If Susan Roberts were to write a travel guide for business travelers, she knows what she would include in her list of hotel must-haves: a blow dryer, an ironing board and a workout room.

Some days Roberts goes to work in the West Des Moines home office for Farm Bureau Financial Services, while other days, she reports to work in New Mexico or one of the six other states she regularly travels to in her job as the company’s senior field training administrator.

“Some of it I’ve done enough that it becomes very routine and it’s no different from me driving from here to my house,” Roberts said. “I can fly from here to El Paso, rent a car, jump on the interstate, and in 45 minutes later, I’m in Las Cruces, N.M., where the office is. There’s no stress; I’m just going to work somewhere else.”

Minnesota, Kansas, South Dakota, Utah, Arizona and Nebraska complete Roberts’ training territory. After eight years on the job and many flights, Roberts said traveling doesn’t faze her too much. She’s found that the variations in people, geography and weather fit her style.

“You just have to be kind of intrigued by the differences and the lifestyles,” Roberts said. “For example, you notice things like they have hat racks in certain places like South Dakota, Utah and parts of western Kansas. Just to appreciate that these are active ranchers who are also insurance agents, and they may have been up doing chores or selling cattle on their way to the training session. That’s part of their lives and it’s very different from mine.”

While on the road, Roberts said, she tries to maintain a degree of continuity in her routine. Because she works out regularly at home, she tries to do the same when she’s traveling.

“It helps keep the energy level up,” she said. “You don’t have to change your routine. You’re really trying to make it as normal as possible.”

Roberts also has to make sure to cover the same responsibilities that she has while she’s in the office, such as checking e-mails and voice messages and calling in for conference calls when she can’t be at meetings in person. The business side runs pretty smoothly in her absence, she said.

Then there’s her personal life, which requires a great deal of coordination to keep it on course in her absence, especially since her husband, Ben, also travels about half the time with his career, selling medical equipment across a four-state region.

“I think that the personal life gets a little more complicated because it’s like coming back from a week’s vacation all the time,” Roberts said. “You have lots of things to catch up on that you couldn’t do while you were gone, from watering the plants, paying bills, unloading one suitcase and loading another—it’s a constant in my life.”

Roberts said planning is the key to handling the little things that are key to a satisfying lifestyle, such as remembering birthdays, seeing friends and finding personal time. Also, she relies on having a cell phone she can use anywhere.

“I don’t expect my friends and family to remember where I’m at from week to week,” she said. “They know that they can usually get in touch with me at night on my cell phone. My husband and I have a preset time to call each other at 9 p.m. every night, no matter where we are.”

Another thing the couple does occasionally during the year is meet up for the weekend in the state where Susan is working that week.

“Usually, we’re both home together during the weekends, but if I’m somewhere and the flight to get back to Des Moines is kind of iffy, he’ll fly to where I’m at and stay there for the weekend together. If I’m in Arizona in February, I’m sure we need to golf over the weekend.”

Roberts said she and Ben have adapted to being “interchangeable” at home. “If one of is us gone and something happens, like the water heater goes out, you really have to be self-sufficient and ready to step in to take care of it,” Roberts said.

Roberts said a ‘real’ vacation for her and her husband is quite the opposite of most people’s definition.

“A vacation for us is to be at home,” she said. “If a friend wants to get together, I frequently ask if they wouldn’t mind coming to my house, so instead of meeting somewhere else, I get to be home.”