Are Your Travels Ephemeral?

This time of year makes me think about the ephemeral nature of things.

Here in central Appalachia we’ve spent the last month watching the leaves change from the “green rolling hills” we’ve grown accustomed to over the summer to the vibrant yellow, red, and orange hues we see in fall.

It’s a fairly short-lived six weeks of a rainbow pallette on the hillsides that ends pretty abruptly as the colors get dull and then the leaves fall off.

This year I finally caught peak foliage on the Highlands Scenic Highway.  I’ve been trying to get there on my road bike for several years but couldn’t get my timing just right for the peak.

National Geographic’s Center for Sustainable Destinations describes three different types of tourism:

• Touring style tourism relies on the human and physical character of a place.
• Activities include sightseeing, history, hiking, and local shopping.
• Characteristics include diffuse impact, supporting small businesses, and requires protecting nature and heritage.
• R&R tourism depends only on the physical character of a place.
• Activities include coastal resorts, ski resorts, and golf resorts.
• Characteristics include risk of sprawl, imported labor, and potential for environmental impacts.
• Entertainment-style tourism is manufactured attractions that do not depend on character of place.
• Activities include theme parks, outlet malls, amusement parks, and casinos.
• Characteristics include changing the nature of the locale, mass tourism, high traffic, high potential for environmental impacts.

Touring style tourists seek out an authentic travel experience knowing that the window of time for the epic experience often lasts for just a brief period, is short-lived, so the timing of the trip and the circumstances have to be just right.  Sometimes they are and some times they aren’t, but when they are its nothing short of spectacular.

If you seek Entertainment you can pretty much book your trip anytime and expect to get the same experience.  The price may change occasionally but the timing and circumstances don’t change much because it’s a manufactured experience which takes things like weather, flora, and fauna out of the equation.

Now my timing has been off in the past making the experience less than epic but that’s the fun of it, not knowing just exactly what’s going to happen.

Do you take a left instead of a right to seek out the local restaurant?  Do you look for that unknown trail that just might lead to a spectacular overlook?  Do you stop to chat with the locals in hopes that you might learn about something or somewhere you hadn’t thought of?

As I pedaled back to my car in the twilight glow as the sun set behind the Appalachian mountains I felt a sense of euphoria knowing that the leaves and the weather would be different tomorrow and that my gamble had paid off with a spectacular ride in a spectacular place.

Are you willing to take gambles in search of authentic experiences so you can feel that sense of euphoria when your gamble pays off or do you seek manufactured, entertainment-style experiences?

See you on the trail

Tags: fall travel, geotourism, green travel, sustainable tourism, travel green appalachia

This entry was posted on Monday, October 31st, 2011 at 11:23 am and is filed under Blog, Green Travel Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.