This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for many things and outside of my family, close friends and colleagues, I'm most thankful for travel, an industry where I've spent the past eight years of my life.
If I wasn't an expert in half that time I certainly like to think that I've become one over the past two years as a nomad of sorts moving from city to city every three months with my travel nurse partner.
Travel has taken me to some amazing places but it's also taken me out of my comfort zone on numerous occasions and even introduced me to some incredible people. Whether it's a complete stranger at an airport lounge during a long layover or some of the very best travel professionals in the industry, travel is a community.
We're all in it together and I'm thankful to live a life where I'm never alone.
But for the second straight year, I won't be joining the 54.6 million Americans which AAA estimates will travel 50 miles or more from home for Thanksgiving. It's bittersweet. I certainly don't miss the traffic, crowded airports or intrusive questions from family members about my lifestyle but I do miss the tradition and making the two hour drive to grandma's house each year is a big part of that.
I'll be staying put for Thanksgiving this year, chowing down on turkey and stuffing and watching football in Rapid City, South Dakota some 1,700 miles from the traditional destination on the eastern shore of Maryland.
Spending a holiday where being with family and friends is kind of the whole point without so many of them can be depressing, sure, but it also provides an opportunity to reflect. Not only on the importance of not taking those people for granted but on the fortune of being able to celebrate in a place most people will go their entire lives without experiencing.
When you work and live in the travel space, you always have the places even when you don't have the people.
Being somewhere new or different for Thanksgiving affords you the chance to make new memories and traditions. Next Thanksgiving I'll no doubt miss the Black Hills of western South Dakota the same way I miss last year's Turkey Day in Phoenix.
This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for many things but I'd be remiss to leave out the places that I've been. All of which have been made possible by this life in travel.
Topics From This Article to Explore
