Where to go?
I want to take a trip, but have no idea where. How do you decide where to go on a say 2-4 week trip?
Forum Discussion
It is either someplace I have never been, or someplace I've been to and really like. It involves seeing something I want to see, or doing something I want to do, or going to an event.
I've always started with road trip travel books to find destinations or interesting trips, also finding information from the many tourism sources on the Internet. I used to work with Streets and Trips to fit a trip to a time limit, finding additional interesting places along my route, adjusting the trip to make the the additional stops fit the schedule.
Depending on what interests you, 2-4 days of driving can add up to a 2-4 week trip, checking out everything along the way. I've been traveling from NE Oklahoma to SE Michigan several times a year for more than 35 years and by varying my route and picking different places to stop, each trip can be different, seeing something new.
From N Texas a two week trip could get you to the Pacific Northwest or New England, and back, if you didn't stop at any place interesting along the way. Four weeks could get you to Alaska and back. On the other hand, spending some time seeing things along the way, two weeks might be southern Colorado, southeast Utah, NW Arizona (all places I go to see geology, but you might not be interested in geology).
It comes down to what interests you, where you've been, what you still might want to see. My travel more recently has been escorted tours and river cruises, and I choose places I've never been. When my wife still lived, much of our travel was repeat visits to places she loved to visit, and some of it to places we had never been.
You need to first figure out what interests you, then you find the places that match that interest. For most people, that will involve new experiences, for others it is driven more by specific interests: historical museums, wineries, factory tours, automobile museums, horse races, rodeo circuit, auto races, flea markets, bluegrass festivals, and so on. I know people who just travel to go antiquing, others to music festivals.
One of the things I like to do when traveling in the U.S. is to pick one of the numbered US Highways and try to follow it end to end, or if I have a destination, follow it as much as possible to that destination. "Road Trip USA" (book or website) covers a few of the highways in this system, many of which are still important trunk routes in the big empty parts of the country where the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system is sparse. But this is a personal quirk.
I've always started with road trip travel books to find destinations or interesting trips, also finding information from the many tourism sources on the Internet. I used to work with Streets and Trips to fit a trip to a time limit, finding additional interesting places along my route, adjusting the trip to make the the additional stops fit the schedule.
Depending on what interests you, 2-4 days of driving can add up to a 2-4 week trip, checking out everything along the way. I've been traveling from NE Oklahoma to SE Michigan several times a year for more than 35 years and by varying my route and picking different places to stop, each trip can be different, seeing something new.
From N Texas a two week trip could get you to the Pacific Northwest or New England, and back, if you didn't stop at any place interesting along the way. Four weeks could get you to Alaska and back. On the other hand, spending some time seeing things along the way, two weeks might be southern Colorado, southeast Utah, NW Arizona (all places I go to see geology, but you might not be interested in geology).
It comes down to what interests you, where you've been, what you still might want to see. My travel more recently has been escorted tours and river cruises, and I choose places I've never been. When my wife still lived, much of our travel was repeat visits to places she loved to visit, and some of it to places we had never been.
You need to first figure out what interests you, then you find the places that match that interest. For most people, that will involve new experiences, for others it is driven more by specific interests: historical museums, wineries, factory tours, automobile museums, horse races, rodeo circuit, auto races, flea markets, bluegrass festivals, and so on. I know people who just travel to go antiquing, others to music festivals.
One of the things I like to do when traveling in the U.S. is to pick one of the numbered US Highways and try to follow it end to end, or if I have a destination, follow it as much as possible to that destination. "Road Trip USA" (book or website) covers a few of the highways in this system, many of which are still important trunk routes in the big empty parts of the country where the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system is sparse. But this is a personal quirk.
