Welcome! I’m Jess: traveler, blogger, hiker, runner, avid Peloton user, reader, vegetarian cook, and latte drinker. Since early 2021, my husband (Dominic / Dom) and I have been traveling the US regularly while working as actuaries – I have a remote job and Dom has a flexible, hybrid job, so he goes into an office when we’re home. We’ve learned quite a bit about traveling in the last few years, so I’m here to share it all – including favorite restaurants / coffee shops / hikes, unfortunate mistakes we’ve made, and easy recipes to make at an Airbnb, or at home when you want an easy recipe.

My love of exploring new places doesn’t take away from how much I also love being home in central Illinois. I’m always a little sad to leave a new town or National Park that we’ve fallen in love with, but I always recover after a few days. Some favorite “home” things for me are using my favorite coffee mugs and throw blankets, working from local coffee shops, meeting up with friends, running on our town’s incredible paved trails, and being reunited with my second love: our Peloton.

Where We’ve Traveled – in the US

In the last few years, we’ve traveled exclusively in the US for a few reasons:

  • Most importantly, we both work US-based jobs. When we’re traveling, we work during the day and explore on weekends, evenings, and on occasional PTO days. Traveling internationally requires significantly more PTO, so we’ve been building that up over the last few years.
  • While there’s obviously way more to explore outside of the US, the US has quite a bit to see, too. We’re working through the US National Parks and the places that friends, other blogs, and travel books recommend.
  • COVID. It made it tricky to travel beyond the US when we first started traveling regularly in 2021.

So, in the US, I’ve been to the following states:

  • Alabama: Orange Beach
  • Arizona: Phoenix for a month + a few weekend trips; Tucson for 10 days; Grand Canyon National Park
  • Arkansas: Fayetteville for two weeks; a few day trips while visiting Dom’s family in Southwest Missouri; biking the Razorback Greenway in Northwest Arkansas
  • California: Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood; San Francisco; Joshua Tree for 9 days
  • Colorado: Boulder for a month; Boulder again for a week; skiing in Winter Park and Breckenridge; Estes Park / Rocky Mountain National Park for our wedding
  • Florida: Disney World (countless times – I started blogging about Disney trips in 2020); St. Petersburg and Clearwater for work trips; Miami / Fort Lauderdale for the Taylor Swift Era’s Tour; our first trip together was to Destin for a few days in college
  • Georgia: outside of Atlanta for a Spring Break volunteer trip
  • Hawaii: Kauai for a week; Maui for a week
  • Idaho: one night while driving through
  • Illinois: lived here since 2014! Dom grew up in Springfield, Illinois; I interned in Chicago for two summers
  • Indiana: various running races; driving through many times
  • Iowa: driving through / one-night stays on road trips out west
  • Kansas: driving through; day-trips while visiting Dom’s family in Southwest Missouri
  • Kentucky: driving through; visiting Dom’s family + his cousin’s wedding
  • Louisiana: driving through; visiting extended family
  • Maine: visited Acadia and Bar Harbor with friends for a few days
  • Massachusetts: Boston with friends; Boston again for a work trip
  • Michigan: the Upper Peninsula (Munising and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore) with Dom’s sister
  • Minnesota: a work trip; a friend’s wedding
  • Mississippi: driving through
  • Missouri: Dom’s sisters and other family live here; we both interned in St. Louis; driving through countless times
  • Montana: we spent our honeymoon at Triple Creek Ranch in Darby, MT
  • Nebraska: driving through; a few nights in Omaha
  • Nevada: Las Vegas a handful of times + a day trip from Vegas to the Hoover Dam and Boulder City, NV
  • New Hampshire: driving through
  • New Jersey: a work trip to Jersey City (right across from NYC)
  • New Mexico: driving through; 9 days in Santa Fe
  • New York: driving through
  • North Carolina: Asheville for a long weekend
  • Ohio: Cincinnati for the Western & Southern Open (tennis tournament); I was born in Ohio and my extended family lives there, so I visited several times a year growing up
  • Oklahoma: driving through; I also grew up a short drive across the Red River in North Texas so we would cross over for restaurants and events
  • Pennsylvania: a two-week work trip in Philadelphia
  • South Carolina: our first COVID trip was to Charleston for a long weekend in Summer 2020
  • South Dakota: Mount Rushmore and Rapid City; the Corn Palace
  • Tennessee: driving through and visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park
  • Texas: I grew up in North Texas
  • Utah: we’ve done a few trips to Salt Lake City – once for a month, once for two weeks, and once for a long weekend; we’ve visited all five National Parks in Utah (Arches, Bryce, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Zion)
  • Vermont: a week-long stay in the small town of Ludlow before meeting up with friends in Maine / Boston; while we were there, we section-hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail / the Long Trail
  • Virginia: visiting George Washington’s Mount Vernon during a D.C. trip in high school
  • Washington: a long weekend in Seattle shortly after our college graduations
  • Wisconsin: several weekend trips to Madison / skiing at Cascade Mountain; Green Bay and Door County for Dom’s races; biking the Badger State Trail; driving through
  • Wyoming: driving through; visited Yellowstone National Park / West Yellowstone
At Waihe’e Ridge Trail in Wailuku, Maui, Hawaii (2024)

Where We’ve Traveled – Internationally

Like I mentioned earlier, we’ve been really focusing on US travel in the last few years, but prior to that we had both been a few places internationally.

In college:

  • I went on a ten-day trip to Germany; I visited Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Potsdam and Munich
  • Dom went to Kenya twice on volunteer trips

After college:

  • One of our friends was living in Thailand, so we went with a group of our other friends to visit her. We went to Chiang Mai (our favorite part of the trip), Bangkok, and Phuket.
  • Dom and his sister went to Hungary (Budapest) and Germany (Berlin and Potsdam)
With friends after a cooking class in Chiang Mai in Thailand (2019)

Travel Blogging

In 2016 and 2017, I started two college blogs. In 2020, I started a Disney travel blog because we were traveling to Disney World pretty regularly after COVID. In late 2022, I started Today With Jess due to our shift away from Disney trips; I wanted a more generic blog title.

Our very favorite way to travel is to book long-term rentals, usually via Airbnb, so we can get to know the towns we visit. Since 2021, we’ve booked month-long trips three times (Salt Lake City, Utah; Phoenix, Arizona; and Boulder, Colorado), and Dom booked a three-month long Airbnb over the summer of 2016. We’ve also booked trips that are 1-2 weeks long several times, including:

  • Salt Lake City, Utah (2 weeks)
  • Boulder, Colorado (8 days)
  • Tucson, Arizona (10 days)
  • Joshua Tree, California (10 days)
  • Santa Fe, New Mexico (9 days)
  • Ludlow, Vermont (1 week)
  • Kauai, Hawaii (two separate places, but 8 days total)
  • Maui, Hawaii (8 days)
  • Fayetteville, Arkansas (2 weeks)

We’ve learned from a few mistakes along the way (most importantly, not to overpack — we brought entirely too much with us on our first month-long trip and still laugh about it). I’ve dedicated a lot of time to creating resources for myself to make sure that I don’t make the same mistakes again, since sometimes there’s a pretty big gap between similar trips that we book. I share those resources here, too, like my checklist below for what to check / think about in an Airbnb listing before booking one for longer than a few days.

Recipe Blogging

I cooked a lot in college – I loved planning big meals and inviting friends over. When I first started working after graduating from college, I was taking certification exams and working in consulting, so I wasn’t cooking much. We sometimes ordered meal prep services when Dom and I were both studying, and Dom did a lot of the cooking when I had to work late nights. After switching jobs, changing to a fully remote job, and having more free-time due to the COVID shut-downs, I started cooking more often. It quickly became something I looked forward to.

There are few things as exciting to me as trying out a new recipe and adding it to my rotation of things to make, so I hope that sharing my personal recipes, and compilations of my favorite recipes from other bloggers, will be happy and useful for you, too.

Mini Chickpea & Veggie Pot Pie

Why I Blog

  • I love sharing our favorite restaurants, coffee shops, hikes, etc. after we travel somewhere new. I always hope that it helps other people while they’re planning trips to the same locations, and I love looking back on old posts and reading the details I may have otherwise forgotten.
  • I’m always trying to think of vegetarian recipes I can easily make while cooking in an Airbnb kitchen, which can sometimes be challenging since I don’t always have all of the oils, seasonings, etc. that I have at home. I hope that sharing my easy recipes makes it easier for others to cook while they’re traveling because, while I love going out to eat while traveling, I know sometimes I just want to make something easy at the house instead.
  • I want to prevent people from making some of the mistakes that we’ve made on our long-term trips. It’s easy to overlook things, especially if it’s been a while since your last trip. I’m always grateful for the various lists I have saved when we book a type of travel we haven’t done in a while – whether it’s a month-long stay where we bring a few extra things from home, or a biking trip where we need all of our cycling gear.

Where We’re Heading Next

I don’t really do bucket lists, but if I did, visiting all of the US National Parks would be near the top of my list. Below is the full list of all 63 US National Parks – I’ve crossed off and dated the 14 we’ve already been to:

  • AK: Denali National Park and Preserve
  • AK: Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve
  • AK: Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve
  • AK: Katmai National Park and Preserve
  • AK: Kenai Fjords National Park
  • AK: Kobuk Valley National Park
  • AK: Lake Clark National Park and Preserve
  • AK: Wrangell–Saint Elias National Park and Preserve
  • AS: National Park of American Samoa
  • AZ: Grand Canyon National Park ☑️ (2022)
  • AZ: Petrified Forest National Park
  • AZ: Saguaro National Park ☑️ (2022 & 2024)
  • AR: Hot Springs National Park
  • CA: Channel Islands National Park
  • CA: Death Valley National Park (also located in Nevada)
  • CA: Joshua Tree National Park ☑️ (2024)
  • CA: Kings Canyon National Park
  • CA: Lassen Volcanic National Park
  • CA: Pinnacles National Park
  • CA: Redwood National Park
  • CA: Sequoia National Park
  • CA: Yosemite National Park
  • CO: Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
  • CO: Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
  • CO: Mesa Verde National Park
  • CO: Rocky Mountain National Park ☑️ (2022)
  • FL: Biscayne National Park
  • FL: Dry Tortugas National Park
  • FL: Everglades National Park
  • HA: Haleakala National Park ☑️ (2024)
  • HA: Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
  • IN: Indiana Dunes National Park
  • KY: Mammoth Cave National Park (🗓️ booked for 2025)
  • ME: Acadia National Park ☑️ (2022)
  • MI: Isle Royale National Park
  • MN: Voyageurs National Park
  • MO: Gateway Arch National Park
  • MT: Glacier National Park (🗓️ tentatively planned for 2025)
  • NV: Death Valley National Park
  • NV: Great Basin National Park
  • NM: Carlsbad Caverns National Park
  • NM: White Sands National Park
  • ND: Theodore Roosevelt National Park
  • OH: Cuyahoga Valley National Park ☑️ (2022)
  • OR: Crater Lake National Park
  • SC: Congaree National Park
  • SD: Badlands National Park
  • SD: Wind Cave National Park
  • TN: Great Smoky Mountains National Park ☑️ (2022)
  • TX: Big Bend National Park
  • TX: Guadalupe Mountains National Park
  • VI: Virgin Islands National Park
  • UT: Arches National Park ☑️ (2022)
  • UT: Bryce Canyon National Park ☑️ (2022)
  • UT: Canyonlands National Park ☑️ (2021)
  • UT: Capitol Reef National Park ☑️ (2021)
  • UT: Zion National Park ☑️ (2021)
  • VA: Shenandoah National Park
  • WA: Mount Rainier National Park
  • WA: North Cascades National Park
  • WA: Olympic National Park
  • WV: New River Gorge National Park and Preserve
  • WY: Grand Teton National Park
  • WY: Yellowstone National Park ☑️ (2024)

Unrelated to National Parks, we have a few new-to-us things picked out that we’re hoping to go to or do in the next few years. As of early 2025, our list is visiting:

  • Nashville, Tennessee
  • New York City
  • Garden of the Gods in Southern Illinois
  • The new Universal Epic Universe park in Florida
  • London and other parts of England / UK
  • The Walt Disney Hometown Museum in Marceline, Missouri

We’re also hoping to:

  • Do a night or two of backpacking; we’ve never been but have always talked about it
  • Go to other professional tennis tournaments (we’ve been to the Cincinnati Open several times) – particularly Indian Wells in California and / or the Miami Open
Hiking at Joshua Tree National Park (2024)

Follow Me On Social!

The only social media account I’m currently using regularly is my reading-focused Instagram @today.jess.read (this is often called a Bookstagram). Following me on Instagram is the best way to see 1) what I’m reading and 2) travel updates.

Interested in Travel Blogging?

I’ve been following Mike + Laura Travel for a few years, and have listened to quite a few of their videos – I’ve been taking their advice on how to set up this blog, and I’ve seen some real improvements since then. Mike + Laura are hosting a virtual Travel Blogging Summit on Friday, February 21st – Sunday, February 23rd. There will be over 15 guest speakers and 6-months of access to replay videos. I’m excited to attend and learn more from other travel bloggers – click here to sign up and join me!

Thanks for reading!

-Jess