What exactly are stories?
Stories for us are those anecdotal happenings that occur on a journey. Completely unplanned, but still somehow part of our overall itinerary. They don’t have to be funny, just different. The key for us is to view each journey event or phase from the perspective of adventure.
We look for, and anticipate, fun, quirky things to happen.
Occasionally you notice things right away, some you wonder about after the fact…
In case anyone was wondering too, the woman behind us definitely seemed ok. The following picture was taken after the one above.
But the real question is, why were there two rolls of toilet paper in that bathroom in the last picture of that slideshow?
And of course, anyone who knows us – but in particular Gary, knows there’s no lack of travel stories we have to share.
Whether for work or for pleasure, there’s plenty of ways one can enjoy the journey. There are great stories to be had every place you go all along the way. It’s fascinating how some of the most mundane things you do can turn into one of the most intriguing stories. Of course, how you tell it can also bring color into an otherwise black and white picture.
We live for those stories.
How do you get stories?
You have to get out of the house and go “places”. If you aren’t interested in where we go that’s not important. What is, is to find what you like and have fun doing it.
Go places and recognize the unusual. Or what went awry in a funny/different way. Or what went completely right when maybe it shouldn’t have. There’s all sorts of things that happen that make great stories when you starting thinking about it.
Sometimes you just walk into it. Like when we headed off to a beach in Hawaii to see the sunset and ended up with a “two-for” during the same excursion. Finding The Monkey Tree and seeing a wrecked car suspended by branches in a ditch.
Other times, it’s not being afraid to ask people. This happened in Oregon where we discovered there’s a Stonehenge in Washington State.
How do we do it?
We get out. We talk to people. We ask questions.
Sounds simple, but it’s easy to keep to yourself and travel. Especially if you don’t know the language. However, if you do? We’ve discovered there’s a huge potential for reward.
It’s no secret that we’ve been around the world a couple times for work and to some great vacation spots for pleasure. All in all, we’ve seen more than a few dozen countries on 5 continents (North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa). In addition, we’ve been blessed to experience 5 countries in the Caribbean (Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and a couple islands in the Bahamas).
Gary went so many places he had to get more pages sewn into his passport (yep, that used to be a thing – read about Passports here).
The number of stories our traveling has generated is surprising (even to us). Only a few are currently posted on our Journey Moore Often website to date. Trying to find hot chocolate, stairs versus lifts (elevators), bartering for handcrafted items by local artisans, ways to pack wine, are just a few we’ve been able to post since we launched our website in July, 2018.
There’s so much to tell, and we’re surprised at how many pictures we do have of our various journeys. However, we wished that we had taken even more! No matter though, we’re sifting through the “archives” to see what we can share on the website. And as time goes on, we’ll keep filling in those older stories with dated posts from previous trips. Of course we also be adding newer current posts, and letting people know they’re there on Facebook.
You don’t have to go far though. There are plenty of stories and experiences to be had right in your own backyard.