ABOUT US
ABOUT US
Hi, my name is John. My family and I have travel fever.
I didn’t always love to travel. I grew up in Wisconsin with 3 siblings and most of our vacations were spent at cabins on the lake, hanging out with family, and doing water sports.
School breaks were meant for sleeping in and roaming around the neighborhood with the other kids.
Shirlee had a very different childhood. Her family was constantly on the move. One year she missed over 50 days of school.
They spent summers road-tripping around China, winters in the Caribbean, and by the time she was in college, had visited nearly every US state and a large chunk of the national parks.
At the beginning of our relationship, we didn’t quite see eye to eye about travel. We were both busy residents, working 80+ hours a week, with only 3 weeks off a year.
She wanted to maximize that time to explore the world (which usually also meant getting up with the sun and going until the last possible moment). I wanted to rest and recuperate. Thank goodness, she’s persistent.
I was 30 years old before my first transatlantic flight. We’d gotten married that year and spent our belated honeymoon driving through the UK and Ireland.
The following year we celebrated Shirlee’s residency graduation in Iceland. The year after that, we went to China, then Prague, and at some point, the travel bug hit HARD.
Traveling has now become somewhat of an obsession. From trekking the “W” in Patagonia, to exploring the sprawling skyline in Hong Kong, and glamping in Morocco – we’ve had experiences that 10 years ago were unimaginable.
We have demanding and stressful careers. So our goal is that when we have time off – we are either having an adventure, planning the next adventure, or planning the next adventure during the current adventure.
And now we have 2 kids, Oliver and Maddie, with whom we can share our love of travel. Their curiosity and enthusiasm makes exploring the world even more exciting.
And at ages 8 and 10, have already visited more countries than most Americans do in a lifetime.
Shirlee and I created this blog as a means of documenting our experiences – both to record our memories for ourselves and our family, and to provide others a resource for making their own travel plans.
We’re not trying to teach anyone how to travel on a shoestring budget – we’ve outgrown the phase in our lives where we’ve felt the need to stay in hostels and eat on the cheap.
But we also don’t travel lavishly. Travel is inherently expensive – especially as a family of 4.
It’s important for us to be comfortable, so sometimes we do “pay up” for convenience or truly special experiences, but we try to budget realistically.
While we try to give our kids a wide breadth of experiences, most of our travels are based in the outdoors, especially hiking.
Sometimes it’s just short day hikes and sometimes it’s a multi-day trek. But we much prefer spending time exploring nature than cities.
As we work through our bucket list, we hope that our stories provide inspiration and give you the confidence to venture out of your comfort zone and explore this wonderful planet.
