Travel Resolutions for 2020

My top 13 personal 2020 travel resolutions - or, as someone coined - "travelutions" - include:

1. Regular carV practice in Chez Prius before the big road trip to Alaska
2. Road trip to Alaska
3. Road trip with my mother
4. Loose ends closure: New Mexico: A hike in the Bisti Wilderness
5. Loose ends closure: Drive to the southern end of Highway 1 in Louisiana
6. Indirectly related to travel: When I leave Tucson, I will have slashed my inventory of belongings to the point where I can carV in Chez Prius as I migrate on the way to whereversville
7. A second trip to Nogales
8. A trip to Yuma, forever riveted into my brain with The Devil's Highway
9. A trip to San Luis Rio Colorado, MX, which is just south of Yuma
10. A trip to Naco, Sonora, MX, which is south of Bisbee
11. A trip to Agua Prieta, Sonora, MX, also south of Bisbee
12. While still in Arizona, push out of my comfort zone by staying solo on public lands
13. Push out of my comfort zone by hiking solo more often

Below are past travel resolutions, which continue to be relevant today. I've looked at more recent lists, but they generally repeat the content of previous years' lists. This is because the best resolutions are timeless best practices not only for travel, but for daily life.

• 2015
• 2014
• 2013

Travel Resolutions for 2015

Highway 3, New Mexico

Here is my tiny round-up of travel resolutions for 2013. Salt plays a prominent role.

An even tinier round-up of travel resolutions for 2014 is here. Greg Kohl's list remains solid.

A common theme for 2015 travel resolutions is to unplug. As is local travel, a model I've long espoused.

I especially like two of Pauline Frommer's 2015 resolutions: 

1. Connect with some of her social media's "friends of friends" on her travels - what a keen idea to arrange a meet-up with someone who is a stranger to you, but with whom you share a friend! 
2. Use an outlet multiplier at public venues so nearby strangers can still get plugged in. Open source in a  literal way - love it.

I also favored two of Wanderlust's resolutions for 2015: 

1. Remember to look up. The Wanderlust author refers to the heavens, and I agree. Looking up also applies to treetops, surrounding hills, ceilings, and rooftops. 
2. Call on local guides to get more local back-story. I have smiling memories of a local guide in Harar, Ethiopia, who took me to see the hyenas.  

After dipping in and out of dozens of lists, what I've got above is the best of the lot.

2014 Travel Resolutions

Columbus, NM, and Las Palomas, Chihuahua, border.

Last year

I did a round-up of some online travel resolutions for 2013 here.

The CNN (on choices), the Travel Troubleshooter's "Don't Be A Jerk", and Arthur Frommer's lists are still good today.


For 2014

Geoff Kohl's list, 8 Travel Resolutions for 2014, speaks to quality and personal expansion. I'm a proponent of local travel, both in attitude and in action, and so is he. His is a list almost anyone can implement regardless of disposable income or time.

..... and after some time searching for other worthy resolutions lists .... the one new list above does it up just fine for this year.

Travel Resolutions for 2013

Lonely Planet has weighed in here [2020 update: Thanks to the Wayback Machine for revivifying this defunct link.] with staff lists of where they intend to go in 2013.

Salt flats, Bolivia. Credit: Best Travel Places

Sidebar: Reading about one staffer's desire to enter a new continent, with a photo of Bolivia's salt flats, made me wonder about an itinerary, executed over the course of several years or so, based on salt.

I like salt. It's necessary for one's survival, and has been demonized unfairly by so-called advanced medical experts. It figures prominently in local histories.

In a favorite book of mine, Alas, Babylon, there comes a time when the survivors of an apocalypse have a desperate need for salt, which prompts the search for same.

Salt Flats, Texas

I've already been to the site of a war over salt (and other things) - Salt Flats, Texas. 

The movie, The Wind Journeys, showed spectacular scenes of the salt mines in Colombia.

]

But I digress. 


Back to travel resolutions for 2013.

CNN offers a list of 2013 travel resolutions that isn't about specific destinations, but about choices and planning. I like it.

The "Travel Troubleshooter" offers one 2013 resolution for us to consider: Don't Be A Jerk.

Arthur Frommer [2020 update: Thanks to the Wayback Machine for revivifying this defunct link.] offers a thoughtful list of 2013 travel resolutions. I like it so much, here it is in full:

"At the end of last year, I hastily scribbled a list of 18 New Year's resolutions for travel in 2012, realizing as I did so that I was including too many marginal and minor ones. I have since pared down the list to 12 important rules for the year ahead, which I genuinely believe reflect important and realistic suggestions. Here they are:

1. I will be courteous and respectful to airport and airline personnel and members of the TSA; they work under stressful conditions, and deserve our smiles and understanding.
2. I will constantly remind myself of the moral obligation to leave a generous daily tip to the housekeepers who have made up my hotel room -- theirs is an underpaid profession, and we should supplement the measly wages of the hotel chains.
3. I will avoid traveling on airlines that delight in public-be-damned attitudes, the companies that exult in an openly-expressed disdain for the traveler.
4. On my very next flight, I will politely ask permission of the person sitting behind me to recline my seat.
5. I will stop burying my head in a newspaper or book, and converse with the airline passenger sitting beside me, if they have indicated a desire to talk.
6. I will continue to argue for high-speed rail -- either in journalism or meetings -- to make a case for a technology so urgently needed in a nation that will soon have 400,000,000 people, as dense as any other on earth.
7. I will agitate as well for an easing of our nation's overly-restrictive visa requirements for incoming tourism, that have prevented so many foreign residents from visiting our country.
8. I will bring sandwiches with me, prepared at home, to substitute for that atrocious airline food.
9. I will never leave on any trip before spending at least a few hours reading about the history and culture of the place I am about to visit.
10. I will supplement the recommended tipping policies of the cruiselines with additional sums meant to recognize the hard labors of the people who staff the ships.
11. I will never book any Caribbean cruise that stops at the many artificial "private islands" or "private beaches" that the cruiselines are substituting for encounters with actual local people.
12. And finally, in the writing I do and the talks I deliver, I will continue to regard travel not as a mere recreation, but as a serious learning activity, a way of understanding the world, an essential element of a civilized life."