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.
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