Why We Travel

Many of my travel experiences have been for gymnastics competitions. I have traveled to Florida, Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Long Beach for gymnastics competitions. The competition was the main focus of these trips, but once I was finished with my gymnastics meet I was free to explore. Unfortunately, my Hawaii meet was held in February so I was only able to stay for five days because I had to return to school. The Florida meet was held in June so I stayed for ten days and had plenty of time to play. Now that I am finished with my competitive gymnastics career, I hope to travel more for pleasure. I have just returned from Disneyland where I went to have fun and act like a kid again. This trip was to be relaxing, but how relaxed can you be when you are standing among thousands of other people who are in such a rush. I made the best of this trip and enjoyed being with the friends I went with and making memories with them. I have family in England and my sister and I hope to go visit them soon. My family enjoys camping and on weekends we can be found sitting by a campfire at various local camping sites. I enjoy traveling and exploring new places. Having fun and experiencing new things is what makes traveling interesting for me. Pico Ayer said, “We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate,” this will now become my main focus when I travel.

The most unexpected event that happened to me while traveling was when I saw bears in Yosemite up close. Even though I know bears do live in Yosemite, I was quite surprised to see so many so close. The bears entered into our campsite every night even when we were sitting by a campfire. Before nightfall we would make sure our site did not have any food outside of our storage box, but a bear managed to find the one piece of bread that happened to get left on our barbeque. One night we left a single slice of bread on our barbeque and a bear knocked it over to get it. It was amazing that a bear could smell bread and knew how to get what he wanted. This experience was scary because I was asleep and was awaken up by the noise of our barbeque hitting the dirt. Yosemite belongs to the people during the day, but at night it belongs to the animals that come out at dark.

I do think that the idea of rescuing the humanity of places, and saving them from abstraction and ideology does apply to my own experience with the bears and the unbelievable sights in Yosemite. The fact that we accidentally left food out was not smart, but we caused no major harm to the bears or to people. This experience taught me that we may be able to view and partake with nature, but we do need to be very careful with our actions.

While we were camping in Yosemite, we made sure not to harm any wildlife or destroy any items of nature. We choose to take in the beauty around us and slow down time to truly appreciate what we saw. We traveled to this valley to help keep ourselves in tune with nature. My parents made sure to take us off the beaten path, the path that the tourists do not use. We explored and found areas not known by many people. We came away with such special memories that will preserve in our minds forever. I came away with a new respect for nature and how much we can learn if we slow down and relax.

I had to think if anonymity is an important part of the travel experience. If the travel experience is to meet family or spend time with family, then anonymity is not an important part. This type of travel experience is to meet people, spend time with them, and let them get to know who you are. You do not want to spend time by yourself, but you want to mingle with your family and make special memories. If the travel experience is for rest and relaxation, then anonymity is an important part. This type of travel experience is to be unknown to the world around you. You want to get away from the stress that surrounds you and pretend that you are the only one in the world. You want to hang out and enjoy yourself while doing whatever you want.