Featured Image: (From left to right) JourneyWoman webmistress Melissa, publisher Carolyn, and editor Amanda are gearing up for #TravelatHome road trips across Ontario to seek out the Unknown. Even the clouds seem to be happy! 

Finally, we can travel at home

by Carolyn Ray, JourneyWoman

Grounded from travel as we’ve been for months, many of us are feeling restless. Cranky. Bored. Annoyed. I’m with you. Having my international travel plans cancelled and restricted makes me feel powerless. In limbo. Stifled.

A few weeks ago, I was commiserating to my friend JourneyWoman editor Amanda Burgess about all my travel plans for the summer. I love planning trips, often spending months researching, reading books, watching movies – so that by the time I go to a destination, I know its history, best places to stay and eat, and have plans to connect with local experts. When I reflect on 2019, I was rarely home. Instead, I was in places like Puerto Rico, New York, Florida, Cuba, Oregon, Quebec, British Columbia, and California.

But planning and research is a skill. I can still practice that close to home. In fact, some might say there are more resources than ever to learn about a place, its history and its culture. Why not take advantage of that?

Safety criteria has changed

There is no question that travel is going to be different than it was before the pandemic. We are dealing with many complexities, both known and unknown. Information changes almost daily.

This means that the way we travel – how we evaluate destinations, accommodations, transportation and healthcare is going to be profoundly different. So, I thought, why not use this limbo time to try out new travel criteria and see what’s working and what’s not?

In our recent survey, Embracing the Unknown: The Risk and Reward of Travel, you told us that you’ll use different criteria to evaluate the risk of travel. Risk is the possibility of danger or loss. Recently, my friend Kelly Peters, a behavioural scientist, took the time to explain risk to me. If we know the exact outcome, there’s no risk. But if the path is unknown due to its complexity, it creates uncertainty. Kelly says there are three dimensions of risk: the nature of the risk (is it unknowable or knowable?); our perception of risk (how good are we at evaluating risk, based on our experience); and third, how confident are we in our ability to withstand risk (in other words, the consequences of our decisions). Sometimes we can be held back by our own fears if we don’t properly understand risk. We can overestimate it, or underestimate it.

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

We’re Going on a Road Trip to Embrace the Unknown

In July, as most of Ontario enters Stage 3, your JourneyWoman team (Amanda, Melissa and I) are hitting the road – solo, with each other and with a partner (our close friends or daughters). We’re using this opportunity to evaluate sites and experiences under the lens of new safety criteria that we’re developing for you – including appeal, cleanliness, trust, transportation, healthcare  – and tell you the TRUTH about what we’re experiencing.

Who better than the JourneyWomen you know and love to help assess the uncertainty of travel, design our own travel experiences, and report back to you so you can feel inspired and empowered to do the same, when it’s safe in your region to do so?

Over the next two months, you’re going to see us exploring a range of places that are both new to us and off the beaten track. New destinations: Small towns, within a four-hour drive of home. Unique accommodations: A houseboat, cabin in the woods, teepeei, farm, yurt, Airstream, glamping, camping, and a treehouse. We’re aiming to show you that while international travel may be delayed for many of us, adventures can be found in our own backyards.

We’ll be taking a hard look at safety, social distancing and hygiene: Are proper safety precautions being put into place by boutique hotels, at Airbnbs? What do we need to pack to travel safely? What happens when we observe breaches of protocol? Who can we trust to give us accurate information? How do we know things are being done to keep us safe?

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