This Couple Has Their Distinct Way Of Traveling And Emphasizes Exploring Destinations Locally
What is GAFFL?

GAFFL connects solo travelers with similar itineraries to explore destinations together. Whether you are backpacking in Asia, road tripping in Australia, or exploring national parks in the US, simply type the destination you are traveling to, find travelers who are going there at the same time as you, connect with them, plan trips, meet, and travel together.

Esther and Jacob
Esther and Jacob run one of the largest travel blogs and have spent the last 6 years moving to a new city every year.
5th Dec | 5 min read

Table of Contents

    At GAFFL, we love to publish inspiring travel stories from adventurers around the world. You can connect with adventurers from 170+ countries on GAFFL, meet up, and explore destinations together. In this post, we are featuring Esther and Jacob, a couple-traveler and professional travel bloggers.

    Esther and Jacob run one of the largest travel blogs and have spent the last 6 years moving to a new city every year. They are passionate about encouraging people to explore their greater backyard and are currently based in Las Vegas. You can also follow them on Instagram.


    Join The GAFFL Newsletter

    Join our subscriber list to receive the best tips on solo travel, helpful travel guides, inspirational travel stories, and more. You can unsubscribe anytime with just one click.

    SUBSCRIBE

    What Inspired Us To Travel Together

     Before the meeting, we both loved to travel, so it was natural to continue doing it together.


    Our Travel Frequency

     We currently aim to travel no more than 25% of the year, although in past years we’ve been closer to 50- 60% of the year.


    Since we mostly travel domestically, most of our trips are 5-7 days. When we travel internationally, our trips will extend more depending on how long the travel days are. We always miss our cats when we’re away if we can’t bring them along.


    How We Pick Next Travel Destination And Prepare For It

    Esther loves making lists, so she always has an ever-growing bucket list of places we want to see. We usually break it down to local adventures, weekend getaways, longer road trips, places we have to fly to, and international spots.

    Once we have a trip booked, we do a ton of research on what we want to see and what content we need to capture for the blog. We typically try to prioritize one big activity for the day, where we want to be at sunrise or sunset, and places we want to eat. We then have a running list of other spots we want to check out that we can fill in as we go.


    How We Pack For Our Trips

    We do our best to travel as light as we can. On most trips, we each have a small carry-on bag + backpack. On shorter trips, we can usually share one carry one and each has a backpack.


    We usually pack based on what type of activities we’re doing but camera gear, laptop, travel power strip to charge all our electronics, and layers since Esther tends to get cold.

    Favorite Memory Of Meeting New People

    Whenever we get a chance to meet locals, it helps us get to know a city better. Because we moved each year, we made fast friends who want to adventure with. It was fun seeing their favorite spots in the city but also discovering new spots together.


    We also love exploring the National Parks and try to get insight from the rangers as much as possible. They can often times tell you off the beaten spots and give tips on how to avoid crowds.


    Favorite Destination And Bucket List

    When it comes to travel bloggers, we’re more slow travelers and are much lower on country count. Esther’s favorite spot is Italy for the food, whereas my favorite trip is to the Galapagos Islands.


    If we could go anywhere international on our next trip, it would be Antarctica.

    Travel Apps Or Website We Use

    When researching for a trip, we heavily rely on other blogs and destination sites for tips and Instagram for photography locations. We usually create our own google maps with pins on all the spots we want to visit. Otherwise, we don’t use other apps especially for travel.


    If the timing works out to be around the new moon and we’re shooting astrophotography, we use photo pills to help us plan our milky way shots.

    Our Encouragement To Start Our Own Travel Blog And Its Mission

    The blog started as a hobby after Esther left her wedding photography business. She started out by blogging our past travels, but as she grew an organic following, she started focusing on creating posts that would be a resource she would want when planning a trip. A good mix of inspirational content with beautiful photos + information and insider tips to help us on our adventures.


    We hope our site encourages people to explore locally and our greater backyard. When we left Atlanta, where we spent most of our lives, we realized how much we took it for granted. We never wanted to do that again. Our three main goals for ourselves and our readers are:

    -      to be grateful for whatever circumstances we find our lives in

    -      to see our hometown, state, or country with fresh eyes

    -      to be open to new experiences and take baby steps outside our comfort zone

    Traveling On A Budget And Managing Cost

    We keep an eye out for deals but I wouldn’t describe us as budget travelers. Now that we’re older, we know what level of comfort we’re seeking when we travel and don’t mind paying for it. We typically have an overall budget for each trip we try to stay within and use that as a guideline.


    Biggest Challenges To Traveling

    Right now our cats are the main reason we don’t want to travel as much. They are getting older and we don’t want to be away too long since they both have major health issues. Esther also recently really got into plants so there’s, even more, to take care of at home.


    Managing Work And Travel Simultaneously

    Since our travel blog is our main source of income, when we travel, it’s 90% of the time work. We always try to make the most of our travels to capture the content we need and get first-hand experience that we can pass on to our readers. We joke that vacation for us is the time at home doing nothing or watching Netflix.


    With that said, we’ve tried to find a good balance when traveling. Since we know what we enjoy doing, we focus on planning our days around them first. For us, that’s photography spots and food. We also leave some flexible time in between to relax or explore new spots that we learn about from locals.

    New to our blog? Here are some of our inspiring solo traveler's stories worth checking! 


    Other cool travel stories you might enjoy!

    Join The GAFFL Newsletter

    Join our subscriber list to receive the best tips on solo travel, helpful travel guides, inspirational travel stories, and more. You can unsubscribe anytime with just one click.

    SUBSCRIBE