The only thing more enjoyable than visiting unfamiliar places is sharing them with a familiar person. Jim became familiar to me after reuniting at a friend outing nearly four years after our first encounter. As our time spent together increased, so did my awareness that we had many similar passions, particularly traveling. After completing separate character-defining study aboard trips, we were both left envisioning other far-off destinations.

In our two years as couple, we’ve obviously grown quite fond of each other. But what has strengthened our bond is our travels. We’ve ventured to Hawaii and voyaged on a very odd circumstance road-trip (doesn’t everyone have one of those?) from our hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota to Spokane, Washington. More recently we spent a weekend seeing Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. While not an exotic locale, it was on my mile-long list of places to see. Since the list also includes locations such as Easter Island and Mount Kilimanjaro, Jim wisely suggested that we “start with the cheapest and easiest place to get to.”

No matter the place though, my experience is enriched by knowing our eyes are sharing the same sights. It’s one thing to come return home with a memory card full of pictures, it’s another to be able to be reminisce about how a humpback whale breathtakingly came within 25 feet of us while kayaking in Maui. Even a camera with the most megapixels can’t capture that.

For now, our paths seem to be headed in the same direction – we’ve got planned and unplanned trips galore. And as we discover each new location I’m more certain that he makes up a lot of my world and whatever remains, we’ll explore together.