Shutterbugging in Cali

I’ve wanted to be a nomad for as long as I can remember.

There is nothing sweeter than waking up each day in a new town to new smells, sights, noises and, of course, music. It represents pure, unadulterated freedom. Travel educates. Travel replenishes. Travel sanctifies.

Adventure beckons everywhere. What’s the time zone? Is it considered rude to point? Is chewing gum illegal? Will I get beat up by the monkey if I try to take its picture?

Throw in some new languages and cultures, and you’ll find me blissed out in a corner like Keith Richards.

Global trotting sounds crazy to most. When I confess this to friends, they usually smile sweetly at me as if I’ve just announced I want to meet Santa.

Haters.

My renewed passport came in today, and the wanderlust is now burning through to my core. This site collected some of the most inspiring travel quotes. My favorites are below, interspersed with the next best thing to travel – photos.

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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

Roadside bathroom stop in Big Sur, CA

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

Near Lonaconing, MD

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Big Bend, TX

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, MN

“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

Milford, CT

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe” – Anatole France

“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

Sunset on Pacific, taken from Big Sur cliffs