One year of traveling solo has seen me through many states, including Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina, and Mexico. I learned about why we travel, especially about traveling solo.
How traveling solo renews your sense of self
What I’ve realized about this last year of traveling is that it gives us a new way to see and understand ourselves. Not only are the places new, but we are different in those places.
Every place we go, some new aspect of our character is born that would have never been otherwise if we hadn’t traveled. We discover new flavors, smells, tastes, sights, textures, and sounds in each place and learn new likes, dislikes, and behaviors in response.
How Solo Travel resets your focus
One of the best parts about traveling all the time is having new things to set our focus on. This image of Death Valley National Park reset my focus after I camped there alone one night.
Years ago, when I could not travel anywhere, I had a t-shirt with a colorful pink, purple and orange sunset on a black background with “Death Valley” in tiny crystals across the chest. I couldn’t believe a sunset could look that way. But as I sat on the hood of my van, watching the golden sun sink behind the mountain, that picture became real. It felt like a dream manifesting.
Traveling solo resets our focus and reminds us that unreal things do exist and that we’re always rewarded for pushing outside our comfort zone – because spending a night alone in Death Valley wasn’t an easy decision.
How Fear Stops Us from Traveling Alone
Fear stops most of us from traveling solo. Most women are afraid of being approached by men when in isolated places.
Hiking alone can get our nerves going too. Bears are always a wild card for a solo hiker. I’ve overcome these fears by telling myself that if I die in a bizarre, random way while traveling alone, it’s better than with a heart filled with regret and unrealized dreams. Truly, the things we fear are incredibly remote.
The Way New Landscapes Open Our Minds
Monument Valley at the four corners of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico changed my view of the United States.
On road trips, we can be driving when the landscape unexpectedly shifts like it does when you’re approaching a special place. Nature begins to quiet, the land evens out, then builds. The scenes we see force us to pull over and stare in shock. We didn’t know there were places like this. You can’t keep driving. You must stop and take it in for a while. The sight caused me to learn about the people and it gave me a new perspective.
The Beauty of the earth is unknown to us
The Hall of Mosses in the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington was so unusual it caused wonder what else I didn’t know. The area is a World Heritage Site and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Everything is covered in so much moss that it hangs from the trees like curtains. Bizarre mushrooms and slimy things grow from obscure places.
When we travel, we find places like this that are so unusual it builds our passion for being an intrepid explorer. We want more of these places; to save them and love them and find them.
How Traveling Makes us Try New Things
In San Jose, I spent a day learning to be a beekeeper because I could. When we’re traveling solo we do things out of our comfort zones that we would never do at home. Sometimes, we never had a previous interest in the excursion, but when traveling we think, let’s try it.
On this excursion, I learned bees aren’t anything to fear, but they’re brilliant, amazing and essential. It completely changed my thinking. We love that about travel.
Traveling Allows us to meet New People
We meet so many characters while traveling. When we’re staying home on the couch we don’t meet anyone and our world seem small, but out in the world, we encounter all types of people. One of my favorites was Tony, whom I met on a boat in the Puget Sound in Washington as I was about to get on a parasail. He was there with his wife and young son, also parasailing. We were chatting when he randomly asked me my birth date.
“Uh, June?” I answered, confused.
“June is six, OK. I tell you something about yourself. You good at attract money. People too, but you like money, things.”
He asked for more numbers and practice numerology on me. Every time he’d ask me a number, he’d tell me something about myself. After, he’d ask me if he was right. He was only right about half the time, but he was new at it. When we travel, we meet people who inspire us.
How we get comfortable being uncomfortable
When we travel, we’re on planes, trains and automobiles. Sometimes a donkey, boats, bikes and others. It’s often uncomfortable. But we do it. For my nomad experience, I bought a van and slept alone in it at national parks. Mostly it sucked. But when we travel, we are forced to try different modes of transportation and come to terms with our expectations of comfort. It’s humbling and
Traveling in uncomfortable, sometimes boring situations gives us a new outlook on how good our home lives really are! When we’re back at home in the comfort of our own beds, we appreciate them more.
Road Trips Get you Closer to Everything
Road trips give us time to reflect, especially when we’re traveling solo. I was on a two-lane highway from Helena, Montana, to Glacier National Park. I’d heard the phrase “Big Sky Country” but wondered what that can mean. It’s not like the sky can be bigger there. But then you’re on the road, and there’s nothing but you and golden crops on either side, lined by wooden fences mile after mile.
The clouds are as puffed as marshmallows, and the sun is as round as a beach ball. Somehow the sky really is bigger. If you continue going through Montana into the panhandle of Utah, you’ll see some of the tallest pine trees and greenest fields too. And that’s mighty fine driving also.
Learning from our Travel Mistakes
My biggest mistakes with solo travel have been not planning enough time or the right time of year in certain places. I zipped through the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks in three weeks, and I wish I would’ve stayed six or more. Then I went through California during wildfire season, so I couldn’t do much of what I wanted.
I was in Utah in June when it got up to 115 degrees, and in South Carolina, I poorly timed my visit, just missing the synchronistic fireflies. There have been many things like this where I’ve missed events or seasons. I’ve spent too long in one place and not enough time in another. It’s hard to plan for everything on a year-long drive. Travel helps us learn to become better planners and more organized. These are profoundly important life skills.
We Come to Understand Perception Versus Reality
Despite any of the difficult parts of traveling solo or the things we give up or problems we encounter, our lives and days are as or more interesting and enjoyable than we hoped. We learn so much, evolving, meeting people we never would, and being regularly amazed.
If only we realized how quickly time goes. At first, the amount of time we budget seems long, but at the end, we look back, and it all goes so fast. I wish the living of the days could feel as sweet as their memory.
How my outlook has changed after a year of solo travel
I used to have this outdated idea that traveling was a luxury, but now I know it’s necessary. If we do not travel, we cannot grow in all the ways a person should. We do not know what we do not know and only putting on our feet on unknown ground can teach us.
Read my post Six Months a Nomad here.
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