When planning an adventure, a route planner like Visorando can be a helpful tool to ensure a smoother and safer journey. Are you overwhelmed by the desire to explore nature at its best and venture into the wilderness? Or perhaps, it’s time to take a break and satisfy those incessant yearnings for the mountain sun and rugged slopes? Adventure lovers are always searching for the next big adventure, biding their time and growing their travel funds.
An adventure traveler is not your average vacationer who seeks luxurious resorts and a wealth of comfort-enhancing amenities. Adventurers seek a profoundly deep connection with Mother Nature, choosing destinations that offer abundant natural beauty and adrenalin-raising recreation. For instance, thrill-seekers flock to Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains to explore the wilderness with soul-satisfying experiences.
Whether you’re headed to the Smokies or exploring any other peak, we urge adventurers to set priorities and ensure safety. It’s natural for explorers to neglect safety to venture outside their comfort zones, but it’s simply foolish to go entirely unplanned among nature. Read on to explore some crucial tips to plan your upcoming adventure.
1. Conduct Extensive Research into Your Target Destination
Familiarizing oneself with the landscape and terrain is of the utmost significance before setting out on an adventure. If you plan to live in the wild, setting up tents on camping grounds and trails, you must equip yourself with information.
The idea of hiking all day and sleeping under the stars sounds heavenly in one’s imagination. But unfortunately, the reality can prove strikingly disturbing if you don’t account for wildlife, poisonous shrubs, and pesky pests. Extensive research into your target destination will facilitate in-depth knowledge about local trails, recreational amenities, wildlife populations, and safety hazards.
When you’re headed to the Great Smoky Mountains to summit Mount Leconte via the 8.1-mile Appalachian Trail, prioritize research to vicariously explore the trail and find other routes leading to the summit.
For instance, the Appalachian Trail is the longest and relatively more challenging route to summit Mount Leconte. Beginners can explore other routes like the Trillium Gap Trail – the easiest route leading to the 6,593-foot summit. Adventurers seeking the formidable challenge of the park’s steepest trail will find the 5-mile Alum Cave Trail ideally thrilling.
The internet is brimming with informative resources, videos, and comprehensive guides to travel vicariously and prepare yourself. Sufficient research will help you map a realistic itinerary by identifying well-appointed camping grounds to recharge before hitting the trails again.
2. Don’t Compromise Comfort & Safety
Venturing into the wild doesn’t demand neglecting one’s comfort and safety and throwing caution to the wind. Setting on an adventure doesn’t require punishing your exhausted body by compelling yourself to sleep in an uncomfortable tent. Compromising comfort and safety will expose you to many hazards that can disrupt your vacation.
We strongly advise adventurers to prioritize their comfort and safety and find ways to combine adventure with luxury. For instance, renting a cabin at the foothills of the alpine trails combines comfort with accessibility. Imagine getting a good night’s sleep on a supportive mattress to recharge yourself before heading out at dawn. Your body will perform better when your limbs aren’t worn out with exhaustion, and your belly is filled with warm food.
If you’ve never embarked on a wilderness camping adventure, you’ll likely fall for the unrealistic depiction we see in movies. Camping in the wild is tough and demands robust survival skills to combat erratic weather fluctuations and steer clear of wildlife. We suggest starting small and choosing a location where you can learn about outdoor living without compromising your safety.
If your heart is set on sleeping under the starry night, consider finding a group where you can join like-minded adventurers.
3. Prepare Yourself Mentally & Physically
Are you planning to execute your dream of bouldering across the Grand Canyon? Or perhaps, you wish to cover all the national and state parks along the iconic Route 66? Every adventure demands a unique approach to self-preparation, and it’s important to prioritize training.
High-altitude trekkers, water sports enthusiasts, and summiteers invest months in training, preparing themselves mentally and physically. If you’re mentally unprepared, the toughness of the terrain and lack of modern amenities is bound to prove unsettling.
Physical training is of the utmost significance because surviving in the wilderness requires robust agility, endurance, and stamina. If you’re embarking on a high-altitude adventure, prepare your body by getting accustomed to the incline. Design a daily routine with endurance-building exercises like climbing and deadlifts.
Mental preparation is different from physical training. Familiarizing yourself with the routes and trails will facilitate realistic expectations, allowing you to understand what you’re getting into. If you plan on staying at a place with minimum modern amenities or none at all, we suggest a few days of practicing living without these luxuries.
4. Ditch your Comfort Zone & Experiment
A comfort zone is a place of familiarity, ease, and luxury, making it a space where one cannot grow and evolve. Growth comes from surmounting difficulties, experiencing novelty, and overcoming obstacles we didn’t know we could surpass. Adventure lovers can broaden their horizons and expand their thresholds for thrilling escapades by ditching their comfort zones.
Suppose every adventure you plan revolves around paved routes and beaten tracks in well-maintained national parks. In that case, you need to ditch these paved trails to step outside your comfort zone and challenge yourself. Limiting yourself to one kind of adventure is also restraining yourself within a comfort zone. There’s an exciting world of outdoor recreation, and limiting yourself to one activity doesn’t align with an adventure-lovers spirit.
We urge you to experiment, explore and find new activities to elevate your itinerary. For instance, include activities like bouldering, rock climbing, whitewater rafting, and ziplining. If exploring the trails and covering the region is your goal, hiking isn’t the only way to execute it. You can cover multiple spots by riding a horse or setting out on a mountain biking adventure.
Final Thoughts
Examining safety hazards and prioritizing comfort will help you plan a wholesome, soul-satisfying experience. Adventurers typically believe that adventures are incomplete without harsh conditions and will deny themselves the comfort of a decent bed and clean bathroom. However, there are more than a few ways to embark on adventures, and embracing the amenities now available at adventurous spots like the Great Smoky Mountains will ensure you never get tired of that adrenaline rush!