For #TravelTuesday let's look at the benefits of travel. Yes, there are actual benefits. In fact, there's research out there on the benefits of travel, here are 7 which I 100% agree with. And you don't even have to travel far or long, the majority of people (89%) report a significant drop in stress levels after just 1-2 days of traveling.       

Where do you live? How much have you explored the state you live in? Travel your surroundings! I think a lot of us are guilty of living in some amazing places and yet never having actually explored them. Okay, fine - let me just speak for myself here. I am guilty of this for sure. I live in the amazing state of Colorado and there are so many places in this beautiful state - some less than an hour from me - that I've never even visited! So today, for #TravelTuesday, I'm starting to create a bucket list for my state and I want to start traveling Colorful Colorado and getting to know my state more. Do you have a bucket list for your state?  Here's the start of my list... Ouray Royal Gorge Bishop's Castle Maroon Bells Tiny Town Paint Mines Interpretive Park Sand Dunes Mesa Verde (I went there when I was a kid but didn't appreciate it like I know I would as an adult!)

For #TravelTuesday I've been thinking about my nation. I've been to a few states but nowhere near all 50. It would be fun - and interesting - to visit each state at least once. It would also be fun to travel through states in some kitschy manner - like traveling Route 44 and making stops along the way. Or traveling to all the big roadside attractions like the World's Biggest Dinosaur and stopping at each one (I stole this particular idea straight from a book I read in which the main characters did this very thing). Or visiting all the Hall of Fames, or baseball stadiums, or fill in the blank . Not only would it help the traveling bug but it would give me particular insight into the different cultures of this melting pot country I call home. I would get to experience the different regions - their music, their dialects, their food, their dress, their pride, and yes, perhaps even their flaws.  So today I'm going to spend some time looking up a state I haven...

For today's #TravelTuesday I want to talk about around-the-world travel. This is some of the hardest travel to accomplish for one simple reason - money. It takes money to fly other places, stay in many lodgings, eat out all the time, pay the entrance fees to places we want to visit, etc. Oh sure there are cheap(er) ways to do it but it still takes money.  It's worth it. Start small - get your passport if you don't have it. This is like making a promise to yourself that you will go somewhere someday. Put it in a shadow box, drill a hole in the top of it to drop change and dollar bills down into and start saving.  I've been fortunate enough to do some around-the-world travel thanks to the generosity of my parents. I've also been to Kenya twice thanks to the generosity of people in my life who believed in the reasons I wanted to go to Kenya. And while the traveling experiences were different for a lot of reasons they all have helped to expand my worldv...