Meet the Couple Who Hasn’t Been Home for 4,000 Days!

“Travel Stars” is an interview series created to get to know people in the travel industry who are making a difference; writers, influencers, producers, and travel executives.

In this article, we have the joy of interviewing Mike and Anne from HoneyTrek.

Mike and Anne are a couple who have been on the world’s longest honeymoon, for 11 years and counting. They sold all their belongings and embarked on a journey around the world, documenting their adventures on their travel blog, HoneyTrek.com. With their backgrounds in media, they have become a leading travel blog with over 375,000 social media followers and authored two bestselling books, National Geographic’s Ultimate Journeys for Two, and Comfortably Wild: The Best Glamping Destinations. They are true digital nomads and full-time travelers and are excited to share their travel tips and experiences with the world.

Tell us a little bit about yourself – where are you from? Where did you grow up?
Mike Howard: I grew up in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania and went to school in Pittsburgh and then moved to New York City for work.

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Anne Howard: I grew up in Hollywood, California. Yes, it’s a real place. Then, I knew I needed something different and some extreme change. So I moved out to Amish Country, Pennsylvania, for college. Then I met Mike in New York City while pursuing my dream to work in magazine publishing.

Mike: We met playing volleyball in Hoboken, New Jersey, back in 2006. Then we got married in 2011, and in January of 2012, we set out on this one-year honeymoon, which is now…well, it just hit 11 years, and we’ve not been home since.

Can you remember what first got you interested in the world of travel and why?

Mike: Well, I did a lot of road trips growing up as a kid on the East Coast and a few international trips in high school. And with family, mostly in the Caribbean. My mom and dad went to Europe a lot when I was a kid, and they would leave me with a babysitter for multiple weeks.

Anne: My backstory is that my family did a lot of travel. My mom was a flight attendant in the 1960s and 70s, and then my dad worked in TV and did a lot of filming around the world. So, my first trip abroad was to visit my dad, who was living and working in Japan. I definitely caught the bug early. I remember that Japan trip so vividly as a seven-year-old being like, wow, the world is bigger than my block. And, it sort of ignited a curiosity in me to keep this going.

And then Mike and I as a couple…we were barely dating and we’re like, well, where do we go for Valentine’s Day? Let’s sneak into Cuba. We had this sort of connection on, you know, just curiosity, exploring the cultures, adventures, a little bit of a risk, and the excitement around that. And then after that Cuba trip went well, decided, let’s hitchhike around Belize.

We were still dating at the time. And then when it came to planning our honeymoon, we said…let’s go big.

In the next year, if you could only visit one place for one week, where would it be?

Anne: I feel like Kyrgyzstan has been on my mind for a long time. We haven’t met any of the “Stans”. We’ve heard wonderful things, obviously friendly people, and you know, this sort of the original nomad culture, moving around in Gerz and just going. It’s a simple lifestyle and just lovely people and a wild landscape.

Mike: I’m gonna keep on the same train and say Pakistan because we just had a great conversation with a tour company there.

What are some of the top places you guys have enjoyed visiting the most?

Mike: Mexico is our neighbor to the south and it is so much more than just Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, and Cabo and the touristy spots in Mexico (which are still quite beautiful). They’re great places to visit, and they do provide some vistas and a good tourist experience, but we really love the rest of Mexico. We love Chapas, Guanajuato, and so many other hidden gems.

Anne: We actually just walked over the border in Juárez, Mexico, yesterday, just to stretch our legs. We’re in southern Texas and we’re like “Let’s get a good taco,” and we walked over the border. Just to connect with Mexico. Cause people are good and that’s notoriously one of the most dangerous cities. And Mexico gets a bad rep for being dangerous. We’re rolling around in Juárez, which got the worst rep of them all and people are still so kind…we share a lot as North Americans, but it’s yet so different at the same time, and it makes us feel really welcome there.

Mike: We also learned that the margarita was invented in Juarez, Mexico.

Anne: Yeah. Not a beach palapa somewhere. It was a bartender whose girlfriend wanted a certain drink with lime and tequila, but a little bit sweeter than that, and then her name was Margarita. So, there you go, travel magic!

Mike: The bar is called Kentucky Bar.

Anne: Yeah. Which sounds weird, but it’s actually a bigger story about prohibition in the States and they were still making liquor there, you know, during the dry time in the USA…so the bar is a nod to Kentucky moonshine.

What was one of your more popular posts in the last and why do you think it caught on?

Anne: We just did a big project in Slovenia, one of “The World’s Most Romantic & Sustainable Destinations.” So we are known to be on the world’s longest honeymoon and when we hit our 10th year, we said, let’s see where we can make a difference. It’s not just about, which we have never been about, but you know, just lying on the beach and looking lovingly into each other’s eyes. It was always about having life experiences together. If you have the means to go to far-flung places, you will have some pretty fantastic crazy experiences.

We should all be more mindful about the places we visit and can you leave it in a positive place versus just take, take, take type of tourism? It can be a negative thing, but if you choose your tour operators wisely, your hotels wisely, and people who are doing right by their communities, well then you could be having a positive impact.

And that’s what we wanna focus on. So our goal to find the world’s most romantic and sustainable destinations has been quite the journey it’s sent us this year to Tahiti, to French Polynesia, to Bhutan, to Slovenia, and to the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, and we just had to think really hard about it. We didn’t want to just visit the pretty places that tell a green story. We want to find who’s really walking the walk.

So Slovenia was a fun one to do most recently rented e vehicles, did a crazy road trip around, and just really found people who are like genuinely looking after this country. It was more just from the tourism perspective. It was from the human per, like the average person who cared deeply about recycling, who had beehives on their roofs to make sure that the flowers were taken care of and things and the fruits were being pollinated.

And It’s been a really interesting project and we’re doing it slowly. We’re like, let’s do 12 and one year. No, it’s gonna be actually a 10 of what honeyTrek is going forward is surfacing places that are not just romantic and fun and fabulous, but also meaningful and caring for the environment and communities.

What are three tips you would give to couples that want to travel as long as you do?

Mike: I would say to any couple that is thinking about doing a longer trip (and a longer trip to us is like anything, two, three months, or more). If you’re gonna go as a couple, don’t worry about how long you’re out there, don’t worry about how long your trip is, and think that there needs to be a start and an end. Leave it open, to see where the wind blows you, and let your trip determine the length.

Obviously, you need to save up a little bit in advance, but, do not go and say like, “I want to go on a two-month trip”, or “I want to go on a one-year trip” and have that define your whole thing. Leave it flexible and leave yourself open to where your trip takes you. Because it might turn into a 10-year trip or it might turn into a 10-week trip and it doesn’t matter. Neither of those is a fail or neither of those is a win, you know, it’s like, it could be 10 weeks. It could be 10 years.

Anne: Yeah. I think everybody should take some kind of long-term trip, and long-term literally can just be like a month or two because it feels different than the intended vacation. You kind of get into a lifestyle versus a plan every minute, check off all these things. So the longer, the better on some level. But I was a normal two-week vacation worker person and when we were playing this trip and I was like, it sounds so fabulous. Let’s go around the world for a year.

But I also reserve the right to freak out and go home if I want to, cause I won’t know how this feels. But the most important part was you just getting out the door. So just get out the door. You’re allowed to change your mind but just feel it. Feel it. Don’t have a ton of preconceptions about what’s gonna be, or what you should be, and just enjoy the journey of it.

And it can be any length you want. But yes, finances are a big piece of it, clearly. Oh, go forever. That’s not realistic if you don’t have some money in the bank. We were not millionaires or trust some babies, any of it going into this. We had budgeted for about a hundred dollars a day for the two of us for a year with some nest egg to come back to if we couldn’t find a job and needed some time.

So I think that’s a good number to have yourself as a buffer. But also, most importantly, which was a good lesson for anyone, no matter if they’re leaving or not, is how can I be happy with less? How do I live simply and find the enjoyment of a sunset and good company and not in the stuff? So we kind of learned to say, “Hey, what do we really need?”

And we think about it. It’s not that much. All of them seem like super excesses to me. A lot of the things we own and things we did seem totally frivolous now, and we focus it on, you know, just meeting great people and seeing beautiful places and a lot of that doesn’t cost a thing.

You guys bought a vintage RV and set out on a two-year, nine-country, 75,000-mile quest to find the best glamping destinations in North America. How was that experience?

Mike: Yes, we bought Buddy the camper, this 1985 vintage Toyota Sun Rader. And we bought him mostly because we wanted to experience the more remote spots in North America, Mexico, the USA, and Canada.

Anne: We’d been to seven continents but had barely explored the country we were from. And we also hadn’t unpacked our bags in five years. So it was really exciting to have a closet, albeit the world’s smallest closet, and the same bed and someplace to cook some yummy vegan eats.

Mike: …and Falcon Guides asked us to write the first book about glamping in North America, and we accepted, took this camper, drove it to over 150 different glamping camps.

Anne: We went as far south as Costa Rica, so we did tons of driving around North America, but there were some flights to reach the countries in Central America and the Caribbean. So like Buddy’s journey, Buddy the Camper, we went slow cruising the continent for the most part. But we wanted to make sure we included Jamaica and included Nicaragua in places that, you know, just cause we couldn’t get there by this old rickety camper didn’t mean we should exclude them.

Mike: Glamping to us is the best way to experience nature with a little bit of luxury.

Anne: It’s a great hybrid for people who enjoy the outdoors, but don’t wanna have to rough it. The most important part is connecting with nature and making that easier for a wide variety of people. There’s glamping at all price points and glamping is for any skill level and should welcome people into the outdoors.

Mike: Obviously, if anybody wants to pick up a copy of our book, it would be hugely appreciated, Comfortably Wild is over on Amazon. And then if you’re thinking about starting a glamping camp too, we offer consulting for Glamping camps, new and existing to help them kind of level up their offering.

Anne: Because some people, honestly, just want to start with land, to make use of their property, to invite people and share their little slice of the world…and it doesn’t need to be so extravagant as a multi-unit resort.

Where are you guys traveling next and what are you doing now? What are you excited about? Any new projects?

Anne: From this very moment we are in Big Bend National Park, which is our 58th national park in the country.

This is a really remote western southwestern Texas. We are literally on the Rio Grande separating the US from Mexico. So that’s been exciting to road trip to this lovely corner of the country. And we are flying to Germany in a few days, and then from Germany, we don’t like to waste a good transatlantic flight, so we’re gonna go skiing in Bulgaria with some friends for my birthday, and then we will housesit in Romania.

That’s kind of how we fill in the gaps between these far-flung trips, have a moment to reset, and get some work done and get local. It’s a wonderful way to nestle into a community, is to housesit. So we’ve written an article with all the best websites for housesitting, along with our best tips to land the sweetest digs.

Anne: Yeah, cuz why not? Even if we’re in Romania, like getting some work done, even just going to the market as an adventure. I mean we were talking to the homeowners, and they said, “So the guy with the ox and the wooden wheels will come by, he will sell you onions.” And you’re like, that sounds interesting in and of itself. Let’s just do that. So yeah, so from Romania we’ll figure it out and maybe overland to Monte Negro. And then probably Greece and then we’ll come back to States, pick up the camper, and head to Canada for the summer.

Thanks for joining and sharing with us your journey, Anne and Mike!

If you want to follow Mike & Anne on their never-ending HoneyTrek, you can find them here:

HoneyTrek Website
HoneyTrek on Facebook
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