Wonderings on Wanderings: Traveling as Much as You Can!

I have finally submitted my second book draft for my publisher's return editorial evaluation. I now turn to writing about the quotable quotes from the book, some by anonymous people, others by famous greats, and the rest from me, and why they are part of the book. My next travel write-ups will be in March 2015 from Europe. This week’s quotes are from an anonymous source and a favorite on Facebook walls, the most famous quote by Mark Twain on travel, and one of my very own.

“Travel as much as you can, as far as you can, as long as you can. Life is not meant to be lived in one place.” This is so appropriate for the lifestyle we adopted, cruising in an RV. I bet you will never guess how much, how far and how long we have traveled nor how many places we have lived in.

Bill and I have traveled 30,000 miles in our two RVs put together. An additional 60,000 miles are in road trips in our first red and second tan Saturns. On our ten months in our first year we traveled all of 15,000 in our RV from the Arctic Circle in the Canadian Yukon to the Tropic of Cancer in Mexico to the Southernmost Point in Key West, Florida. In the next 32 months we went as far east as Nova Scotia in Canada to as far west as Homer in Alaska, traveling the balance of 15,000 mile with a three-month trip to Asia in the middle.

Star @ Dempster Highway
on the way to the Arctic Circle

Wherever the RV is parked, a campground, a friend’s driveway, or even a Walmart, is called home. I estimate that we have lived in over a hundred homes in those 42 months or an average of two weeks per home. That was really a lot!

Fall in Blaine, Washington

We are staying put now, months at a time in a resort. So that has changed. But this does not come as a surprise for I have been relatively mobile in the Philippines. In 54 years, I lived in 8 homes, an average of 6.75 years per home all in Metro Manila. Bill, on the other hand, had been even more mobile in America and lived in 18 homes in 64 years, an average of 3.5 years in seven states.

So the quotation is really appropriate for Bill and me. The question is: what is the benefit of being this mobile and living not just in one place?  The other famous quotation of Mark Twain, from Innocents Abroad comes to mind: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

I am not saying though that, since we have not been confined to one little corner of the earth, we do not have any prejudice. I know I still do but there are more and more previous beliefs I had that I no longer hold true as I traveled more and more, getting more varied perspectives in life. For example, I no longer believe that people with higher degrees are necessarily better than those without one. People's education come from more than just schools. A good home life is a greater influence, I think.

I do hope that there will come a time when I will have absolutely no more bigoted views. That is why we will not stop from all our wandering. Travel makes me open to learn, be moved, and change.