Summer Travel: Tips for a Fulfilling Experience

What if you could transform your approach to life's transitions? Join me, Sally Burlington on the Create Harmony podcast as we navigate the cyclical nature of our journeys and revisit cherished experiences with fresh insights. We'll share how recognizing the type of travel you’re embarking on—be it a restful vacation or an adventurous trip—can prepare your mind and spirit for the journey ahead.

This episode also includes a special excerpt from episode 37, where we explored the distinctions between vacations and trips. Discover practical tips to optimize your time and minimize hassles during your summer travels. Whether you're seeking relaxation or adventure, learn how to prepare for the unique experiences each type of travel offers and make the most of every journey you take. Tune in and let’s make your next trip a harmonious and fulfilling adventure.

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

You've just joined the Create Harmony podcast. Welcome In this place. We spend time talking about everyday joys and the abundant blessings that sometimes we tend to overlook. We set our rhythms with the rhythms of nature and we celebrate the changes that each season brings of nature. And we celebrate the changes that each season brings. We like to use our imagination as a way of listening to God and tune our senses to the magical presence of the Holy Spirit. You can find your place here, and while you're doing that, we hope that you'll also find some peace.

Speaker 1: 0:40

So I'm your host, sallylington, and this is episode 77. So if you listened to last week's episode, you heard me talk about transitions that was the topic last week and you probably also heard my ramble about our journey through life, from full circle moments to the cyclical nature of things. Our focus right now is journeys and how we often pass back by the same things we've experienced before and get to take that in again and have new feelings and thoughts and ways to process. So I shared last week that around here at our house we're really processing some big life transitions and along with those transitions comes a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings and just a lot of things for me to take in, for my brain to process for lack of a better word and I also shared that I've used lots of tools to do that, including creating content for this podcast. This is helping me come to terms with all the things that I'm passing back by again Now. When I'm playing content for this podcast, I often refer back to what I've created in the past. So, like I said, when I am on the journey of creating content, I sometimes circle back to what we've created in the past because we'll be back to the same season again and I look back to see like what's still fresh and what's still applicable now that we're coming back through that season another time. And on the theme of traveling along and journeying, I found some content that we discussed at the beginning of last summer that I thought it would be great to revisit. So we're taking that journeying theme and we're getting a little bit more literal this week. So last summer we talked about summer travels and we made a distinction in one of our episodes between going on a vacation which is a restful and restorative type of experience, and going on a trip which is maybe not so restful but maybe full of adventure and full of action and things that are exciting to do. And those two things are different, both awesome, but just different and recognizing which one of those things you're going on and preparing your psyche for that is sometimes a helpful step. So as we pass back by this way again, I'm going to share an excerpt from that previous episode with you today so that you can reflect on how to prepare for your summer travels. So we're picking it up midstream. It might be a little bit of an abrupt transition, but hope you enjoy this excerpt from episode 37.

Speaker 1: 3:27

And in my mind and sometimes in the discussions between myself and my friends, there are two big categories of travel, and those categories are a vacation and a trip. So let me, if you haven't heard those terms before, let me clarify those terms. So a vacation is when you travel somewhere to experience rest and relaxation and you come back restored. It's the kind of journey that fills your tank back up. So when you come home from a vacation, you are refreshed, you feel rejuvenated and you are ready to face life head on.

Speaker 1: 4:09

But now a trip is quite a different experience. A trip is an adventure that requires extra energy and often extra patience. Trips sometimes involve time spent with complicated family members, even though we love them. Sometimes our family member connections are complicated, or it could be a place that we travel that's crowded, or it could be somewhere that's really far away, where the travel journey is complicated and difficult and tiring. On a trip, you might see and experience wonderful things, but while you're doing that, you are draining your tank. When you get home from a trip, you feel like you need a day off to regroup and restore. Now, both trips and vacations are definitely worth taking.

Speaker 1: 5:02

However, having the awareness of which type of travel you have planned this summer is an important part of knowing how to make the most of the experience. So when we travel, it's important to try to plan ahead and optimize the time we have because we don't get to travel every day and minimize the hassle that we're going to have while we're on the trip. So I did some online research and I found lots of ideas for travel hacks Things that help with packing, how to survive a long flight, ideas to help entertain kids while traveling, and that kind of thing but there are way too many of those for me to go through them here. I am not getting ready to read a list of travel hacks out to you, because that would be incredibly boring, but I'll be posting those ideas to Instagram and my newsletter, so so you can look there for that kind of content coming soon. But for the purposes of our discussion today, I just wanted to draw your attention on more big picture items, sort of how you want your travel this summer to feel.

Speaker 1: 6:08

So some of you may have already taken your summer trip, but it's not too late. You can still reflect on these questions. Many of you will still be doing some summer traveling and even though those plans are already made, you might want to take a moment before you go to reflect on what you want that experience to look like. What do you want it to be like when you actually take your trip? Are you looking for adventure on this trip? And even if you've planned a vacation full of relaxing, you could still add a little piece of adventure along the way If you thought about it beforehand. You could think through your relaxing trip and think where could I sprinkle in a little adventure? Do you want your focus of this trip to be memory banking? Maybe this? You want this to be a really memorable, significant trip. Maybe you're going on a trip with family that rarely has much time together and you really want to make the most of it. So perhaps you should add in some games or some planned activities where you know a lot of exchange will happen and memories will get made.

Speaker 1: 7:14

Is your trip more about reconnecting with yourself or reconnecting with a loved one? If so, maybe you need to take a journal or find some questions for reflection that could be discussed. So, in in advance of any trip, it seems like you want to make space for one really important thing, no matter where you're going or what you want it to feel like. This thing belongs on any trip, and that is gratitude. How will you embrace the blessing that this trip brings? Could you plan a gratitude moment for each day and include the people you're traveling with in on the experience? And getting to break up the routine with travel really is a blessing. So adopting a spirit of curiosity to really learn about the world and enhance that feeling of being blessed is an important part of the experience. That will really make it a more pleasant and more joyful experience if you savor it with gratitude. So that's our excerpt from the previous episode, and hope you found some insights to help you for your summer travels. Hopefully you heard some things in that earlier conversation that can help you savor all of your journeys, all the journeys and travels that you're going to go on this summer.

Speaker 1: 8:41

So now I want to pivot from talking about travel to giving a garden update. So if you've been listening this spring, you know that we've installed a raised bed garden in our backyard and I wanted to give you a little update on how things are going so far. And the update is my plants are really, really thriving. We have new growth on almost all my plants. My squash plant is full of blooms and tiny, tiny little squash. Hopefully they're going to be growing more in the coming days. I've got a yellow cherry tomato with those little teardrop tomatoes and there are some little teardrop-shaped tomatoes on there. They're not yellow yet, but there are some on there, and my full-size tomato has several green ones on there. We're still waiting for those to ripen up and get ready to make some yummy tomato sandwiches this summer, because we live in the South and we love a tomato sandwich.

Speaker 1: 9:32

My cucumber plant's really branching out. Still don't see any cucumbers this summer because we live in the south and we love a tomato sandwich. My cucumber plants really branching out? Still don't see any cucumbers. I do have some blooms on my pepper plants, my dahlias are starting to get taller and my herbs are growing so much we're gonna have to start eating basil at every meal. So I'm gonna. I guess I will need to figure out some breakfast basil recipes or like a basil smoothie or something I don't know, because we've got a lot of basil, we've got a lot of mint, we've got a lot of oregano. So I'm going to have to branch out with those recipes and try to use those herbs or really make friends with my neighbors and share some. So, overall, the project is going really really well and I'm excited about my first harvests that are to come going really really well and I'm excited about my first harvests that are to come.

Speaker 1: 10:17

But, as gardening always does, there are a few stumbles along the way. Here we're still having some drainage issues. I told you earlier in an earlier episode when I gave an update, that I had installed some pots in the big raised bed so that I could contain certain things like mint or lemon balm to keep that from overcoming the whole garden, and those were not really draining well, but we seem to have solved that issue. That issue is situated now, but there's a walkway. The garden itself is shaped like a big U. It has two sides, and then the bottom of the U and there's a walkway in the middle, and the idea is that you will be able to walk in there and harvest things and tend to the garden, but what I'm doing right now is making a pond in the walkway. It's just not draining properly. I don't exactly know how to figure it out. So we might be growing some mosquitoes, along with all of the other things that we're growing, but we're working on it.

Speaker 1: 11:12

It's a work in progress, as all gardens are, so there'll be ups and downs and you know that's just part of the project and hopefully we can. By the next time I give an update, there will be a few less mosquitoes and a few more veggies that I'll be able to give you an update on. So that's the growing update, and the good news is the plants are doing well, so we'll hope that that stays to be the case. Hopefully you're finding ways to grow something at your house, even if it's just new ideas. Thanks for listening in today as we talked about journeys and travels. What you heard in the previous episode that we talked about, there was some a promise that there would be some specifics in my monthly newsletter and on instagram about travel hacks and tips, and we'll still do those again. As we pass back by this way, again you'll get those travel hacks and tips, and that will help you get ready for all of your summer journeys. So we'll be back next week and hope you'll join them too, and until next time, peace.