What's On Your Bucket List?

I feel very fortunate to have the means to travel and a job that requires it. I’ve been lucky enough to have visited close to 75 countries, mostly for business. I've also been able to check off a few dream trips over the years: canoeing the Minnesota-Canadian border, making a pre-dawn visit to the fish market in Tokyo, this past summer’s family vacation to South Africa.

But even when I was a student — when my missionary parents struggled to get me and my siblings through college — my parents encouraged us to see the world. Today, they have plenty of company.

Studies have shown that the rising middle classes worldwide and millennials of all income brackets have the same top aspirational goal: To travel the globe.

Recently, one of our company’s brands, SpringHill Suites, asked travelers more about that. Here’s what researchers found:

1) Most people have a Travel Bucket List.

2) Many have similar items in those Buckets.

Almost a quarter of us want to visit every continent, a fifth want to take an African safari. Seventeen percent want to fill every page of their passport. Fourteen percent want to bungee jump or sky dive. (I’ll confess to being a bit relieved when my eager kids discovered the bungee jumping site in South Africa was closed.)

Sometimes it seems like much of the fun of travel is in thinking up that next dream trip – and sharing the idea.

To that end, here are a few of the bucket list trips I hope to knock off before I do:

1) Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica — cold, even in summer, but the beauty is supposed to be breathtaking.

2) Bike across Vietnam — just to get warmed up after visiting Antarctica.

3) Mongolia – can you think of any place more exotic?

4) Climb Cerro Aconcagua in Argentina – at 22,841 feet, it’s taller than Mount Kilimanjaro (already climbed) and the highest peak in South America. I’m too old to climb the biggest mountains in the world, but maybe, just maybe, I might be able to tackle this one.

5) White-water rafting on the Snake River in Wyoming.

Now it’s your turn. What’s on YOUR Travel Bucket List? What are the best travel experiences already inside your bucket?

Related Link:
Take Vacation, You Earned It

Photos: Melinda Nagy, ThinkStock; Arne Sorenson

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