Team

Spencer Spellman

Travel has run through Spencer’s veins ever since flying for the first time at age 5, and by himself for the first time at age 7, thanks to a sister who was a flight attendant. By the time he graduated high school, he had been to most U.S. states, in part from a 23-state road trip, and had collected more travel photo albums than books. Fittingly, it’d be only a few years later when he’d be hired as a writer for USA Today 10Best, where he was promoted to an editor on his first day on the job. Spencer used this as a springboard for a career in travel, which has included writing and photographing for publications like the Los Angeles Times, Travel + Leisure, Time Out, Sunset, and Outside Magazine, while developing award-winning content campaigns for brands like Expedia and Vail Resorts.

Spencer loves taking new challenges and calculated risks, such as for his 30th birthday, when he challenged himself to try 30 new things over the course of the year that he said he always wanted to do, but had never done. He did 38. When Spencer isn’t traveling, he’s creating new cocktail recipes at home, summiting California mountains, mastering his s’mores recipe and trying every taco truck possible in L.A. He’ll travel to the snow, but doesn’t want the snow to travel to him, and his favorite thing in the world is the feeling of clean sheets after they’ve come out of the dryer.

 

  1. What’s your spirit animal?
    Lion! They are determined, brave, protective, fight for who they love, and communal, but yet they’ll go crazy on food and just veg out.
     
  2. Your favorite cause and charity and why?
    Surfrider Foundation. From as little as I can remember, I’ve been a beach kid. In fact, there’s actually a painting in my bedroom that my cousin made of me at the beach when I was a couple years old. Today, I’m lucky enough to walk to the beach from my neighborhood and try to enjoy the coast as much as I can. As such, it’s important that as much as I enjoy it, I also help protect it, both for myself, and generations to come.
     
  3. Your favorite travel destination that you’ve been to?
    Patagonia’s Torres del Paine in Chile. I did a 5-day trek there a couple years ago, and it was one of the best weeks of my life.
     
  4. Where do you dream of traveling to?
    New Zealand!
     
  5. What does it mean to #TravelKindly to you?
    For me, traveling kindly is an act of respecting and helping preserve an experience and destination so that just as I’ve enjoyed it, so too other generations can enjoy it. Traveling gives so much to us, that it seems only right that we’d give something back as we’re traveling ourselves.