Over the past two months, I feel like we have spent more time traveling than we have at home. It has been a wild ride and I’m SO excited and happy about the fact that I get more than an entire week where I get to be home without having to catch a plane or drive more than an hour away. After saying that I’m happy to be home, I’m also extremely grateful and happy that we have had the opportunities that we have to have seen the places we have and to have traveled the way we have. These trips have been a mixture of being together and separate, plus Logan also spends a lot of nights in Rexburg because of school and his job (that he just finished working at on Thursday!). We have strived to make the time together traveling really great quality time and to also learn to still be there for one another when we are apart. I personally really struggle being away from Logan. I’m pretty sure I cry every time we have these trips apart because I am truly attached to him. He has done such a great job at making me feel loved and that he really cares about what I’m doing while I’m away. As we have been traveling and being apart so often, we feel like we have come up with some good tips for traveling together and being apart!!

• Audible- While you drive in between different states and cities, it seems like a constant battle to find the right radio station with the kind of music you like. Then once you find it, it is either a commercial or one of those five songs that you’ve heard on the radio a few too many times. When we drove to Colorado earlier this year, we knew we were going to be in the car for quite a few hours and we decided to try Audible. For signing up for the free trial, you also get a free book to listen too! We love Harry Potter and heard great things about the audiobooks and decided to give it a go. We seriously have fallen in love with these books all over again and find ourselves laughing about these different memories we have about the books. We still have our subscription to it because we’ve loved it so much! The books really help the time pass quickly and when I’m too tired to help Logan stay awake on late night drives, it helps him stay awake too.
• Notes- I love notes and love letters. Yes, I’m that cliché and hopeless romantic, but I never claimed to be anything else. When we are apart or about to travel, I usually try to write little notes and stick them in places that I know Logan will find them while I’m gone like in his laptop, in the fridge, on his pillow, etc. I haven’t been really great with this the last few times, but I always loved leaving those reminders and knowing that he would find them all at different times. Logan has also given me notes and stuck them in random pockets of my suitcase/tucked away and then told me days into my trip to look into those pockets. We take time before the other person leaves to make sure they will know they are loved.
• Postcards- This is my FAVORITE tradition that we have started with traveling and I’m just realizing that we missed a couple places we should have done this. Instead of buying trinkets or souvenirs (unless they are way cool), we buy postcards at that place and then write our favorite memory from the trip with each other. Once we have written on them, we randomly leave them for each other to find at some point and I always love finding them! Plus, postcards are a lot easier to move and store than a bunch of little trinkets 🙂
• Airbnb- We love staying at hotels and being able to soak in a hot tub and enjoy a free continental breakfast, but recently we have fallen in love with Airbnb. Airbnb gives us a chance to feel less like tourists or visitors and gives us the chance to feel like we live in a city. While we were in Spokane for a wedding, we stayed at an apartment and fell in love with the area. We went for walks on the river path behind the building and imagined what our lives would be like if we lived there, in that city and that apartment. And it’s been way more affordable than hotels when we’ve used it!
• Food & Leisure- I’m super guilty of being a picky eater. I don’t like to be brave and try new foods too often, but we have been trying to eat at new places or finding a recommended place each time we go out to really try new things. That often means we try the local pizza place, but pizza is always good, right? We also love playing frisbee golf and have started packing it on our trips with hopes that we will have some down time to find a course and play.
• Conversation- While we are apart, we actually don’t text a lot for a couple reasons. First, I’m the world’s worst texter. I realize days later that I need to get back to people. Secondly, we are busy people and we don’t always take the time for texting. This means that we can have longer and more in depth conversations at night about what we did, not every conversation is super lengthy though. We also try to make our conversations more meaningful while we are apart by asking questions like what are you hoping to accomplish tomorrow and how did your to-do list go today? These are things that help us stay connected to one another on a deeper level than how are you? At least this works for us!! We also use our time in the car driving to work and talk through a lot of ideas, goals, and plans. And I always have a notebook or 3 to write things down in to remember what we talked about. Logan always knows that I have a million things to talk about as we drive and then halfway through the drive, we finally turn on audible because I’m finally out of things to ask and talk about. This is how we even come up with some blog topics, styled shoot ideas, and all of our other crazy plans.
• Coming home- There was a trip once that I took and when I came home, I wanted Logan to be at the airport waiting with flowers in hand. But he wasn’t and I was disappointed and frustrated. Those unsaid expectations made what should have been a happy moment, not as happy. I completely take the blame for that moment because I had something envisioned in my mind that wasn’t necessary for me to be happy. Would flowers have been nice? Yes, but were they the key to my happiness? No. Logan was and should have been the thing that made the happiest about being home, not the flowers. Since that time, I have been greeted with flowers, but I also now know, that I would rather be greeted with that smile of his, a great big hug, and that whispered I love you, more than any bouquet of flowers.

I know traveling looks different for us than a lot of people because we don’t have kids, but we hope there is something insightful in here for you to take into consideration for trips you take together or even when you will be apart for just part of a day or a few.

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