I landed back on American soil last September and until now it hasn’t happened. If you’ve had the symptoms then you already know what I am talking about. Loosing sleep, sleeping to much, weight gain, weight loss, constantly being distracted, lack of focus… it’s the itch. Not just AN itch but THE itch! It’s now January and I’ve done what some people would categorize as traveling (Louisiana and Texas for Christmas) but to me that definitely is not traveling. I don’t consider it traveling unless your passport was stamped. That means if you go to mexico from America… and your passport didn’t get stamped… then you didn’t really travel out of the country.
Since I haven’t been traveling, which I never travel during this time anyway, my girlfriend and I have been spending time watching National Geographic documentaries on NG Explorers. And while watching these videos we sit lethargically on the couch dreaming of being these people. To us these are no ordinary people. I mean National Geographic doesn’t just foot your traveling bill because you have a cute smile. Trust me, if they did then they would have sponsored me a long time ago… since… I’m so ridiculously good looking and now that I have a super ridiculously good looking girlfriend then they’d HAVE to sponsor me… IF that’s how it worked…but… unfortunately for us that is NOT how it works. To get sponsored by them you have to be way more than awesome and have a few letters before and after your name. Not ordinary letters but letters like MA and PHD and maybe PHDx2 or something like that. So… in the meantime… the super ridiculously good looking girlfriend and me have decided to plan out our next adventure for spring break.
So… to plan this out we first decided on a destination. I will be announcing said destination later because this blog is more focused on planning your trip and I want YOU to know how I plan and organize my trips! First, as said before, find a destination. When you’ve done that you want to do as much research as possible without over researching yourself. ya… have fun figuring out how much that is seeing that it is different for everybody. For example… my dad will research to no end. He will have photos of the places we’re going and will know every web based speck of information read about his destination. He’s very good at that and I believe that’s where I get it from as I can do the same thing but over the years of my travel I have come to realize that if you OVER-research then you can easily kill the entire event because when you arrive you already know everything which means there’s no feeling of exploration.
Just to let you know, after I find my destination I will roughly map my route and decide on a few towns in which to stop. From there I go to wiki travel and type in the country that I am going to. I will print out the entire article. From there I find and print out each city as well. After I am done with that I will go to state travel warnings page. Here is an example of Haiti’s State Travel Warning Page. This isn’t where I am going but this is an example. I will print the travel warnings off as well. From here I take a trip to Target! I purchase a 1″ three ring binder, sheet protectors, a small notebook, and post it tabs. The reason I use post it tabs is because regular dividers don’t work well with sheet protectors and post it tabs easily stick to the end of a sheet protector to make dividers. It works really well and it took me a few summer trips to figure that out soooo you’re welcome!
Once you have all of that together you will make your own outline of your trip. Later on I’ll write a blog on the power point in which I prepare for each of my explorations as well but for now know that every trip I take has a one inch binder prepared for it before hand. Also know that this is a really awesome idea as far as being able to tell other people about your trip later on. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve pulled out my binders to show people where I went. At the very back of the binder i place all of my receipts from any purchase I make for the trip. Inside the small notebook I keep records of every penny that is spent on each trip that way I can always show people how much… or how little… it costs to travel!