Just Because Everyone's Doing it Doesn't Mean it's Not Awesome

Anyone who has traveled with me anywhere–including downtown for dinner–has probably noticed that I can get a little wrapped up in finding the "right" thing. While I love to experience new places, I am easily overwhelmed by options and can bottom out with indecision in the early stages of planning.

"Right", in this context, is an impossible combination of vetted and unknown; I want something special and different, but I also want to know it's going to be good. I am mortified by the inherent greed in this kind of thinking and yet, if I lie about doing it, it means I stack shame on top of that embarrassment. The best-case travel scenario for me, someone prone to this kind of thinking, is a spontaneous trip to a place I haven't thought much about, where there hasn't been time for me to gather recommendations and build expectations.

I got to take this kind of trip recently when my husband had an opportunity to go to Australia for work. I knew plenty of people who had been to Australia and had a great time; I'd just never felt the pull to go myself or paid close attention to what was there. We would spend most of our weeklong visit in Sydney, so we decided to balance that out with a weekend in Blue Mountains National Park nearby.

I refrained from online research in every area except for food and hiking and accepted recommendations from just two people–one who used to and one who still lives in Sydney. I was doing so well until I got to the site written by two local enthusiasts about hikes in the Blue Mountains. They got to me. After thoroughly reviewing their insights and observations, I became convinced that we needed to do their Favorite Hike.

For the record, Favorite Hike was 8.6 miles with 4000 feet of elevation gain. At a glance, this could look like me falling plague to the classic American mentality where bigger and more is always better. That's part of it, but not the whole story. I was drawn to Favorite Hike primarily because it was not something that everyone else would do. This kind of exclusivity–the kind you pay for with a willingness to suffer and expend significant effort–is Sasha Davies catnip.

It's not likely that I would have convinced Michael to do Favorite Hike, but that wasn't what stymied my plan; our first morning there, Michael woke up in the middle of a head cold. We took it easy and wandered down the road from the hotel to what is arguably the most famous lookout point in the park, aka the exact opposite of what I thought we should do, where we could pick up one of the more well-known trails in the park.

There were a lot of people. Things got very busy inside my head. Too many selfies, too much talking, and why was the trail paved? The views were incredible, this popular trail followed a shelf at the top of an escarpment, overlooking a river valley dense with eucalyptus and more ridges and cliffs in the distance. Favorite Hike would have taken us down into that valley and up to different ridges, and by different I mean better in some way that is so deeply ingrained in my beliefs that I'm not certain I understand it.

Five minutes from the viewpoint the paved trail transitioned to dirt. Eight minutes along, the crowds thinned. Ten minutes in we heard a terrifying screech that prompted us to wonder whether dinosaurs still exist in Australia. Turned out to be enormous (1 1/2 to 2 feet long), noisy cockatoos. There were many of them–two dozen or more–and because we couldn't ignore them, we stopped to watch them soar collectively into an out of the next fold in the canyon. The pause, a minor distraction, was enough to make me forget what an utter disappointment the trail was.

An hour later I realized we had barely encountered anyone along this path. It was a stunning, windy, spring day. We saw birds with the coloring of panda bears, a fern with a duo of buds unfurling on its tips that I dubbed the Princess Leah plant, and sandstone with elaborate swirls that made me want more words for colors between beige and brown. I fought my way to a bench on a windy outcropping and it occurred to me that the trail we were on was popular because it's fantastic- both because it is easy to access and it makes ideal trajectory through this incredible landscape.

So, if you find yourself in the Blue Mountains of Australia, I highly recommend you explore the Prince Henry Cliff Walk. You can read about it all over the internet and in every guide book in or out of print. It's not difficult to get to, other people will definitely have heard of it, and it is awesome.