Today I want to wax poetic for a moment the virtues of travel with respect to the writer. In this day and age it is easy to hop on the internet and see pictures of faraway places to help you form a setting for a story not in your own backyard. However, even if you write fiction, there is no substitute for actually BEING in a place. To submerge all of your senses in a place: see it, smell it, taste it, feel it, touch it, hear it, is to truly experience it. Even if I am never to write a tale that takes place at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I now have recorded in my memory a unique place that may help me someday to write about the heat and odd oppression at the bottom of a canyon on a newly terraformed mars.
My point being, the more experiences you have as a writer the more sights, sounds, smells, etc. you have to draw from when writing. Additionally, traveling and experiencing new things is a wonderful source of creative inspiration. I admit that I probably have more wanderlust than most, and I further admit that you can certainly write excellent stories about a place you've never been (i.e. Jim Butcher Re: Chicago). On the other hand, aren't all great stories about a journey? ;)
Keep Writing and Edit On