Looking for a better way to travel? Slow travel is about connecting with people and places and taking a smaller environmental footstep.
Have you waited in line to see the Mona Lisa? Have you stood with all the other tourists pretending to hold up the tower of Pisa? Driven for hours to get to San Francisco? Or pretended to sleep on an airplane while your legs scream to stretch?
A meaningful vacation isn’t about fancy hotels or putting a checkmark next to all the sights in the tour guide. When you think about vacations you went on 10 years ago, what do you remember? What stories do you tell?
–> Most of our stories are about the people we traveled with and our conversations with locals.
This isn’t surprising. As much as we are sold things like perfectly plated meals, cocktails with a view, and beautiful streets, our brains are wired for social connection.
What is slow travel?
When I first came up with the idea of writing about slow travel, I looked up what it meant and found a lot of nebulous information about taking the time to be intentional in your travel. I went to 4 or 5 websites and really didn’t get a good idea of what slow travel is… most sites talk about what it isn’t… and it isn’t a series of Instagram-worthy photos.
Here’s what I think slow travel is:
- Minimal Travel: staying in one place for a week or more, so you really get a feel for it
- Social: connecting with family, friends, or other travelers
- Cultural: Avoid chains in favor of local retailers and choose a variety of sights, not just those that appear in the tour guide. If you get the chance, ask a local what there is to do. You may discover that a trip to Government House is actually a lot more pleasant than Bouchart Gardens.
- Slow Transportation: I think slow transportation is a BIG part of slow travel. When you travel by bicycle instead of driving, you get an in-depth experience of where you are. This is also true for hiking, kayaking, and all self-propelled travel. Instead of focusing on the destination, you get to focus on the journey.
Why we love slow travel
Every year we sit down as a family and decide what we want to do for our family vacation. There are always some trips to visit family. But once the kids were old enough, we brought them into the discussion of what else we wanted to do for our vacation.
–> I highly recommend including your kids in travel planning once they become tweens and teens. There’s no point dragging a grumpy teen on holiday with you. It’s a waste of money and doesn’t help build family connections.
Our kids nearly always choose to do a local cycling or hiking trip. (Una also likes downhill skiing. Max would like to go to Iceland or Eastern Europe. Only one of those options is easy and affordable from the PNW).
Here’s why we like slow travel:
- No car travel: It doesn’t matter if you listen to music and have air conditioning, car travel is hard on active children. They don’t want to be trapped in an enclosed space for more than 30 minutes (let alone the 18 hours it takes to drive down to San Fran). Some of us get carsick and there are not enough stops to make a 5 hour drive feel fun.
- Carbon-free and happy: Climate anxiety is something that bothers me, so skipping carbon-based travel makes vacations happier!
- Accomplishment: Who doesn’t love a sense of accomplishment? When you travel slow, you get to feel like you’ve accomplished something every day. In fact, we usually break up our travel days into 3 or 4 chunks, so we have a sense of accomplishment every few hours!
- More to see: When you go by car you get to stop at the gas stations and restaurants. When doing human-powered travel, you can stop and enjoy the scenery whenever you want.
- Exercise: This probably should be #2 on the list, because it’s definitely what makes my kids happy travellers. Not only are they benefiting from the endorphins and accomplishment of exercise, but they don’t have time to think about how they’d rather be in front of a screen. 😉 Exercise isn’t just good for teens, it’s linked to happiness in every age group.
- Food: Who wouldn’t want to power their transportation with croissants and ice cream? When you burn a lot of calories you get to eat more food!
- Cost: Probably most people lean into slow travel to save on costs. It is cheaper to do house exchanges and stay somewhere for a few weeks. If you already own bikes or backpacking gear then hiking and cycling are nearly free!
Staying Local: The Vancouver Island Trail
We are lucky to have so many beautiful biking and hiking destinations in our region. I particularly want to mention The Vancouver Island Trail, which goes the entire length of the Island, over 800 km.
Hiking
Hiking on Vancouver Island definitely requires camping. The distances are too far otherwise. So fill your pack with lightweight meals (like my instant cream of mushroom soup and lentil soup) and focus on the restaurant at the end of the path.
Biking
Cycling on the Vancouver Island Trail doesn’t necessarily require camping as you can often bike from town to town. (For the portion we cycled, we occasionally left the trail to stay in nearby towns, but were able to keep the distances to less than 50 km/day.)
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