Honestly, I think of one or another of these common myths regarding solo travel just about every time I’m set to leave on a trip!

I firmly believe that if we don’t take risks in our lives, we’re just stuck on an endless and monotonous treadmill. It’s best to address these myths head-on:

Solo Travel is Dangerous

Crossing the street is dangerous – if you don’t look both ways before you do. I think that while it’s true there is some vulnerability to solo travelers on the road, most of it is mitigated by common sense and trusting your instincts.

Say you turn a corner in a strange city at night and suddenly you’re thrust into the darkness of little to no streetlights. Common sense tells you that it’s safer to go back to the light.

Likewise, if your driving route takes you over a mountain pass and the weather report forecasts a couple of feet of snow, you should probably listen to the experts and go another way.

How often has your gut told you that there’s something off with a person or a situation? Listen to that inner wisdom! It’s there for a reason.

Solo Travel is Expensive

“Two can live as cheaply as one.” A corollary might be that “two can travel as cheaply as one.” Certainly sharing gas and motel fees on a road trip are cheaper if spread among two or more people.

I would argue, however, that you’re bound to save money when you’re on your own. At the very least, you’re only going to pay for exactly what you want. When you travel with others, often you’ll do something on their agenda that you would not likely choose if alone, and thus not pay for it.

So what I’d say is that it probably evens out – solo travel is more expensive in some realms, but you save in others by focusing on yourself and your interests.

It’s not necessarily cheaper, but it’s not wildly more expensive, either.

Solo Travel is Lonely

Being alone is not the same thing as being lonely. While I have had “blue” moments on solo road trips or other travel adventures, they’ve been transitory.

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Feeling alone has always been more than balanced out by meeting strangers and discovering what these new people add to my life-in-the-moment. It could be a sex hookup (as in my almost-memoir, Wanderslut 1996). It could be a motherly waitress in an empty diner on a rainy night. It could be an enthusiastic college-aged tour guide in a museum. It could be a bunch of friendly guys on a dance floor.

Honestly, isn’t that why we venture out alone anyway? To find some answers – which so often come in the form of new people.

When I was a kid I really internalized the parental advice “don’t speak to strangers.” I think the opposite should be advice for adults: “Don’t NOT speak to strangers!”

Solo Travel is Not Fun

“How am I gonna have any fun if my friends aren’t around?”

It’s all about the definition of “fun.” If you limit the definition of fun things to what you are used to doing with friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc., then you’re already handicapping yourself.

Solo travel requires you to get out of your comfort zone and go for the possibility of what might be: Going for a spiritually uplifting hike in the red rocks of Sedona. Taking in a movie on the spur of the moment as the only patron in the theater. Eating lunch at a hole-in-the-wall diner (that your friends would die rather than go to) because it just looks interesting to you.

These few examples are part of a world of experience – fun experience – that you will only know if you push yourself.

People Will Think You’re a Loser

This actually speaks to your own insecurities (or MY own insecurities) more than anything else. (Maybe it’s only my common myth about solo travel!)

I went to school with a young woman whose last name was Campellone (pronounced “camp-alone”). When one of our teachers asked her, during a roll call, if she enjoyed that – camping alone – she replied with (I’m sure a well-rehearsed) “I have no choice.”

I remembered that because it was so funny. But that’s the fear – you’re only on this trip by yourself because everyone you know hates you and doesn’t want to travel with you.

The truth is that people will admire you and your “bravery” for venturing out on your own. This goes for the people you meet while on the road as well as the friends and relatives back home, who will often say things like “I could never do that, go on a trip by myself, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

It takes a certain strength to blaze a trail and solo travelers should congratulate themselves every time they do it.