Have you ever taken a moment and truly thought about the reasons you choose to travel? Why you take certain routes, the Interstate vs back roads, weekend or weekday, warm or cold locations? Scott and I were discussing our thought process the other day, and I thought it might make for a good blog post to explore the reasons we travel and why we choose to do it Shanty style. These are my thoughts and opinions on this topic, and I am rarely an authority on any subject, so if you have any thoughts to share, please leave us a comment below.

A while back Scott actually talked about this on his photography blog called Why Rushing Hurts Your Photography Skills because these two mindsets really do determine much of how you see and do life itself. Ultimately, there is no “wrong” way to travel because it depends on so many things, and you have to adapt and adjust to your situation and circumstances.

Journey vs Destination Travel

The mindset behind travel today falls into two major categories, either it’s about the destination, or it’s about the journey.  Destination travel is primarily focused on arriving, and not much else. I am trying to get from point A to point B for reasons 1, 2, and 3. The other is exploration driven. Destination travel begins with a location in mind and a plan on how to get there. Journey travel takes more of a wanderlust approach in which the traveler goes from place to place with no particular itinerary or route in mind. There are positives and negatives to both of these two types of travel. These are distinctly different reasons for traveling, and so are the people who chose one over the other. Many times we attempt to combine the two reasons into one trip, often unsuccessfully. More on this later.

Destination Travel

Destination travel involves picking a destination, planning a route and potentially an itinerary, and then moving ourselves via some mode of transportation to that destination as quickly as possible.  Airline travel is a good example of this type of travel.

The benefits of this type of travel are that you are able to plan everything in advance, which is very efficient, pack accordingly for weather and activities, and prepare financially ahead of time for meals, lodging, etc.

The disadvantages of this type of travel are that there is no spontaneity, no freedom to roam, and outside pressure is sometimes applied by having to meet certain deadlines and participate in certain activities that were planned in advance. And often, it can also be a much more expensive way to travel.

Exploration Travel

The mindset of exploration or journey travel can still be a structured travel model if you choose it to be that way. You have a destination in mind, but it differs in the way that destination is reached. In this type of travel, you might pick a place you want to eventually end up, but you may not plan each day’s itinerary based on specific criteria. Instead, you would, for example, leave your front door and head towards your final destination with the idea that if you saw a sign for an interesting spot along the way you would stop and enjoy the place for what it offers (destination people may think of the dreaded historical marker signs).

These interesting spots can be anything from a natural wonder to an amusement park, or an abandoned welcome center like we found on our way home from our last trip to Florida.  The what does not matter, it is more about the freedom to explore and enjoy the journey.

There are so many benefits of exploration travel, and they expand as you allow them to. You will personally grow in the ability to let go of structure and rules, learn to have more patience, overcome fears, follow roads less traveled, and you will experience new things and places that you may have never seen in your lifetime had you not taken the exploration travel approach to your trip.

The disadvantages of this type of travel is that it may (probably will) take longer to get there, and it can be more stressful at first if you are a goal driven personality. It is mentally hard to let go of the end goal and just enjoy the journey. It is also not a travel model you would want to use if you were traveling to a date specific event, or wanted to spend the maximum amount of time at a specific place or with specific people. 

How Do You Travel?

The two types of travel mentioned here are not mutually exclusive. We all use both and sometimes on the same trip. The reason I wanted to talk a little about these two types of travel was to point out the differences and perhaps start a conversation about which is right for you more often than not.

A majority of travel today falls under the destination type of trip. For most people, the priorities are the job and the home life. For most, the time dedicated to travel presents itself in the form of a two-week vacation, a trip to see family for holidays, or some other goal oriented destination like attending an out-of-town sporting event. That almost eliminates the very possibility of exploring while traveling.

It is very rare today for people to have the opportunity, means, and time to make an exploration journey actually happen. If this is where you are settled and you are happy with this type of travel, then that is wonderful.  However, I suspect if you are reading this post, you are more drawn to the exploration model of travel and may be wondering how to make it happen for you.

Moving Towards a Journey

As you can tell from our website, our trips mostly fall under the exploration type, or at least we have tried our best to follow that model. It’s not perfect. The destination mindset has been drilled into us for a long time. But we are doing much better at this now than we have in the past. More often than not we are intentionally choosing to let go of the end goal-oriented way of thinking and focusing on the experience, the journey mindset over destination.

This takes a lot of work and constant focus on what is important and what is not. I will be exploring the things I mentioned in this post in deeper detail in future posts. There are so many rabbits to chase on this subject. For now, I will leave you with the above to consider next time you are preparing for a trip away from home.  Life is an adventure, enjoy the journey!