Better Mental Health Through Travel

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Traveling to new places can be the best therapy for what ails you. A change of scenery is an opportunity to recharge one's batteries, have new experiences, and can even cause a person to reevaluate their own life.
 
If you are hesitating because you don't think you can "afford" to take time away, think again. Patty’s Tours explains that taking time off and going to new places can actually improve performance and increase motivation when you come back to your everyday life. If nothing else, Les Roches notes that travel makes you a more interesting, thoughtful, and open-minded person.
 
Educate Yourself
If you found history boring in school, you might change your mind by visiting places of historic and cultural significance. People living in Virginia are fortunate in this respect; the history of the Old Dominion goes all the way back to the late 16th Century when the first English settlers established the Roanoke Colony. Virginia boasts a wealth of historic sites related to the War of Independence and the American Civil War. Some of these places even feature living history exhibits with reenactors who show how people lived their everyday lives in the past.
 
The Jamestown Settlement is one of the premier living history museums in the U.S. Open daily from 9 AM to 5 PM, this attraction features live people acting out everyday life as it was during America's early days.
 
Going Further Afield
Although the Washington Commanders Football team is right across the state line, Virginia doesn't have any major league teams of its own, so there's another good reason to travel if you're a sports fan. Fortunately, there are more than a few professional sports teams not far away. In addition to many historic and cultural attractions, New York is home to the Yankees baseball team, which plays regularly at Yankee Stadium.
 
Rest and Relaxation
Often, the best reason to take a trip somewhere is simply to unplug and do as little as possible.  A Cornell University study showed that nature can be an excellent stress reliever, and the Appalachian Range in Virginia's own backyard has no shortage of natural beauty. Take a hike along the Appalachian Trail, visit the Great Smoky Mountains, or the Blue Ridge for a great camping experience. Make it as primitive as you like, or go "glamping" at any of the many bed and breakfast establishments in these regions.
 
Wherever you end up, you’ll want to preserve the memories you made on your trip by taking lots of pics and sharing them on social media. If you're planning on sharing pictures on social media, an online photo size converter allows you to instantly adjust the size of your images. Once you've resized your images, you can easily upload them to use for your social media pages.
 
Mark Twain Summed It Up Best
American author and humorist Mark Twain famously said, ”Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
 
If you travel for no other reason, you should do so in order to gain new perspectives and increase your empathy for others. In a culturally-diverse country like the United States, you won't even have to cross borders.
 
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