The Case for Travel GuideBooks
So I just ordered a slew of travel guidebooks in preparation for my trip- and just got 6 of the 7 of them delivered today. I love Amazon Prime. I debated on whether to get guidebooks at all, or not- and it turns out, in the larger travel community, there are, apparently, two schools of thought on this.
The first school of thought says guidebooks are your friend. They are a good way to quickly tune into what's most important about a place and make sure you see everything you should see. I can see merit in this approach- I generally plan ahead and wouldn't want to miss anything important.
The second school of thought says guidebooks should be avoided at all costs. If you're just out there to experience your trip, you just do it. I think the idea here is that you don't want to be overprescribed or just doing things by rote. I understand this too.
But, for my trip, I went ahead and purchased a bunch of guidebooks: Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Washington State, Idaho, Montana & Wyoming, and California. I chose to do this for 2 main reasons:
- I wanted to get kind of an overview of what all there is to see in each place- it will help me make more informed choices along the way
- I wanted to be sure I didn't miss anything I would regret not seeing while I was there. In this situation, ignorance would not be bliss.
In terms of using the guidebooks, I'm planning to use them to build what I call a "general + gentle" itinerary. To my way of thinking, this means I'll use them to fill out the general structure of my travels, but then leave the specifics and details more up to the moment- feeling free to make changes along the way. It makes me feel good to be sure I see some things I definitely want to see, and I am also excited about leaving some open space and letting Life fill in the details just right.
I'm excited to take the books home this weekend and start going through them. I know I'm going to Colorado first, and Utah next, so I'm basically going to start with those two. Since I'll be circling back to Colorado a few times on my trip (Denver is going to be sort of "home-base" while I'm out West), I plan to see a few things in Colorado each time I'm in town, and then travel out of state to see some of the other places on my list.
It's really intriguing to me to be thinking of living a less structured and more open-ended life while traveling. I'm also excited to see how many fantastic and cool places I might possibly visit.To that end, I also picked up a copy of 1,000 places to visit before you die- going to see how many I can check off on this trip (generally and gently of course! :)
I've got my windshield repair appointment set up for next week, and will be picking up maps for my trip sometime in the next few days as well. So the planning is moving forward!
