Justin & Ellen

Hi, we’re Justin and Ellen. Thanks for visiting our travel site!

We’re a married couple living in and exploring New England. We spend most weekends away from home, searching for outdoor adventure, discovering interactive museums, eating strange foods, drinking flourescent-colored substances, enjoying romantic destinations, running into aliens when we least expect it, or just getting lost … all in an effort to satisfy our endless lust for adventure and exploration.

Whatever we do, we just try to relax, have fun, and bring back a great story to tell.

But although we love to travel and long for adventure, we also work full-time and are committed to our careers. As a result, we sometimes find ourselves hampered by the limited amount of time we actually have to travel. Like most Americans, we usually only get about 2 weeks a year!

So, how do we make the most of our limited time off?

We look for creative ways to travel the world without having to quit our jobs and sacrifice our future financial security!

We figured we’re probably not the only ones!

That’s why we developed the Time-Crunched Traveler — to help adventurous working professionals like ourselves make the most of the limited amount of time they have to travel. We’ve learned a lot from our years of time-crunched travel, and we know you can, too.

We hope you find our site useful in helping you plan day trips, long weekend getaways, or two week adventures overseas!

We’d love to get to know you better and hear about your passion for seeing the world. Be sure to connect with us on Facebook and Twitter to share your travel adventures with us!

In the meantime, here are some fun travel-related facts to help you get to know us a little better!

About Ellen
Ellen first traveled overseas at age 15 when her father insisted on sending her to Germany with her high school classmates. Somewhere along the way, high atop Switzerland’s Mt. Pilatus, she was bitten by the travel bug and has never quite recovered. Since then, she has traveled to more than 15 countries on four continents. Highlights of her adventures include rafting along the Nile River in Uganda, riding camels around Egypt’s Pyramids at Giza, sea kayaking in the Adriatic Sea, watching the sun set on the island of Santorini in Greece, exploring Machu Picchu, and cycling New England’s stunning coastline. She continues to hold her father responsible for all the money she has spent on travel since that first trip to Europe.

Travel Motto: Never return home the same person you were before you left
First trip inside the U.S.: Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky
First trip outside the U.S.: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Last Trip: Peru
Best Trip: To Uganda in 2009 – I spent two weeks volunteering at an orphanage just outside of Kampala. The trip was truly life-changing.
Worst Trip: Niagara Falls – the travel companions were great, but the location was a bit of a let-down.
Favorite U.S. Locations: Hands-down New Hampshire’s White Mountains … oh, and Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge region, and the rolling farmland of my native Indiana
Dream Destinations:Turkey, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Cuba, and Oman
Languages: German, minimal Spanish
Favorite aspect of traveling: Travel is a great reminder that I am actually not the center of the universe.

About Justin
Justin grew up overseas, moving to a new country — and a new continent — every few years with his family. By the time he turned 18, Justin had lived in South Africa, Wales, the United States, Brazil, and Egypt. His travel highlights include horse trekking in the mountains of southwestern China’s Sichuan Province, viewing the breath-taking coastline of South Africa’s Garden Route, gazing out across Alaska’s Harding Ice Field (and realizing it’s the size of Rhode Island!), helping build a hospital in La Romana, Dominican Republic, and SCUBA diving in Egypt’s Ras Mohammed National Park. Through all of this, he has learned that no matter which corner of the globe you’re in, there is beauty to be found in the landscape, people, and culture.

Travel Motto: Keep going – until I’ve visited more countries than my dad! (Dad’s at 43!)
First Trip: Believe it or not, I’ve been flying since before I was born! My mom flew from South Africa to New England a few weeks before I was born so I could be born in the U.S. At two weeks old, I flew back to South Africa.
Last Trip: New York City
Best Trip: The Dalmatian coast of Croatia in June 2010, where Ellen and I spent our three-week long honeymoon.
Worst Trip: I’ve gotta agree with Ellen on this one and say Niagara Falls. We enjoyed going there with her mom, but the Falls were disappointing and over-crowded.
Favorite U.S. Locations: New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Maine’s Mt. Katahdin, and Ellen’s hometown of Evansville, Indiana
Dream Destinations: Antarctica and Cambodia
Languages: Spanish
Favorite Aspect of traveling: The thrill of exploring something new.

Not enough information for you? You can also read about our travel history from A - Z!