Living life as a tourist I felt a real change in myself this week. Its a change Ive read about happening in some of the travel blogs I have followed, only they usually talk about it happening after a year of travel. Yet it happened to me now after about three months. To explain what happened, Im going to share a story that happened to me when I was 12 and we were visiting Niagra falls. We were just pulling into a gas station or something like that and I overheard my Dad talking with a middle-aged man who had lived there his entire life and had never, not once, gone to see the falls at night when they do their spectacular light displays. In fact, he had never been to the falls at all if I remember correctly. My Dad made some comment about how he knew a lot of people in Utah that had never swam in the Great Salt Lake, never visited Temple Square, or had never visited the National Parks Utah has to offer. People come from ALL OVER THE WORLD to see these places, yet the locals often never go. My parents talked to us about it, and growing up, Im grateful that they often took the time to take us to local attractions, things like the free museum in our home-town, hiking in the local mountains, and yes, swimming in the Great Salt Lake. Ive done that with my own kids too. No matter where you live, and how stationary your home is or isnt, one can always try to live as a tourist by simply getting out of ones shell when they have the opportunity. But this post isnt about that, really. Its about the flip side of the coin. It takes a truly wealthy person to always live like they are on vacation. People who travel to Niagra Falls during their time off will most certainly be seeing the falls, maybe riding the touristy boats under the falls, getting the T-shirt, and jam-packing as many wonderful, touristy activities as their stay will allow. I know when my parents took me back east on that trip when I was 12, we did a myriad of activities. Every day we were either driving or seeing something new and wonderful. It was an amazing, life-changing trip for me. Something my parents planned for, saved for, prepared for, and dreamed of, for them and us. There was even a touch of business thrown in to make it more affordable. Thats how these things usually are done, how they should be done. So heres the question: How many people who live in Niagara Falls go during a busy week like that? If they do go to the falls, they probably didnt plan their visit out for months in advance. They are less likely to buy the T-shirt too. Its something they will do on a weekend, or maybe theyll go with their local play group. They are also less likely to go if they have a looming work deadline ahead of them. The waterfall has been there for hundreds of years, after all, and the opportunity to visit wont go away any time soon. Theres a big difference between the local visitor and the traveling visitor. And that quintessential difference just happens in time for full-timing families. They say the first year, you want to go everywhere, to see everything, and soak it all in. The second year you slow down, and by the third year, you feel more like a local. But theyre the kind of local person that wouldnt spend their whole life living in Niagra Falls without seeing what the whole hullabaloo was about. Of course theyre going to see what their local area has to offer if they can and as money permits, but there comes a point where you settle in to your new life too. That happened for me this last week. Here I am near touristy San Diego, and I had a fairly big list of things I wanted to do here in my head. Well, my husband had a meeting in town and I took it upon myself to take the kids to do something fun. In the end, our navigation system wasnt working as well as I would have liked, and we only drove around town. We saw the skyscrapers up close and drove over a neat bridge over the water, but we also wound up in shadier a part of town and drove under a bridge where we saw homeless tarps set up. It was really an eye opener for the children. For me too. They talk about it a lot and I dont have good answers for their questions aside from the fact that life isnt always fair. And that was our big touristy day in San Diego- that and a lot of driving while Mommy tried to figure out where she was on the map. Later this week I felt a strong urge to really button down the hatches and catch up on our schooling. Well, not catch up as much as get back into a routine. I also have a business to build and I was able to get some good work done on that. The kids did a few lessons in their math book, they read a few chapter books, and our neighbors even noticed that we didnt go anywhere one of the days. We didnt. We didnt even walk to the playground, we stayed inside all day long on a beautiful day, just like we did when we were in a sticks-and-bricks home. We were very productive that day. Because life doesnt stop happening just because you live in an RV, and there is work that has to be done. I always knew that this would be how full-time-RVing would ultimately be. Full-timing it sounds so exotic, but in the end it is remarkably similar to living in a stick-and-bricks home. People think it would make a great reality TV show, but in the idea usually gets scrapped. So while San Diego has a lot to offer, its not going anywhere, and Ill probably visit again some time. If I dont see the lighthouse state park, there could be another time, yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubt I shall ever come back. Not under the same circumstances. This week I realized that during our travels, we might go to a famous city and spend the entire time working on a big deadline, only to move on. And I am okay with that. I mean, of course I would be because thats life, but the old me would have had an agenda, would have a list of things to do and feel disappointed when it didnt happen. Now Im expecting it to happen more often than not. We also might end up in a random town no one has ever heard of and have the best traveling experience one could hope for. I expect experiences like that too, and I look forward to them. As our journey and time in an RV proceeds, I want to live my life as a tourist. The same kind of tourist I was when I lived in Logan and our family decided to take a walk on USU campus to see the statues, or go on a nature walk up by first dam, but not if the weather was too cold or the laundry needed to be done. Unless we needed to get out, in which case we went anyway and somehow caught up later. We did what we needed to, when we needed to, both in work and play. THAT is the kind of tourist I want to be. Im not on vacation, this is my new life. Its not that different from my old life, really. Even so, I feel like Im beginning to change this week.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 09:20:04 +0000
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