What Fuels Your Drive for Adventure?

What's the dumbest thing you've done while traveling?

While exchanging travel stories with a coworker, I was asked this very interesting question. No doubt that this question was subjective. It caused one of those moments where it seems as if time stops as you play through all of the memories in your head.

Was it the time that we decided to kayak out to an island many miles offshore in choppy water against the advice of practically everyone? Or the time that we ran out of gas and got stranded in the middle of nowhere in Alaska?

I replayed running through the airport in Rome as a gate agent frantically almost rushed us onto the wrong flight after a last minute gate change. That surely would have been dumb.

One thing I do know is that it wasn't the time that we slept on several feet of snow in the Tetons with no sleeping pads, sharing body warmth in a single sleeping bag. Our lack of frostbite solidifies that was an excellent idea.

I couldn't think of an answer right on the spot, but what I did decide right then and there was that out of all the things that could be perceived as "dumb," I would NOT change one bit of it.

Part of the Adventure

You are probably thinking, how is running out of gas in the middle of nowhere not a dumb thing to do? The answer is quite simple; I not only learned from it, but I made memories from it. That is the case for each and every experience that I have ever had while traveling, and that is the beauty of it. These are the memories that I still talk about to this day more than almost any other event from those trips.

Our story begins in 2014 when we took a road-trip to Tennessee. We spent a week in the Gatlinburg area hiking and relaxing with our best friends. That week was great, and it naturally left us wanting more adventure. That very next summer we made a direct plunge into a California adventure that would take us through about 1,500 miles of the beautiful state in a week.

It it safe to say that from there the travel bug was in full swing. We have proceeded to travel through roughly 30 states and 8 countries in the span of about a year and a half. Between air and ground travel, we have traveled well over 50,000 miles together with no end in sight.

What Fuels your Drive?

The experiences that we have had together has brought us closer together on so many levels. We grew not only in our travel knowledge together, but in our general knowledge of the world and culture. We have met people along the way that will never be forgotten for long as I live.

Looking back on a memory and thinking about a certain situation is invaluable. I would have never been given these opportunities sitting at home on the couch. Some of these moments may sound "dumb" to some, but to me those are the memories that will last a lifetime.

I may be young, but if I could give anyone advice in life right now, it would be to travel at every opportunity. Travel to a place you never considered you would go and try something new. Eat a crazy dish. Get out of your comfort zone. Don't let things like costs or time stop you from experiencing. If you want something bad enough you will do anything to make it happen. You can never calculate every event or guess who you will meet. And that is the best part.

That pursuit of the unknown is what fuels my drive for adventure. There is a Prime Adventure out there for everyone and only you can take the initiative to find it.