The best plan is to have fun

Tourist found wandering without plan, reports having ‘fun’

I am a planner; always have been, always will be. I love itineraries and schedules. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not an extremist who schedules every minute of every vacation. But I like to leave with a list of activities and places, and a general plan for each day. If the plan changes, so be it, but I sleep better at night knowing I won’t be sitting on a park bench bored out of my mind.

Which reminds me of the time my first carefully planned trip went right off the rails. I was backpacking alone through Western Europe, which was also the first time I traveled alone. I did end up on a park bench bored out of my mind. On the second day. So I decided to leave a day early for the next city on my list. Well, there goes the perfectly timed schedule. But boy was I glad I changed my plans when I stepped off the train (into the pouring rain) in Salzburg. Salzburg is my favorite stop from that trip, and I wouldn’t have had an extra day to enjoy it if I’d stuck to the plan.

Unfortunately, I got to enjoy a lot more of Salzburg than anticipated, because that same day the Deutschbank ATM ate my card. It was a Friday at 6 p.m. and Austrian banks aren’t open on Saturdays. So I was definitely not leaving for Zurich on Sunday like I had planned. That frustrating delay turned out to be another blessing in disguise, because I met some amazing people in Salzburg that night and got to take a salt mine tour in Bavaria.

The rest of the trip went almost exactly the same. A delay here, a new city added there. And you know what? It was fantastic. And everything worked out just fine. Fast-forward a few years to my family’s trip to Glacier this September, for which I made reservations and a daily schedule like I always do. True to form, the schedule lasted exactly one day. We stayed in West Glacier the first night, then went about our merry way across the Going to the Sun Highway and on to Babb, Mont., where our second hotel was waiting. After passing the seven buildings that make up Babb, and bumping down 2 miles of dirt road, we started to doubt that Hook’s Hideaway was such a great deal. Our first reaction: laughter. Hook’s is a 10-room pole barn in the middle of nowhere, next to a deserted dance hall. It was not an oasis in the valley like we had imagined. The nearest food was nearly 5 miles away back up the awful dirt road.

Needless to say, we didn’t stay there that night, or the next night as we had planned.

So where did that leave us? In Babb with no hotel reservations for the evening. Goodbye, plan! We decided to spend the rest of our trip flying by the seat of our pants, and in doing so managed to find a great room in Babb for that night. The next day we booked a hotel on the fly while driving to a new city. It was liberating, and everything turned out just fine —exactly like Europe.

So what’s the takeaway here? Did I find some universal wisdom that I can now impart to you?

Not really.

But I did learn that every trip is going to have serious glitches, and sometimes that’s the best part. It’s OK if you’re a planner, and it’s OK to leave with no plan at all. The most important part is learning to go with the flow, otherwise the only thing you’ll remember from the trip is the stress of losing a plan and trying to find a new one. If you can tap into your sense of spontaneity, it will still turn out to be an awesome vacation for everyone.

And also, maybe remember to take a backup credit card.

Next time: The science (and potential headache) of holiday travel

Julianna Satterly is a Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy graduate who worked as the Editor in Chief of her college newspaper at Washington and Lee University for three years. She’s lived in three states, visited 28 others, and has toured 13 countries. Contact her at juliannasatterly@gmail.com, or on Facebook or Twitter @jsattz.