Hi there!
Thanks for stopping by our little corner of the Internet.
We’re Justin & Jess, full-time travelers and serious adventure lovers. We know all too well that life is crazy short—if you’re lucky, you get just 90 summers to enjoy this big, beautiful world. So we want to make the absolute most of the years that we have- and encourage you to do the same!
Here at 90 Summers, we highlight bucketlist experiences and destinations, from national park roads trips to Antartica luxury cruises, with practical tips and tricks to help you make the most of your adventures.
Our origin story
When you hear that we’re full-time travelers, many people assume that we’re spoiled trust fund kids- but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
We both grew up in lower middle class families in the Midwestern United States. When we were kids, our family vacations were not exactly of the exotic variety- imagine weekend trips to Branson, Missouri or road trips to the Wisconsin Dells.
So, when we met in St. Louis in 2012, neither of us were particularly wanderlust-y. We occasionally went on road trips to nearby cities, like Memphis or Nashville, but, as broke young professionals, most of our money went towards rent in our not-so-nice apartment and happy hours (sorry, mom- just being honest!).
A whole new world
When we got married in 2017, though, we had saved up and planned to do something BIG for our honeymoon—10 days in Japan. We were totally blown by our time in this incredible country, from the delicious food and chaotic lights to the ancient buildings and new-to-us cultural norms.
Our adventures in Japan totally changed our perspective of the world and our time in it- we were suddenly hungry to see and experience as much as we could.
Over the next two years, we traveled to 19 countries and 16 U.S. states, packing in as much as we could into our limited paid time off our corporate jobs. For example, we managed to somehow visit Ireland, France, and the Netherlands in just a week’s time! We also started a travel blog, Uprooted Traveler, just for funsies, to document our adventures for our friends and family.
The year that changed everything
After a lifetime of living in the Midwest, we both decided we wanted a change of scenery and found corporate jobs in Seattle, Washington in the fall of 2019 (Jess as a corporate attorney for Amazon and Justin as a business analyst for UPS). While our views in Seattle were infinitely prettier than those in St. Louis, our life looked largely the same- we worked our 9 to 5 jobs, explored local bars and restaurants on weekends, and giddily planned international vacations during our allotted time off.
However, the lockdown in 2020 totally changed our lives. Instead of trips abroad, we spent our time exploring the rainforests in the Pacific Northwest, went on our first backpacking trip into the mountains, and somehow, wound up buying a travel trailer to explore the U.S. with (something neither of us had ever thought was in the cards for us!).
Not waiting for “someday”
It also made us realize how short life is and how, at the blink of an eye, the world, as you know it, can radically change. We came up with a plan to take a one year sabbatical from our corporate jobs to take a trip around the world to do all the things we wanted to experience before retirement- hiking in Patagonia, trekking to Everest Base Camp, and seeing the pyramids of Egypt.
In order to save up for our trip around the world more quickly, we started to take our website seriously, learning how to create helpful content for our readers to plan their adventures, as well as providing travel guidance through other platforms, like YouTube.
As our online business began to grow, our plans for the future shifted- what if, instead of a one year trip around the world, we were able to run our online travel advice business full-time, with time to more deeply explore destinations and provide more detailed advice on how to maximize your time exploring the world?
And we did just that- in June of 2023, we quit our corporate jobs to run our online business full-time, while diving into as many destinations as we can. We’ve spent the last year living in our RV and driving from the southernmost point in the United States, Key West, Florida, to Tuktoyaktuk in the Arctic Circle in Canada- and we’re about to spend the next seven months exploring Central and South America and Antarctica!
And that’s exactly where 90 Summers comes in- this is your one stop shop for everything you need to know to check destinations and experiences off your bucketlist. We know how precious your time (and money!) is, so we want to share actionable tips and tricks to make the most of it.