Boldly Going Where Alot of Gardening Gnomes Go

When I was younger and was sans offspring, I did quiet a bit of world traveling, backpacker style. It was an enjoyable past time and one that I hope that I can return to sometime in the future.

My thoughts often return to this wish when the weather gets colder, simply because I don’t have my beloved gardening to distract me. I fantasize about running away to far away locals where I don’t speak the language and there is a good chance I don’t read it either.

Then a child screams and another screams back and I am forced to leave exotic fantasies in order to break up warring factions of siblings. I realize at these times that I have a few years to yet before I can go gallivanting around the world again.

But it would be nice to be able to do so vicariously through a friend.

Lately, a lot of press has been thrown around about garden gnomes pulling up roots, so to speak, and going on whirlwind adventures. It is not always clear whether these adventures are voluntary or not, but so far no gnome kidnapping charges have been filed.

Traveling garden gnomes… I am thinking that this is a good patch for my travel fixation. Pawn off a gnome on a childless friend who still has the freedom to wander the world and force them to report back regularly. Sounds good to me.

The problem is that I, personally, would not want to lug around a bulky, ceramic garden gnome. These days, with the way security is at US airports, you could have some pretty uncomfortable questions to answer when they found that in your bag. I would hate to find out that I was responsible for a friend getting strip searched. Unless the TSA agent was cute, then I wouldn’t feel as bad. But still.

But never fear, I have found a solution to my traveling gnome conundrum. Gnomads.

These pint size garden gnomes travel well and they have their own websites where their traveling companions can post all of their antics and activities. With this, I would just have to sit back and watch the fun as it happens.

Then again, I wonder how hard it would be to convince a friend that one of my kids are actually oversized garden gnomes. They say travel is good for kids. I think it is also pretty mentally healthy for parents when kids travel with someone else.