While December is often the busiest travel season of the year, it's often followed by one of the slowest travel months of the year, January. While January gets kicked off with a bang for New Year's, it's often downhill from their with short, cold days and little travel typically involved. However, January can be one of the best months of the year to travel. We've come up with five reasons you should travel in January.

Nobody else is traveling: While January passes by without you traveling, it passes by without everyone else traveling as well. While the holidays are usually a headache for air travel, mid to late-January can be a breeze. If traveling touristy areas, you can enjoy short lines to get into theme parks, restaurants, and bars.

It's cheap: Since so many people don't travel during January, many rental car agencies, airlines, and hotels lower their price. While this is the case in many destinations, it's not the case at many ski resorts and Caribbean destinations, where they are currently in their peak season. Nonetheless, January is the cheapest month to travel to many places.

Escape the winter blues: January and February have long been known as being a drag. Short, cold days make it hard to have any motivation to get out of the house. While it's hard to get any motivation going into the new year, you can get a great kick-start by traveling somewhere warm.

Cruise travel is in: Cruise travel continues to grow as one of the best forms of travel, especially for couples and families. It's often the most affordable way to travel and a great escape to those cold, winter days. Many cruise lines offer special post-holiday deals for the winter months.

Ski slopes are at their best: If you prefer those cold, winter destinations to spend a January vacation, then the slopes don't get any better than in January. January is universally a great year for hitting the slopes, as Europe, Canada, and the Northwestern U.S. all make for great winter vacations this time of year because they all have fresh snow. While this is peak season for many ski destinations, some resorts may still be offering special post-holiday travel packages and deals.