And many accept that they will never have the time or money to see all the great things right here.
And there are 2 exotic places people dream about and hipe to get to after quite a bit of travelling. Hawaii and Alaska....... and heck seeing jyst part of Alaska takes people 2 or 3 trips depending if the trips are in weeks or months.
There is a world to see without leaving the country. Sadly, most haven't seen much of it and a good percentage haven't seen beyond their state and bordering states.
You just see the number of people here exploring Alaska and talking about the Loop.
We never traveled much prior to retirement and moving to FLL. The vast majority of places we've been to since the move are places we'd never seen, new adventures daily. I think that's the beauty of the loop, the exposure to new areas. Even just cruising the East coast. Every town has something different, unique, special.
We've cruised some through Central America and the Caribbean and we could have an incredible life never going to any other continent. Now, we do intend to go to Europe at some point and to the South Pacific, but it's definitely not essential. Every time we cruise the East Coast we experience something new. This trip it was running 126 nm down the St. Johns River from Jacksonville and back in a RIB. I had no idea what all was on the river. Now, one day we need to return and spend time on it. Then there's the part beyond where we went. We might not have done this but we removed Fernandina from our plans based on conditions there. There are states like Florida and NC as great examples, that we've spent time in, but we still haven't gotten to each port, each town along the way. People cruise the Chesapeake but most don't go up the Potomac.
You definitely don't have to leave the country to meet a lot of very different people either. Their culture, their history, their ways of speaking, very different. It's like visiting different countries.
Yes, we spent 2 months seeing Alaska and a little of BC. One could do that annually for years and still not see it all. Most cruising from the PNW still only see the lower part of Alaska. Just the PNW, we didn't get to all the islands.
So much to see and the beauty of it is that it doesn't matter how many years we do this, there will always be things remaining that we want to see. You can't really see all the US in a lifetime.