Tourist at Home

I don’t know if you’ve gotten the picture by now but I’m kind of busy lately. My Grand Canyon trip is only TWO WEEKS away and preparations have kicked into high gear. On the way home from work yesterday alone we stopped at Costco, Walmart, REI, got my eyes checked, picked up my quilt from the state fair, and met a guy off Craig’s List to buy his high flotation life jacket. But, of course, being busy with this trip hasn’t stopped the rest of my life from continuing forward too; work is a nightmare – I’m feeling tons of pressure to finish a program I’m not even sure was wired correctly, my old friend from high school was in town this weekend, I’m going to a concert tonight and I’m meeting another old friend to catch up while she’s in town on Friday. The only reason I’m sitting here typing this is I’ve decided writing down these things is essential to my sanity, and thinking about work right now only makes my brain hurt.

So you would have understood if this weekend when I realized my friend Julia hadn’t been to the Great Salt Lake I had told her I didn’t have time to go. But a stronger part of me knew that adventures are always worth it so we made the plans for Sunday and drove out, swimming and floating in the salty lake that I hadn’t been in since the road trip with my fellow naughty princesses over three years ago.

It was a beautiful overcast day and the water was warm as we floated with the brine ship and the less adventurous tourists took our photos. We talked with all of them, telling them that we could easily read a book while we floated and that the smell goes away once you pass the shoreline. We met five bad ass motorcyclists from Belgium who turned out to be sweethearts once we started talking and a French couple who asked us how dense the lake was. It was a perfect adventure and I felt proud saying we were local every time one of them asked us where we were from.

I had a few free tickets to use up on a rollercoaster one of our local ski resorts sets up in the summer so Julia and I stopped there too, also talking to a few different people who were surprised to hear we were locals. I’d forgotten how shocked people are to meet locals when on their own adventures, though it makes total sense, locals aren’t going to hang around the overpriced tourist traps unless they’ve got free tickets.

Thinking about my upcoming travels, I’m starting to realize that most of the people I’ll meet in hostels and at museums will be from out of town. Who knows if this is a good or a bad thing, though people always say travelers should do all they can to soak up the local scene. But in many ways I’m just as excited about the traveling ones too, luckily any decision I make won’t have to be permanent.

Anyway, the very weakly supported moral of this story is that I like being a local just as much as I like being a traveler. In the future I’m going to make more of an effort to be both, working to appreciate the awesome that surrounds me just as much as the awesome that I’ll see in the future.

I also really miss my fellow princesses.