3 Reasons Why You Don't Travel

By: Randy Scott
Published May 4th, 2019

“Travel is the only thing you spend money on that makes you richer.”

Have you ever planned a road trip or a flight for a much-needed vacation and ended up never going? We have all fallen victim to this. We get excited, search online for the best destination, plan every detail down to how many gallons of gas we’ll buy – and then life happens. At BestofTheInterstate.com and AmericasRoadTrip.com, we have been thinking about this problem and broken it down into ‘3 Reasons Why’ we all get a little intimidated by travel.

Choosing Destinations

It’s far too easy now with the internet and countless travel sites to search for destinations that are far away.

When it comes to choosing a destination, we tend to choose “exotic” locations that make our Facebook friends jealous. In reality, there are destinations within 50 miles of where you live that you could go to see that would be considered far away to someone else that is 500 miles away. This same scenario goes for that person that is 500 miles away from you. Somewhere “common” to you may seem exotic or foreign to them.

The point is, to travel and get away doesn’t always mean planning the furthest destination you can find.

Homework: Do a simple online search for tourist destinations within 50 miles of your location and we promise that you’ll be surprised. Another cool search that you can try is for historical markers near you (Tip: This can make for a great educational trip for youngsters!). Once you arrive, you can also repeat this search and see if there’s anything else nearby that you can go to before you must return home.

Over Planning

While the Internet can be helpful to find nearby destinations, it can also prevent you from going on the trip in the first place. How? Type, “Best Travel Destinations” into your search engine. For me, Google came up with over 655 million different answers. This can be overwhelming. One helpful way of dealing with this is to choose a few places you’d like to visit, and maybe choose a destination based on price of flights/transportation there.

TIP! If you’re going on a road trip that is over 500 miles, it may be worth it to rent a vehicle. Renting vehicles can save wear and tear on your own vehicle and get you better gas mileage.

Doing some light research on the area that you are planning to visit is a good idea, but don’t focus too much on planning every single day down to the minute. This can lead to stress to follow your itinerary and keep you from fully appreciating your vacation.

While searching for businesses to feature on BestofTheInterstate.com, we don’t rely on one book or review websites to tell us which businesses to seek out – We rely on our network of travel enthusiast that report back to us and traveling ourselves. We get off on Interstate exits that we normally wouldn’t get off on.

Try this sometime: The blue signs that you see on the Interstate are heavily regulated and are difficult for small businesses to get on. Using BestofTheInterstate.com shows you all kinds of businesses including small town and local businesses, and educates you on some businesses you might otherwise never hear of and just pass by!

Fear of Travel

With constant depressing and shocking headlines from news organizations and online publications, finding yourself discouraged to travel is easy. Just remember:

For every bad story that you read or hear about, there are literally millions of good ones that surround it.

While you should always be aware of your surroundings and understand that some places may be more high risk than others (regarding political/military climates), fear of the unknown should never be the reason you choose to stay home.

Traveling can do wonders to alleviate stress and help get a break from your daily routines. No matter if you’re wanting to travel 5,000 miles or 50 miles – it’s all about seeing new things, meeting new people, and rejuvenating your spirit.