My DH and I have very similar vacation styles. When we first got married, we had no money so we went camping. After a few years, we started going on beach vacations. For a very long time, this was our plan. Lay on the beach all day, go out to dinner at night, quiet evening. We definitely prefer renting houses and have done so almost exclusively over the years. When kids came along, we started camping again(for shorter periods) and still did beach vacations. Never been on a cruise.. neither of us has any desire to.

We mostly do vacations on our own. Neither of us like waiting for other people. When our kids got older, we started to do more active vacations.. Hawaii, Costa Rica, etc.

We just got back from 2 weeks in Italy.. our first European trip. I think we are hooked! Can't wait to plan the next one.

We spend the summer on the east coast and winters on the west coast. Next week, we'll drive cross-country. This will be our third year of driving west in the fall and back east in the spring. We stop here and there and take about 8 or 9 days to travel. Lots of car time! My DH and I are both quiet people.. I don't talk alot. So lots of quiet times. We are both comfortable with that.

Lots of questions! DH won't fly so all of our vacations are on the road. Sometimes driving directly to one location and staying. Sometimes real road trips where we stay in one spot for only a day or two. We're pretty compatible travelers. Neither of us are scenic route people when we have a goal and we don't mind 10-12 hours of driving per day. A few years ago we drove out west. Our first "goal" spot was 21 hours away. Someone later said to me "So. You left on Saturday. You got there when, Tuesday?" Um no. Sunday. In time for cocktails before dinner. :-) We never stop for leisurely lunches.

Most of our time is spent together on vacation but we have no problem with splitting up for the afternoon/day if we have different things we want to do. The lengths of our vacations vary. Anywhere from a few days to several weeks. We do sometimes take trips alone. I've flown to visit friends out of state and we've both driven to places the other was not interested in visiting.

I really dislike staying at other people's houses so even when visiting family or friends is part of the itinerary we almost always stay in motels/efficiencies. Or, if we are going to be in one spot for a week or more, we will rent a cabin or house.

Like your husband, mine has a hobby that he would do constantly if he had his way. It's something I can take part in too but I don't want to be doing it all day, every day. We do have to compromise (and sometimes argue) about that.

Your DH would probably like my house in Cathedral City - lots of golf courses in the neighborhood, but I don't play.

My parents used to take road trips when I was little, but they stopped after I was about 15, and probably should have stopped sooner, as they did not travel well together. They had very different tastes. My father liked C&W music (which my mother hated), and my mother liked Classical music, which I think would put my father to sleep, or at least he would look bored and irritable. My father also had a bad habit of passing gas in the car and then laughing about it when everyone complained. Another bad habit was chewing tobacco - I won't go into details about that. Plus, they liked different restaurants. My father liked truck stops or small diners, and my mother preferred more formal restaurants, which made my father uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable in the truck stops and diners as a small child because everyone would stare at anyone who entered the restaurant when they first got there. My mother was very formal and proper, and my father was more like Stanley Kowalski. My mother liked to go to the opera, ballet, and symphony, and my father liked to go to rodeos, of which there was no shortage in central Texas. I generally went to the opera, ballet, and symphony alone with my mother, to take my father's place.

My mother would not fly, and so all of her trips were by car or train.

I'm just describing my parents because I do not have a SO, although I had on occasion traveled with friends or my brother.

I like both road trip and flying get-aways. But I definitely prefer sight-seeing to sit-and-relax vacations. I can sit and relax at home; I don't need to pay $$ and travel somewhere to do it. In the last few years I've done a camping road trip through Northern California, an unconventional trip to Hawaii's Big Island (volcano, freezing temperatures, caves, and a rodeo, but almost no beach time), and a trip to France and Spain. I do a couple weekend camping trips every year with friends that involve a lot of sitting and talking. That is to say, they are more about friends than about travel.

We have very different travel styles! I like to stay put for a few days, spend time seeing what’s around. DH is a guy on the move, he can’t stand to stay in a hotel more than a night or two. A resort would drive him crazy. I’d love to spend a week at a cottage resort somewhere (full American plan, please!) and go for a short hike whenever I want, or linger in a chair with a good book or puzzle, or walk around town, etc. He has to have some purpose, like the hike leads to a monument or some such, and a plan for everything. The phrase “what shall we do today?” is never heard on our vacations.

Lars, there are many similarities with your parents and mine except with more everyday things relating to the Midwest living . Mom and dad had an on and off love hate passion that finally ended in divorce when I was a teen. It was a relief!

My husband and I travel very well together. I like height to land and he likes water so we try to stay in areas that have both within a reasonable distance. We recently started traveling a bit differently in that we prefer to stay in one spot longer and do mini trips from the hub. We love old European cities, we both love dining where the locals go, drinking the local wine and experiencing delectables from the bakeries . We both like to sit in outdoor cafes and people watch. After the last very successful trip to the south of France we have decided that going right before or on the cusp of high season is the way to go as we had the opportunity to met and talk to more locals. Oh, and we both prefer to stay in two bedroom apartments or homes. We use one bedroom for luggage and a sort of dressing room. The accommodations need not be grand but must be nice, nice and clean. My husband likes to spend endless hours looking for the best flight deals. I spend endless hours looking for the best places to stay that are in a convenient location. I also go with a list of restaurants that locals love. The only thing husband does not like that I do is going to art galleries. He’s a good sport though.

My dh and I have a similar sense of travel adventure. We like to establish a "base camp" and then explore from there. In 2017, we rented an apartment in Venice and did day trips from there. It was so nice not to live out of a suitcase in a hotel. Fortunately he doesn't mind walking all over creation with me, which is my preferred way to explore.

We too establish a base "home" (preferring to rent privately owned homes) and take day trips from there. This has served us well in many different locations, including the UK, Mexico, Iceland, and most recently New Mexico. We typically take two weeks or more at a time, which is long enough to settle in and really experience the places we go. Although we're obviously tourists, we like to immerse ourselves in local life as much as we can. We aren't the types to do group tours or otherwise allow someone else to organize our time for us. We spend hours researching ahead of time and enjoy planning our own itinerary.

We generally travel well together. In fact, I find I really miss his constant presence when we return home and get back to our normal routine. We discovered a few years ago that we both love to hike together, so our trips are now planned largely around that activity. We both also enjoy museums and other sightseeing activities. We aren't much into restaurants (although we will go to local low-key places), and not into nightlife at all. I'm actually surprised at how well we travel together.

Sometimes I might like to poke around in the shops and he'll tolerate that to an extent, but doesn't really enjoy it for too long. I try to limit those sorts of things so we can focus on things we both enjoy doing.

I still travel with my mom from time to time as well, and we are so eerily alike that we are always on the same wavelength about what we want to do and see. I count myself quite lucky to have these two people in my life who like so much of what I do. There really aren't any others I can say that about now.

My husband and I are compatible in every way with our travel and vacation styles, with the one major exception being that I do not share his love for climbing (Eiffel Tower, St. Paul’s Cathedral. Duomo, to name a few). i will walk and hike for miles, so we manage to always keep active. We have been fortunate to have had some memorable vacations with our adult children: Europe (Poland, Prague, Vienna and London) in 2017 and California wine drinking and coast road (not simultaneousl) last year. We enjoy escaping the harsh Massachusetts winters by taking a winter cruise in the Caribbean, and have done so for many years. Our next trip will be to Italy and then a Greek Isle/Croatia cruise next May. We thought when I retired last year we would take long road trips, but an elderly dog on cardiac meds makes that not feasible at this point. We divide our time between our home in the Boston burbs and our house on Cape Cod, which seems like a perpetual vacation. We enjoy drinking nice wines with good food wherever we are.

My husband and I are pretty much compatible with our travel. We do some compromises now and then, but that goes with the territory in just about anything. He likes road trips and loves to drive. I often prefer to fly and just get there, but then I did a lot of travel when I worked, so am used to it more than he is. So we do some of both.

We returned recently from over 2 weeks in Ireland and Scotland where we did something we thought we would never do. We did a group guided tour and actually enjoyed it more than we thought we would. We saw so much more than we could have on our own, and it didn’t require days and days of planning on my part to arrange every little detail. He didn’t have to drive, I didn’t have keep my eyes glued to a gps to make sure we were navigating correctly, we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves, and we saw far more than we could have on our own.

We frequently do both short and long road trips in the US. It’s pretty easy and we can carry our own hiking gear and other equipment we might need, plus our own snacks, so we end up eating healthier. The bonus is what we find along the way that might interest us. For those trips we try to find a base in our target destinations. We enjoy historic lodges in National Parks for example, or often find a B&B or rental cabin somewhere in the mountains.

DH is the only person who will do nearly as many activities as I want to do, so we are pretty compatible. I like to travel more often and more adventurously (still not very adventurous), and often travel alone. He is more of a homebody but likes a trip or two a year. We both like creature comforts, good food, architecture, art, cultural tours. He likes sports games and comedy, I like classical performances and nature tours. Both don’t do anything athletic.

I highly recommend going your own way a few days of any vacation! Send your husband off to golf so you can meander all you want! Makes the conversation over dinner more lively,

Most of my very memorable and moving travel experiences have occurred when I am on my own, I pay so much more attention to my surroundings when I don’t have to worry about anyone but myself.

Some of the comments reminded me that I like flexibility when we are on a trip. We book a room online in the next destination town the day before. That allows us to do things like we did last spring when I saw a state park on the map that I hadn't noticed before. "Let's go there!" We didn't have enough time to visit it that day so we stayed in that town for an extra day. It was a great park! Helps that we don't stay in tourist towns. Even when we visit tourists spots, like Mt. Rushmore, we always stay in towns well away from the attraction. After visiting a national park last spring we drove through the closest town. We both laughed at the tacky touristy kitchy-ness of it and then drove 20 miles to the quiet town where we had a room booked.

So interesting - thanks for sharing. Yes Lars, when you first mentioned your new place in Cathedral City I checked the google map and saw many golf courses. I think it would work out well - he could play golf every day and I could enjoy your pool during the dregs of Minnesota winter (though I'd play a little golf too now that I'm learning). I'm pondering the best way to transport my cats that far - they are good car riders but usually only for about three hours max.
Your parents sound like an extreme case of "opposites attract".

Robo - on the way home I was telling DH I may do some travel on my own since I'm retired and he isn't and that way one of us would also be home with the elderly cat. He was surprisingly opposed to that idea - not sure why as overall we operate quite independently. In part I like the idea because as you say - you can immerse yourself in things more when you aren't worrying about someone else with you. He on the other hand loves to be with people most of the time so probably wouldn't like a solo trip much at all. We are both largely homebodies at this stage of life so don't like long trips. This may be because we have both traveled so much for work.

Happy to be back home and no more imminent travel plans at the moment. I checked New Mexico and Kentucky off my not yet visited states list since I retired at the end of May. Working on a plan to see Vermont (last state I haven't been to) and some places in New York where DHs ancestors were born - may do that next spring or fall.

It took me a while to find this, and I had to do some odd searches to finally find it! Anyway, I did want to respond...

IdaClaire - yes, I am somewhat of a compulsive story-teller, and when I was in First Grade, I won first place in the UL story-telling contest. I had to look up David Sedaris, but he does sound inspirational. I've always wanted to write in the style of James Thurber, which I think is somewhat similar. Anyway, I have to thank for this comment because it has gotten me back on the short story collection I was working on. I had started to write my autobiography, not because I think my life is special, but several friends have asked me to do this, including Dolores Deluxe, who is an actress and also an author. I met her in San Francisco in 1974 when I was living in a theatrical commune where she was rehearsing a play that some of my roommates at the time were in. Our commune was in a storefront on Valencia street that had been a dance studio before, and so it had one cavernous room with 8' high mirrors and ballet bars. I recently saw Dolores again at one of her book signings, and then we had lunch near her bungalow in Venice on the beach. I have her autobiography and thought that I should try to write something similar, but that really didn't work for me, but when I read your post, I got the idea that all I need to do is get a collection of short anecdotes - something that would be much easier for me to do. I've decided that they do not need to be sequential, and I can try to make sense or order out of them after I've finished writing them. BTW, when I was at Rice, I took Larry McMurtry's creative writing class and got an A in it. I was told that some of my writings were Kafkaesque, which I did agree with, but those were especially the ones I wrote in high school and college. They tended to be a bit surreal.

3katz4me, you would have to fly your cats to Palm Springs, which is Cathedral City adjacent. I just had my pool resurfaced, and it has new equipment as well, and the heater works well, although I certainly don't need that in the summer. In September the water temperature was 85° without using the heater. I'm going there this week-end to do some more work on the house.

Lars - it would be a road trip - cats in the car : >) I won't do it as long as my elderly cat is still with us though. And then there is the not-yet-retired DH - of course I could leave here with him by car, he could stay awhile then fly back for work. And then fly back to CA for another visit before we drove back. Hmmm....I can see this taking shape.....

3Katz, do you have like-minded girlfriends you could take a short trip with that your DH wouldn‘t object to? I have done that and my DH didn’t mind at all. It’s usually to do something like go to the beach, attend a concert, visit a specific museum, or just shop and relax with some nice dinners.

Yes, I have a few retired friends I've thought about traveling with. DH is all for that, he just doesn't think I should go somewhere alone though I have traveled extensively alone for work. I think it's the idea of choosing to make a solo road trip to a destination where there aren't any people I know that bothers him. It came up when I said I thought I might drive to the Black Hills (from MN) since I've never been there and he has. Meandering over there by myself, doing whatever I want whenever I want, is quite appealing.

A few years ago I went on a trip to Copenhagen with a then-boyfriend. We booked non-refundable plane tickets far in advance, when we had been dating just a few months. Turned out that we were not compatible travel companions! I don’t need fancy restaurants, but my favorite part of travelling is eating local food in cozy taverns with good wine and relaxation. He liked to eat on the cheap, once while on a bike ride we bought lunch from basically a convenience store and ate it in the parking lot– I wanted to find a nice park for a picnic. He always wanted to go-go-go, walking for miles in all weather, and although I’m not always a museum goer, if it’s raining, I would find an indoor activity. Oh, no, wet and cold and hours of walking -- he didn’t want to pay for a museum. Whenever we stopped for coffee, he wanted it in a carry cup, and I wanted to sit outside on the town square and talk to the locals. He thought that was wasting time (when we could be walking!) It was the most uncomfortable and tedious trip I had ever been on and I broke up with him on the plane ride home.

Kitchenwitch, what an ordeal! Perhaps such a trip should be compulsory for all couples considering marriage! There is little that will test the mettle of a relationship quite like travel to distant places, particularly when things go wrong and stressful situations are encountered.

3katz, your comment about meandering/doing by yourself being appealing is quite true. I posted here about my first brief trip to NYC that I enjoyed on my own, for the most part. That was SO much fun, and even though I only had a few days to do what I'd planned, it was totally MY time, and I got to call all of the shots. There is something heady and exciting about experiencing a new place in that manner. Before I went, I wondered if I'd be lonely/frightened or otherwise just unsure of being on my own in a strange (to me) city. I wasn't. I reveled in it all.

Here's a video that shows (more or less) how my brother and I travel together. This video is from 20 years ago and was made using a VHS recorder, which my brother had to convert to digital (which he did many years ago), and so the resolution is not that good, and the sound could be better. He made an entire DVD of videos from our trips to Death Valley in 1999 and 2000 - not sure why we went two years in a row, but apparently we did! The video below end just before the scariest part of this trip, where we have to drive through mud from melted snow/ice at the top of the mountain on a road that curves so much that we could not see where we were going. We also had to go rather fast to avoid getting stuck in the mud as we went over the top of the mountain. My mother was on the edge of her seat when she watched that, but I told her that we didn't die and were still here!

At one point on this trip (when we went the wrong way), I said to Kevin, "They wouldn't have built this road if they didn't want me to drive on it," but the road had a dead end at a cliff!

As my dad would have said, you were taking the scenic route.

He also often said, "We never turn around" and its corollary, "You can't get me lost in this town."

It was definitely the scenic route. Here's another video of the same road. Evidently it is considered a dangerous road, which I do not doubt. One year when we drove on it, parts of the road had fallen down the cliff and there were boulders in the road. When we got to the other end of the road, there was a sign saying "Road Closed", but there was no such sign to warn us from the other side, and so we had no idea.

As you can see, I do turn around when necessary, and I also do get lost. In this case, there was no one who could give us directions, and we never even met another car. I always get worried when I never see another car.

We got lost in Michigan too when the GPS took us down a dirt road in the middle of a forest. That road had a tree lying in the middle of it, but it was a small one and we were able to move it. The dirt was like a sand dune, but fortunately we did have four wheel drive, or we may not have made it out. This happened because Kevin was driving and did not take a turn that I told him to take (referring to my paper map), and he decided to listen to the GPS instead. GPS can take you down dangerous roads.

Lars - you are quite the adventurer!