There is one thing that is certain in life, and that is you never know where journey will take you. You can make complete and concise plans and as soon as you step out the door to begin your trip you are at the mercy of chance and in my case the weather. My wife Connie and I just got back from a road trip to Utah. We have been talking about taking a trip like this for the last few years. COVID-19 definitely put a damper on our plans. Thank God the craziness that surrounded us the last few years is mostly at an end. You can still see the vestiges of this craziness, when you see young anf healthy people wearing masks outdoors. Get real guys these masks do nothing to stop the virus.
Since we travel was limited do to the pandemic restrictions, we have been watching a lot of You Tube videos on travel and have basically been living vicariously through other people’s lives. I have become a bit of an addict of these videos. It is amazing just how much information is out there. I found it quite helpful in planning out our most recent trip. As a matter of fact it was the first time that I have used it as a planning tool for travel. It was so helpful in this trip, that I am certain that it will play a major part in all of our future travel plans. I found it helpful in all the stages of the planning, from the initial destination stage, where you decide on where you want to go, to helping you decide on what you need to bring on the trip.
We even met a young You Tube couple on the trip in Goblin State Park in Utah, where we enjoyed a very illuminating conversation with them. However all this media coverage from You Tube, Facebook, Instagram and even Pinterest has caused many of our travel destinations to become very congested. As a matter of fact a couple of our main bucket list destinations like Machu Picchu have been taken off the list, due to the incredible crowds and the actions taken by these locations to control the crowds. My wife and I don’t mind crowds, but what we do mind is crazy limitations being set on our travel plans by bureaucratic procedures. In the case of Machu Picchu, they should have just restricted the number of people allowed to visit the temples. Instead they got greedy and restricted the amount of time you can spend at the sites and have made it impossible to get really good photos. Another attraction that has put profit before travel enjoyment is the Grand Canyon Skywalk. When it first opened up, the ticket price was in excess of a $100 per person. I just checked the internet and the price has dropped to $64. I don’t mind the price too much, what I do mind is that they won’t let you take photos of your experience. I have included a statement from the website, stating their reasoning. Of course it is utter BS. “To protect the glass paneling from scratches, personal items including cameras and cell phones are not allowed on the Skywalk, but you can purchase a souvenir photo from a professional photographer.” What a crock of shit. I have been a photographer for close to forty years, even a professional wedding photographer for several of those years, and your telling me that I can’t be trusted to not drop my camera on there glass walkway? In this case it is only greed that is guiding their actions.
There are countless examples of this type of behavior going on in the more popular travel destinations. You Tube is a great tool in helping you avoid these scams and tourist traps. However, they are a double edged sword, in that not only do they provide valuable information they also increase the traffic flow to these sites. Case in point Arches National Park in Utah and their most popular site, Delicate Arch. It is so poplar that Utah has even used an image of the arch on their license plate. The first time I went to Arches NP was over 15 years ago. While the park was still crowded, I did not have any problem finding a parking spot at the trail head to this arch.
This time I was not so lucky, as a matter of fact we were not able to even do the hike in the time that we had allotted to do it. While it was irritating that we couldn’t do the hike , it was not that great of a disappointment, we after all had both done the hike and had seen the arch already.
You may ask why I have shared these anecdotes with you? Well, they are the whole crux of this chapter, which is setting reasonable goals. Even though we had spent a lot of time planning for this trip, circumstances beyond our control got in our way of completing our to do list. So when you set your goals on your trip you have to take in account the increased crowds that are now a fact of life. You may even have to change your destination plans to a less popular destination and therefore less crowded. In our case Capitol Reef National Park, where we spent three days and nights in camp site in the park. By the way, the camp site in Arches NP was all booked up, which necessitated us to camp outside the park and thus required a more lengthy travel time to and from the park.
It easy to set a list of goals for your trip, but are they really attainable? In chapter 8 I will spend more time discussing these issues. One tool I use when planning my trips and setting goals is to make three lists. The first one is the absolutely must do things, the second one is the I would really like to do things, but I won’t die if they can’t be done or seen, and the third list is the gravy list, which includes things that would be nice but no “biggy” if we can’t get to them. This helps to make the trip more manageable and set clear priorities. A few years ago Connie an I visited her family in the Philippines. We allotted two and a half weeks for Philippine Island portion of the trip. Even though I knew travel was a lot slower there than in the US, I was not prepared to how slow they actually are. There is one hub for air travel and that is Manila. We will call Manila letter “A”, my wife’s home town Is Davao City which will be “B”, and one of our destinations was Puerto Princesa or “C”. Now you can’t go from “A” to “B” to “C”. You have to go from “A” to “B”, “B” to “A” and “A” to “C”. You also have to allow at least 4 to 5 hours at the airport for connecting flights, because most of the flights are late, so if you have connecting flights too close, you most likely will miss your next flight. We actually never scheduled a connecting flight on the same day.
Road travel is excruciatingly slow. It took us six hours to go 30 miles in Manila. While these are extreme examples, they are not uncommon in third world countries, so you have to plan for them. You also need to plan on being patient. If patience is not a strength of yours, maybe choose a destination in the USA.