Grace and Simon have always chosen experiences over things—road trips instead of gifts, memories instead of material. The summer before their junior year of college, they drove cross-country from North Carolina to Colorado, falling in love with the mountains, winding roads, and wild beauty of the West. Somewhere between Aspen and Telluride, Grace called dibs on living in Colorado for their year of long distance after college graduation. Now, years (and one long-distance chapter) later, they’ve made that dream real—living in South Boulder with their rescue pup, Oakley, and spending weekends exploring trails, campfires, and alpine lakes.

Earlier on in their relationship, adventures involved slumming it with car camping from Las Vegas, through Death Valley and eventually ending up on Monterey's coast. The following year, they "upgraded" their camping with Simon's parents' $30 camping tent and headed on a cross-country road trip from Elon's campus to Boulder, Colorado. Little did they know that Moab would become a frequented camping weekend spot for them in the future. As word spread in their families that they were doing travel over gifts, everyone graciously offered to contribute to help on the occasional Airbnb or date night. This lead the couple to spending a week in Kauai where they quickly made friends with the locals and got to explore the island from both hiking bird's eye view and from the ocean as they befriended a captain's first mate. When the couple were freshmen in college, Grace had booked a flight to visit Simon in New Hampshire. She suggested they road trip to Banff for the weekend to which Simon responded with a screenshot of where Banff was in relation to his house. It became a running joke for the next 4 years... until they did fly to Banff for a graduation gift to one another. They car camped for two weeks, ran into grizzly bears and black bears and enjoyed ranch life for a bit. Once the couple moved to Colorado, the trips became car camping weekends all over the state. They went all over Utah for a two weeklong camping trip and enjoy finding local secrets in all of the mountain towns scattered throughout Colorado. Adventure, nature, the solitude of being together (now with their mountain dog / tent potato, Oakley) has been the greatest love language and gift the two of them could have ever imagined.