Casual Excursions
The world is an amazing place. And the fantastic thing is that you do not need to travel to famous landmarks or strange and exotic locations to experience interesting and wonderful things. You do not really need to fly in a balloon, climb a mountain, go white-water rafting, or take an ocean cruise to break the monotony of every-day life. Of course, we may dream of visiting such fabulous places and participating in such exciting activities and, with luck and good management, perhaps one day we will.
But, meanwhile,
some of life's greatest pleasures can be derived from casual excursions not too far from home. If we open our senses – I mean really open our senses and see and listen and smell and touch - there might be something quite special waiting an hour’s drive away or just up the street. Or even in your own backyard!
You might not be able to get to Paris, or London, or the Grand Canyon next weekend (unless you live near one of those places, of course), but you might be able to grab the kids and head of to the nearest National Park and go trekking through the bush for a bit. Even if the walking tracks are safe and well-defined and the chances of you meeting a tiger are pretty remote, you'll most probably come home feeling refreshed and perhaps just a little more at peace with the universe.
The Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art might be a little problematical for a Sunday afternoon outing, but you might find some hidden treasures in your local museum, even if it is only a tin shed staffed by volunteers from the local Historical Society.
This website features some of my own casual excursions. Many of these destinations are quite unlikely to ever make it into glossy tourist brochures or sophisticated travel websites. But they are worth seeing nonetheless.
Each one of these places has given me something valuable – peace, relaxation, enlightenment or just the pleasure one receives from experiencing something beautiful or inspiring even for just a few brief moments in time.
One of my primary motivations for building this website is to give some small, but richly deserved recognition to such special places.
Also, I've become increasingly interested in photography lately, and I recently purchased a fairly decent entry-level SLR Digital Camera. The quality of the photographs it produces is streets ahead of my old point-and-click compact digital and I'm really enthusiastic about increasing my photography skills over the coming months and years. Viewing the world through a camera viewfinder provides a whole new perspective. So, a second reason I started the site is to have a place to share some of my photographs in an enjoyable and constructive way.
And, last but not least, the very act of creating the site, along with the desire to keep adding to it, motivates me to get out and about and take more casual excursions than I would have otherwise. And I feel the better for it.
Anyway, I hope my little journeys will inspire you to take a few more casual excursions of your own.
Recent Casual Excursions
- This site is brand new and I am still writing up the first excursions to be featured here. More excursions will be added very soon!
