Our planet is full of weird, wonderful, and generally crazy stuff. Take the above image for example. This isn’t the product of some psilocybin-addled sci-fi graphic designer, but a bird’s-eye view of Icelandic glacial pools. Such psychedelic and otherworldly vistas can still seem foreign to us, despite the fact that they exist right here on Earth.

So get out there and explore it: Traveling more makes us all more self-aware, creative and culturally-conscious, Jonah Lehrer writes in this fairly-ancient-but-still-relevant article in The Guardian. The piece admittedly presents an idealized view of travel. People do not book flights to Benidorm in search of the transcendental, and those headed to the bars of Bangkok are unlikely to be going for the cuisine. However, evidence of our drive to explore new frontiers, from the sea, to the skies, to outer space, is woven through human history.

Bill Nye the science dude makes this point in the YouTube web series Big Think. Admittedly, he veers off into explaining why discovering extraterrestrial species would be GDP-positive (because who cares about intergalactic warfare when we need to shrink that damn budget deficit.) His initial point remains valid though: It’s good to explore.