Travel while you’re fit and able, says Tim Viall ahead of New Year's
“Travel while you’re fit and able. Don’t worry about the money; just make it work however you can. Memories and experience are far more valuable than money will ever be.”
Alana Huxtable
That thought resonates with me as our family gathers over the holidays and discusses travel plans in the new year. We hear similar conversations with friends and acquaintances. Too many folks seem to fall back on “We’ll travel there next year” or, “That’s expensive, and we’ll have to wait on such a grand trip.”
With no guarantees on our tomorrows, let’s discuss planning for and traveling today. None of us can guarantee our health nor avoid the inevitable physical decline that comes with advancing age – far too many friends have written off travel as too challenging due to physical demands or too expensive to fit into their budget. Let’s address those topics and plan for travel not in a year or two but NOW.
Start with planning and pre-travel preparation; we will also touch on saving money on travels to extend your budget.
Planning/calendaring: Share with family and friends over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays and put your travel plan into motion. Consider priorities, realities, and school calendars for students to target local/regional and more distant travel destinations. Chat about how you might trim everyday expenses, such as cutting back on your morning lattes to save money for that special trip. Once you have prioritized, start entering those trips into a yearly calendar.
Pre-trip preparation: Build a “travel backpack” so you are packed and ready to go; be sure you have current passports (if traveling outside the US), medications, and medical records. Download hardcopies of those key docs, your travel itinerary, maps, and the best restaurants and top attractions for specific destinations.
Navigator: Have someone agree to act as a navigator, whether driving or flying. Coach this volunteer to be familiar with maps, helpful travel apps, and your vehicle’s GPS. Get comfortable searching for last-minute motel deals, top attractions at your destination on sites like TripAdvisor, and more. Ask your navigator to scan various travel apps and search out the most popular and less-known but interesting travel attractions. If you’re traveling in a state like California, check the visitcalifornia.com website and visit city sites for specific urban destinations generally offering current insight and inspiration – as well as special deals.
Your health: We recently returned from a two-week river cruise in France; we started with five days in Paris, then cruising the Seine River to the Normandy beaches. Each day offered daily opportunities to tour the historic river towns on foot each morning, from 2 to 5 or more miles daily. To maximize such a trip, plan to get out and regularly walk in the weeks leading up to your departure to acclimate your body to walking several miles and check out comfortable footwear in advance. Better, set a goal to walk three to four days every week or join a local gym. Improved fitness goes hand-in-hand with an active traveling lifestyle.
Saving while on the road: Start with the basics on the assumption your plans involve considerable personal travel via your vehicle; do you have a modern, efficient, and reliable set of wheels? We travel in a 2017 Ford Escape SUV, four-wheel drive but one that will deliver 31 MPG on a highway trip. Modern hybrid vehicles will top that; seek a fuel-efficient car. Before hitting the road, be sure your vehicle has proper air pressure in its tires and a recent tune-up.
Some will call us cheapskates, but we travel pretty light and pack our drinks and snacks in a small cooler, shortening or eliminating rest stops and impulse buying unhealthy, high-calorie snacks. On a road trip, we specialize in quick/cheap McDonald’s lunches, saving our meal money for nice dinners in classy destination restaurants. Additionally, we have adopted the habit of splitting a main course, keeping more money (and never going away hungry).
If you dislike expensive motels for short overnight stops, consider alternatives. One of our favorites is the Affordable Travel Club (affordabletravelclub.net), where a yearly membership costs only $65, allowing you to stay overnight with thousands of friendly club members who love to show off their cities. For example, we travel up to Spokane, WA, several times yearly, about 900 miles. Bend, OR, is a great halfway point, and we can connect via email or phone with club members who live in the Bend area, who offer a comfy bed, an evening snack, and an excellent breakfast; we “tip” the fellow member $20 as we depart. The second benefit to the club is numerous house-sitting opportunities; over the past eight years, we have spent a week to three weeks in lovely member homes in Seattle, Albuquerque, Denver, Tucson, Vancouver Island, and central BC, Canada.
For those mid-trip overnight stops that do require motels, we invariably will not book a room until late afternoon or early evening, when motel prices on apps like Kayak or Priceline are reduced from 30 to up to 50 percent. Try late booking and count the savings.
California and the western states have plenty of destinations perfect for winter and early spring travel, whether involving snow sports or heading towards southern climates where outdoor activities thrive in January through March. So, plan and get traveling!
Share your favorite western states' travel adventure; we’ll highlight some in upcoming weeks. Send to Tim, tviall@msn.com; happy New Year travels!
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Travel while you’re fit and able, says Tim Viall ahead of New Year's
