As long as I can remember, I was fascinated by geography. When I was a child, we had a driftwood-framed color map of Puerto Rico that my parents brought home from a trip before I was born. I stared at that map for hours, imagining what it would be like to live on a Caribbean island.
When I was in Junior High, my Mom bought a beautiful, large-format world atlas. I spent so much time flipping through those pages, imagining what life is like in different areas of the world. I was fascinated by what was outside of my narrow world.
My family didn’t travel much, and when we did, it was to areas within the Midwest that were pretty much the same as where I grew up. Travel wasn’t a priority for us, but it was always something I wished I could do.
Marrying an Adventurous Soul
I always tell people I married a hippy, but that’s not really accurate. I married a woman with an adventurous soul. For most of our marriage, I felt like the cautious person who was always saying no to every crazy idea that she had, but over time, she wore me down, and I started to see life more in the way she saw it.
For example, in 2022, on a camping trip in Colorado Springs, we were talking to a couple at a microbrewery, and they suggested that we hike the Incline, a trail on an abandoned funicular line that climbs 2,000 feet in one mile. Jenn said, “That sounds awesome, let’s do it!” I looked at her like she was crazy, but I agreed to go. It turned out to be an insanely challenging hike, but it had amazing views and was unbelievably rewarding.
Getting off the Couch
Doing the incline was a great experience, but we wouldn’t have attempted it if we weren’t in pretty good shape. I personally wouldn’t have been capable of doing it without Jenn’s persistence.
When our children were young, we found it difficult to get much activity because our lives revolved around working, cooking, watching the kids, and shuffling them to activities. But as they grew older, she insisted that we exercise more. She dragged me, kicking and screaming, into fitness, and since that time, I’ve run eight half marathons, two marathons, and an ultra marathon, usually one event each year.
Camping Against My Will
Jenn grew up camping. I absolutely did not. My family’s idea of “roughing it” was staying at a hotel that didn’t have a pool. Jenn did not accept my unwillingness to camp, and I’m glad she didn’t. When the kids were very young, we started off tent camping, then moved to a pop-up camper, and later to a full-sized travel trailer.
I enjoy camping now, but my favorite part of camping is the hiking that accompanies it. When we took the kids to Colorado in 2022, we camped for two weeks, and in that time, we were able to do some amazing hikes. My favorite was a hike to the lake next to St Mary’s Glacier at 10,000 feet.
Exploring Other Countries
I had always dreamed of visiting other countries, but other than one trip to Cancun, I had never left the United States. The main problem was always the expense of flying. I never thought we could afford to take a family of four overseas with the cost of flights. However, in 2022, I started to look into travel hacking and specifically how to use points and miles to lower the cost of our flights and hotel stays.
Travel hacking lowered the cost of our travel and allowed us to be much more adventurous than in the past. Since then, we’ve had five trips to Europe, one to Mexico (two for Jenn), a trip to Canada, and a trip to Costa Rica. It has allowed us to share these amazing locations with our kids at ages where they can truly appreciate them.
Opening the World for our Children
Our daughter, Emma, graduated from High School in 2023, and to celebrate, we went to Europe for the first time. We had a whirlwind trip, visiting Zurich, Munich, Venice, Rome, and Stockholm over the course of two weeks. During that time, we were able to share as much food, culture, and sightseeing as we could with our kids.
On the last day of our trip, Alex, who had been extremely quiet the entire trip, said that he didn’t want to go home. We honestly couldn’t tell if he was having a good time before that. He was just quietly soaking it all in. At that moment, I realized that we could take our kids anywhere and they would be happy to join us.
In 2024, we took a spring break trip to Costa Rica, where we spent some time at the beach, did some hiking, and soaked up some authentic Costa Rican culture. The thing that we all remember more than anything on that trip was visiting the Blue Falls of Costa Rica. It is a hiking location with seven amazing turquoise blue waterfalls that cascade from the side of a volcano. It was a memorable hike.
That summer, we took our camper to Hamilton, Ontario, and visited Toronto and Niagara Falls. It was crazy to me that I had never visited Canada, but it was well worth the trip across our northern border.
For Spring Break in 2025, we did something a little more adventurous and spent six days on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, where we hiked over 100 kilometers from Portugal to Spain. It was a difficult physical challenge, but it also allowed us to spend a lot of time in the Spanish countryside.
Exploring the world with our children before they were too old to tag along with Mom and Dad was something we really set out to do. I’m really grateful that in the last few years we have been able to travel in a way that I hope shaped their views on the world. What I didn’t expect was that our children wouldn’t be our only travel companions.
Our Other Travel Companions
In the fall of 2024, we went to Italy with our good friends Bill and Theresa, and Jenn’s parents, Mark and Margie. I was a little apprehensive because there is a risk that spending that much time together could result in arguments and annoyances that can ruin a relationship. Travel can be stressful and can expose problems you were unaware of.
It turned out that we had a great time with very little stress. We visited Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice, and Rome on our trip. It was a great trip, and since we had visited Venice and Rome before, we were able to show some of our favorite stops from our first visit to Italy.
We enjoyed traveling with Bill and Theresa so much that when we went to Nice, France, for the UTMB Côte d’Azur ultramarathons in September of this year, they came along and participated in the races as well. We had a great time visiting Monaco and Nice. On the way back, we stopped in Dublin, where we visited a few old pubs and toured the Jameson Distillery.
Jenn also did a girls’ trip to Playa del Carmen to celebrate her sister’s 50th birthday, as well as a trip to Munich and Dublin to celebrate our niece Zoey’s high school graduation.
While the girls were in Munich and Dublin, Alex and I took a trip to Berlin, Dresden, and Saxon Switzerland National Park in Germany. We spent time visiting the historic sites and hiking a couple of days on the Malerweg trail.
I also had the opportunity to reconnect with my old high school friends on a trip to Montana, where our friend Mat was getting married. While we were there, we did some hiking in Glacier National Park and drove the famous Going to the Sun road.
That has been a lot of travel in a short amount of time, and at times it has been stressful. But I think back to how we were just a little over a decade ago, when we were staying close to home, watching a lot of television, and not doing much physical activity. Because of Jenn’s insistence that we not rot on the couch, I’ve been able to experience the world I dreamed about visiting when I was younger.
But it hasn’t just been the fact that we’ve experienced the world; it’s the fact that those experiences have been with people who were really important to us.
Whether it has been hiking to waterfalls in Costa Rica with our kids,
Or having drinks with friends along the beach in Nice,
Or catching up with some old friends in Montana,
Or hiking with my son in Germany,
Or exploring Cinque Terre with Jenn’s Parents,
Travel is so much better when you do it with people you love.
I’m thankful to my wife, Jenn, for pushing me to do all of the things that have enriched my life over the years, and thankful to all the people who accompanied us on our journeys. I couldn’t imagine travel, or life, without you all.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Newby to Expert Traveler 