can remember camping trips where I would have packed more books than clothes if I had been fully in charge of my packing. Audiobooks have saved me from many a noisy hostel experience, and ebooks have been a major source of entertainment on bus rides that felt never ending.

The lists of “Beach Reads” that start to come out early summer every year suggest that it’s not too much of a stretch to say that there are books, or types of books, that are good for certain types of trips. Beach Reads. Camping Reads. Plane Reads. Books to listen to on a long road trip… I think that this also could be a fun avenue to explore.

I hope from all that, you can get an idea of what I see when I think about combining these two topics. Maybe as I go, I’ll find that I focus on one over the other, or maybe the topic of this blog will shift into something that I haven’t considered yet. In any case, I’m excited to start writing about travel and reading both alone and combined, and seeing where the journey may take me.

Do you have any stories about a time when a book you read inspired a trip you took? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time,

For the stories that take you on adventures, and the adventures that turn into stories.

Starting a Travel Blog during a Pandemic?

Published on April 28, 2020November 16, 2020 by Meaghan Elizabeth

As those who know me may be aware, I am almost notorious for starting writing projects and then not carrying through with them. I have wanted to keep a blog for years, but have not yet managed to keep one running consistently for any length of time. I just haven’t managed to find the right topic, or the right amount of motivation or ‘go get ‘em.’

We could go into the reasons for that, but that is not what this post is about. This post is about the journey I have recently taken to move to a point of starting up this blog. A journey that was almost over before it even began this time. I think it would be some kind of record to have a blog last for a negative amount of time… but I am getting ahead of myself.

At some point in the last 6 months or so, I started thinking about starting up a new blog or writing project of some kind. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to work on, but my creative writing juices were beginning to stir after having been largely dormant for quite some time. I had ideas again! I just needed to figure out where I wanted to channel my creativity.

As I started thinking about what I wanted to work on, I started playing with the idea of starting a travel related blog. I didn’t do much more than mull the idea over initially, though. I wasn’t sure what that type of blog would look like for me, or whether or not it was actually something that I would want to work on long term. But the idea started to wander around my mind.

Then, sometime around the end of February, beginning of March, I decided that I needed to stop coming up with reasons why I shouldn’t and start focusing on the reasons why I should. I decided to just dive into the planning, and see where it took me. I knew that I wanted to write about travel and books, but I also wanted to leave the blog name open enough that if I decided to switch up the topic a bit, I would hopefully not need to pick a new name and start over yet again. I finally settled on a name, and I wrote and posted my “About” page. I was all ready to start writing and posting!

Enter Covid-19. And a new, pandemic shaped, day-to-day reality. My writing plans were completely derailed.

Sure, I suddenly had “extra” time in my days. Though my day job has thankfully been able to switch to full time work from home, all of my weekend and evening activities were cancelled. But “free time” didn’t automatically equate to an abundance of motivation or interest in sitting down to write. Work was busy. I was tired. Not to mention dealing with all of the new and added stresses related to a world that seemed to be verging on chaos. Some people were converting the time and additional stresses into a recipe for productivity. But this wasn’t the case for me. Even if I had wanted to be crazy productive, I didn’t suddenly find myself with a cup overflowing with creativity. I have a hard enough time on a normal day convincing myself to sit down and write, and now I had what felt like a million other reasons and excuses that needed to be overcome.

And if all of that wasn’t enough… I was supposed to be writing about travel?

The entire travel industry had essentially ground to a halt. I had no idea if my summer travel plans were going to be cancelled or postponed a year. I wasn’t even travelling to work anymore. And I was supposed to be writing a blog about travel? I mean, sure, I wanted my blog to be about travel and reading, and it could be argued that this was the perfect time to talk about reading. But what was the point? I had finally overcome all of my excuses and self-imposed roadblocks, and before I could even start my project it had been halted.

Days turned into weeks, and I didn’t write, and didn’t write, and didn’t write… But then I gradually started working on shifting my focus from the chaos around me. I started making a conscious effort to spend less time focusing on all of the things that I couldn’t control, and couldn’t change. And I started thinking about writing again.

The more I thought about it, the more I started thinking about how important it is to keep dreaming, and hoping, and looking forward to a time when we are on the other side of this. It’s not always possible to look forward when there is so much going on in the here and now. It can feel impossible to believe that there will even be another side. Especially when we don’t know how long this pandemic will last, or what changes it might leave in its wake. The hear and now can feel very unknown, and very scary.

But then the sun comes out from behind the clouds. And the flowers start to peak through out of the dirt. The birds sing. The air starts to feel like Spring. And just for a moment, you catch a glimpse of of a world that’s a just a little bit more “normal.” And you find your day filled with just a little bit more hope. I started thinking that maybe through writing I could bring more of those glimpses into my life. And maybe I could give someone else a glimpse or two along the way.

I can’t say how much of a writing schedule I will manage to keep in the upcoming days, weeks, and months. And I don’t know how many posts I will manage to write. I don’t want to add too much additional pressure onto myself right now, but I’m also not ready to give up on this writing thing quite yet either. I’m not sure how much of what I write will be about travel or reading right now – and I’m not really all that concerned about overly restricting my topic choices for the time being. But I’m going to put one foot in front of the other, and take it one day at a time. I’d love for you to join me along the way.

Until Next Time,