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This month BootsnAll is hosting a project encouraging bloggers to look back on a year of travel and share stories of travel and fun. Sometimes we forget about the great places we go or the fabulous experiences we have; or perhaps there is some travel that we don’t at first consider to be ‘travel’. This is a great way to re-envision what travel means to us and realize that we all travel more than we think!

Todays Topic: Travel Goals

Seems that now that I’m back in the cubicle world all I ever think about is not being in the cubicle! And, with limited vacation time I am obsessed with making the most of my time off.

Having travel goals for the year makes all the difference.

Looking back at our travel goals for 2011 I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out:

  • We attended the first ever World Domination Summit in Portland, meeting a bazillion amazing people and learning that we are our own worst enemies when it comes to creating roadblocks for ourselves. Portland is the first N.American city I have ever visited that gave Vancouver a run for its money as most livable…the beer is outstanding…you have to go and try it!
  • TBEX11 (a travel blogging conference) was held in Vancouver just two weeks later. I had tons of fun putting faces to blog names and meeting people who I had only ever chatted with on-line. I could have done better with the connecting though (damned introversion!) and hope to head to Keystone, Colorado this summer to try again.
  • The third goal was to visit Jason’s parents in Ottawa and combine it with a trip to Philadelphia to see our friends Keith and Amy and maybe even see NYC and/or Boston. We got half way there and did manage a trip to the Ottawa area but there just wasn’t enough time to go any further.

Plus we moved!! Part one of our Responsibly Irresponsible plan was to move somewhere else in Canada and, in April, we moved one province over to Calgary, Alberta. We’re really enjoying it here so far and are spending lots of time exploring the mountains and prairies as well as the pubs and restaurants. A great start to the overall plan. (Shameless Plug: Check out our AroundAlberta blog to see all the great stuff here!)

We’re hoping 2012 will be just as busy with travel and, in fact, just this weekend we were counting up our vacation days and allocating them to the 2012 travel plan.

  • In January we’ll head to Ontario again to visit J’s parents. It’ll be winter but they have a cozy home with a great view of a wilderness backyard. We’ll visit and enjoy each others company – probably have to chop some wood and do some snow blowing too – stuff we never get to do here so it’ll be fun.
  • I’d like to visit my parents on the West Coast too…maybe Easter?
  • TBEX12 is near Denver, Colorado this summer and I’m thinking I’d like to go again. The conference itself is not that fabulous but I plan on making better use of my time this time round and hope to make some good connections.
  • The next World Domination Summit is in Portland again – it was so amazing, how could we not go again?
  • Our friends Kim and Brian are starting their RTW this summer with a road trip through the US National Parks and I’m hoping beyond hope that we can somehow hook up with them somewhere in the western part of their tour – ideally in conjunction with one of the conferences.
  • And the Big Hairy Audacious Goal for 2012 is….Japan!! We cut Japan from our RTW itinerary about halfway through our trip. We realized that it was just too expensive for that budget and we really wanted to do it right. So, we’ve been saving and are hoping to visit Japan in September for three weeks. I’m trying to take my lessons from Slow Travel to heart and hope not to go crazy with the itinerary but…we’ll see.

That’s it. Not bad really for a couple of cubicle dwellers.

What are your travel goals for 2012? Setting them out can make all the difference when it comes to actually going where you want to go!