4.5 Tips for Traveling With Your Partner(s)

Oh hi readers. I’m home!! After 2 (non-consecutive) months of travel this summer, I am landed back in my beautiful tiny house.

The morning writing spot

In the woods around me, small animals crunch and crash. The bucks that leap our fences have grown their points. We’re building a chicken coop in the woodshop, and getting ready for fall activities - hosting Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a wedding; my chef husband cooking endless meals; welcoming new landmates and friends traveling through.

This article is a little gift to those who want to deepen with their family, friends, and maybe community if you have a big enough car, through traveling together.

Every summer, my husband and I take a road trip.

A…LONG road trip.

Often, we meet up with my mom for part of this trip, since she loves traveling but has a hard time doing it alone. So it’s the two or three of us - very different, very opinionated people - stuck in a car together. For days at a time.

We have had to develop some good survival and thrival strategies. Here are 4.5 of my favorites:

1. Moderate Your Interaction Levels

When I first started traveling with Geof, I had a very particular fear. This was going to be a lot of time together. What if I ran out of things to talk about??

Turns out, especially if you’re on a road trip, you…do not need to talk all the time. It is, in fact, useful to have some alternative strategies.

Here are things we do “together” in the car:

1. Listen to music that we know we both like. Glass Animals, Linkin Park, Run the Jewels, and Brass Against are some of our favorites for traveling, if only because the driver can’t fall asleep listening to them. Shane Koyczan is great for spoken word poetry that makes us cry and incites conversation.

2. Listen to a book together. This last trip, we listened to Peter Zeihan’s The Accidental Superpower, and man did that keep us engaged. We’ll sometimes listen to work-related books like Crucial Leadership so we can discuss them together, and sometimes find a good fantasy to put on.

3. Wikipedia. If a fact in question comes up, the passenger(s) have to look it up and read out any interesting bits of the answer.

4. Read/listen to books separately. Geof will put his headphones in while he drives (he is always the driver) and I’ll read from the passenger seat.

5. Talk about our histories. We often get into stories about our pasts and childhoods on road trips. It’s fun to talk about our relationship to towns we’re traveling through, or memories the trip brings up for us.

6. Talk about our relationship. Okay, this one is definitely interaction-based. We do most of our personal relationship and family therapy in the car.

7. Call friends. Social support is really useful for long trips. One person puts in headphones, the other talks to a buddy. If on a non-road trip, I usually take these calls on walks around the area I’m traveling in.

8. Google cool places to visit. If one person needs space, it’s a great time for the other to look up sights to see at your destination or where you’re passing through. Bonus points if you describe these sites to your partner(s) in your best Terrible Tour Guide voice, when they’re ready to hear what you found.

The most important tip here is to ask your partner(s) what type of interaction they want. If you’ve been talking for a while and/or one person seems distracted, ask: “Is conversation still feeling fun? Would you prefer some alone time, or to listen to a book together?

Geof taking a call while we pick blueberries

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