Seth and I (and Georgia) love adventures. We love to explore.
Now that we’ve moved to a new area, our desire to explore has only intensified. We want to get to know our town. We want to eat at the best restaurants (as long as they’re not too pricey), hike the best trails, tube in the best creeks, and find the best ice cream places.
The problem is finding the time. Seth and I both work full-time. We have very limited time in the morning before work, and still pretty limited time after work. We also have plans nearly every weekend through September. Our free time for adventures is restricted to blocks of two to four hours rather than entire days.
Then there’s the weather. Last Saturday is a perfect example: our weekend plans were cancelled at the last minute, and for the first time in forever, we had an entire Saturday at our leisure. Unfortunately, the forecast wasn’t in our favor. Rain and thunderstorms were due to begin around 10 a.m. Assuming we could get an early morning start, we had about four hours to find an adventure.
Without planning and research, these two-to-four hour “adventure windows” can quickly slam shut.
Following last Saturday’s example, Seth and I found a preserve online that supposedly had some nice hiking trails. We left at 6 a.m. in a foggy drizzle. Our GPS tried to take us on a narrow dirt road literally up the side of a mountain. We were unprepared in my little Honda Civic that was scraping bottom as we crawled up the incline. Seth was calm, but I was terrified. My stress spread to Georgia, and soon we turned around.
We found a parking lot for the preserve back at the base of the mountain (which meant that terrifying drive up had been for nothing). We tried to follow one of the trails, but it was poorly marked and let directly into someone’s private property.
After a few failed attempts to find the trail, we ended up turning around and going to a nearby state park that we’d visited before. We found a nice, short trail and hiked up to a scenic overlook at King’s Gap State Park in Carlisle. We made it back home just as the rain began.
Everything turned out okay, but we’d wasted the majority of our adventure window driving around trying to figure out where we were going and what we were doing. We lacked conviction and direction. We were aimless, and though we found a good trail at the end, we only spent about one hour actually exploring.
Wasted time is not key to enjoying a good adventure.
Here are the keys to taking advantage of the small adventure windows in your everyday life.
1. Make a list.
I like lists. Maybe you don’t. Even so, you’ll be grateful down the road if you make a list of all the places around you that you’d like to hike, adventure, or explore.
Get on the Internet and do your research. Write down all the parks, trails, restaurants, creameries, resorts, etc. near you that you’ve never visited before and you’d like to try out. On that list, chart several different factors. How long will take you to get there? How much time do you anticipate you’d spend there? What all is there to do?
On my list, I also included a section for whether or not dogs are allowed. Since we like to bring Georgia on our adventures, this was important to us. Maybe something else is important to you. Add that to your list.
2. Give yourself options.
Make sure your list includes a variety of options. Don’t limit yourself to a list of state parks. Include other attractions. Ask locals for help. What are their favorite things to do in the area? Even if you’ve lived in a place for a long time, odds are, there are still adventure spots you’ve never come across.
Add up the time it takes to get to an attraction and the time you intent to spend there, plus a little bit of flex time in case you get lost or stuck in traffic. You should have some adventure ideas that take an hour or less, and others that are good for three-to-four hour adventures (or even longer).
3. Be prepared.
Since our favorite adventures include outdoor activities like hiking, fishing, or tubing down the creek, I keep an adventure backpack ready to go for spur-of-the-moment adventuring. I keep the backpack stocked with sunscreen, bug spray, a small first-aid kit, our GoPro, and a water bowl for Georgia.
If your adventures involve different interests, like museums or art galleries, plan appropriately. Be prepared so you can maximize your free time.
4. Be spontaneous!
As soon as you get that unexpected half-day off work, or a Sunday afternoon with no obligations, feel free to be spontaneous! It can be tempting to just sit on the couch with a bag of chips and Netflix for a few hours. Sometimes, maybe that’s exactly what you need.
But not every time. Not when you spend every weekday sitting behind a desk. Not when the sun is bright and a perfect, slight breeze rustles through the trees. Not when God’s creation calls to you.
Get up, gauge your amount of free time, check your list, make a decision, and go!
5. Admire God’s creation, and be thankful.
This point is essential. Don’t get so swept away in your adventure that you forget the One who created it.
And this doesn’t just apply to outdoors adventures, though that is traditionally where we talk about God’s beautiful creation. Everywhere around us, indoors and outdoors, we see God’s beauty. God’s beauty is in the flowers and the birds, but it also fills candy stores and bicycle shops.
Why? We are God’s handiwork. We are the peak of His creation. We were the final touch, the last moment He proclaimed creation’s goodness. As we create art and build bikes and make chocolate, we glorify the Creator. We create, because He first created us.
Admire God’s creation, and be thankful.
And never forget… you are onederfully created.
Love,
Becca
