As 2022 comes to an end, it’s a good opportunity to set up new adventures for 2023. I thought I would share a few travel ideas and tips I’ve learned from talking with others and from my own experiences.
Choose a destination. This sounds simple but most of us have many places we have always wanted to visit, so deciding on a particular one for your next trip can be complicated. Are you traveling domestically or internationally? Are the countries you are hoping to visit welcoming people again or still have restrictions making travel more difficult, in which case a US trip might be better this year? In any case, you’ll need to find a good time of the year to visit, plan well in advance, decide if you will drive, or fly, rent a car, camp, or stay in hotels, cook or dine out. We’ll break some of these down in the following paragraphs to make planning more manageable.
Pick Your Season. If you have children in school, you may only be able to make excursions of a week or two in the summer months. If you don’t have those restrictions, you can plan trips year-round. In either case many travel destinations are best at a particular time of the year. When we did our trip to Death Valley a few years ago, we obviously looked at fall and winter months as any of the summer months would be unbearable in the heat. Unfortunately, we have a fire season in the western states now that starts earlier and earlier each year, so planning those trips can be a gamble anytime in the late summer through the fall. On a recent September trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton Parks we had smoke blow in for several days in a row obscuring the views. Maybe a spring trip to areas of the west might be better. Other spots, such as Glacier National Park, might have a very short season of only a couple of months mid-summer, so research your preferred destination and see when the best time is to visit.
Plan ahead. It's not too soon to be planning vacations and making travel plans for next summer and fall. Many companies and hotels offer special deals for certain times of the year, and if you have flexibility in your schedule, you may be able to take advantage of these deals and plan your excursion around that destination. When we make travel plans for a trip to a popular area, for instance, we realize that we just can’t wing it like we did ten years ago. Then we could travel to a place, stay a few extra days if we liked it, then move on. Now we must look at all our stops along the way and book the most difficult one to obtain and plan our trip around that. You can also save on rental car rates and airfares by booking well in advance.
Book as soon as you can. A couple of years ago we wanted to visit Capitol Reef National Park in Utah and Monument Valley in Arizona with a stop at Goblin Valley State Park in between. A little research showed that the hardest sites to reserve were not the two main attractions but rather Goblin Valley due to its limited number of sites and heavy demand. We had to plan our entire trip around campsite availability at Goblin Valley, so air fares, rental camper, other camping reservations all had to wait until the 6-month advance booking window opened for Goblin Valley. Once we reserved a spot there, which we did on the computer the very minute sites were available online, we booked the other places, along with airfare and rental vehicle. Similarly, where we camp along the coast of South Carolina, we must book a campsite 13 months in advance to get a spot that will suit our setup. If we miss that window, it is all but impossible to find a site. Look at booking windows for national park lodges and campgrounds, as they can range from 6 months to 13 months in advance and put those dates on your calendar.
Check back for Part 2, where I will share other travel ideas to help you plan a great vacation or weekend getaway!
