Hi, I'm Erica and I created Trip Scholars

for curious travelers, just like you!

 

Save time, learn more, and travel better!

Pompeii, Italy

 

Thanks for stopping by to learn more!

I believe that the wonder of travel can begin the moment you start to plan it! I am an expert in travel education and love supporting other curious travelers with transformative trip research. 

Unlike other sites, Trip Scholars is focused on your time before travel. I want to help you turn your one week vacation or your weekend getaway into many months of inspired discovery! We will help you find the best books, movies, activities, classes and more– all related to your trip.

 

On this site and through my services, I apply my wide range of teaching experiences with my love of travel to help you make the most of your time before departure. I have taught adults, teens, and kids in many learning environments: public school, private school, and home school programs. I have served as a school principal and as a founder of a large alternative learning community. I have also volunteered extensively as a naturalist, political activist, and on behalf of children and families. 

This wide breadth of teaching experience guides me in helping travelers discover what will inspire their own self directed learning before they even pack their bags!

 

I am also an avid traveler myself and love international excursions, local camping, and everything in between. I especially love visiting geologic, archeologic, and historic sites with family and friends or solo. I am a pretty nerdy traveler and have kissed many rocks around the world and often cry in museums. 

For the last 15 years, we have been homeschooling our kids, often through travel. I devoted thousands of hours to trip research and travel education to find the best resources to help our family learn through travel. 

As you already know, it can be a slog and very time consuming to sort through a lot of poor quality options to find the gems! I dreamt of a hub where curious travelers could go to quickly and easily find the best in trip research. 

 

I built the Trip Scholars site to solve the problem and serve other curious travelers! Visit the Roadmaps Blog, where we dive in deep with articles on learning about specific destinations, travel skills, unique approaches to travel, and traveling with kids and teens. 

Then explore our Travel Resource Library, our multimedia library of individual travel resources that will entertain you, educate you, and enhance your travel planning – all before you even step out the door!

 

 The seeds of Trip Scholars were planted 30 years ago when I met my husband Brandon in college, where we were both majoring in philosophy. Back then, our trips were often taken with our last $20 and the goodwill and auto mechanic skills of the people we went to see. 

We used to dream about being able to take road trips with a cassette narration about the history, cultures, and natural history of the places we drove through. 

What a long strange trip it has been since then, both personally and for the world! Now through this site, we’ve gathered loads of exciting ways to discover more about the history, culture, and natural history of many destinations!

 

We love slow travel. So slow in fact that we often move to really dive deep into a place. We have lived in the beautiful states of Washington, Oregon, Hawai’i, and California. 

We have three kids, who have been our greatest teachers and inspirations in life. We enjoy planning our next adventures from our home base in Seattle, Washington in the stunning Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Brandon is a sailor and once the kids are all launched in the next few years we will be selling our house and moving full time onto a sailboat as we travel and explore. The future also includes a lot of new travel education services for our Trip Scholars readers that I’m excited to implement– once all the kids graduate!

I am also a travel education writer and photographer published on over 55 travel sites and featured in Buzzfeed.  

I love to connect with my readers! Sign up for my newsletter so I can share the best travel education tips straight to your inbox. Find me on social media or send me a message at [email protected].

Happy travel planning,

Erica

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