Traveler Q&A: Jason Hussong of Jasons-Travels.com

Anyone familiar with the travel blogging scene, specifically regarding Colorado, chances are they have come across the work of Jason Hussong. Author of Jasons-Travels.com and contributor to numerous other sites such as Circumference.org, Jason was recently named as one of the “101 Most Awesome Adventure & Travel Twitterers You Should Be Following” by Abroadening.com.

To date, Jason has visited 15 countries on all seven continents (Yes, including Antarctica), including nearly all of the counties in Colorado. I recently accompanied him on a hike through Stanley Canyon via the Air Force Academy where I was able to talk with him about his love of travel.

What sparked your love for traveling?

It’s just something that is in the blood in my family. My parents always traveled, my grandparents always traveled, and my great-grandparents were the ones that immigrated here from Holland and Germany.

As a kid, each summer we took that quintessential summer vacation- to the Wisconsin Dells, Branson, Missouri, all throughout Minnesota, and Disneyworld and all that stuff. My brother and sister have settled down and have families and haven’t been able to do as much as they like outside of their own family vacations. I figure I might as well see as much as I can and experience what I can before I settle down. I don’t want to wait until I am seventy years old and can’t get around as well.

What inspired your first trip abroad and where did you go?

In between my junior and senior year, my History teacher did a thing with EF Tours during the summer. We went off and the first country I ever went to was Greece. We landed in Athens, and after seeing a bit of the country for a few days we sailed to Italy and saw Vesuvius and Rome and Naples- all these just really great places. It was unbelievable.

You admit to not doing much traveling during college. What got you back going again?

An opportunity came along at work that allowed me to go to Germany as a journalist to learn about their politics and media. It was two-weeks all-expenses-paid around Germany as well as Strasbourg, France, to really experience the culture and what’s happened since the fall of the wall.

With me it’s not as though my trip to Greece and Italy sparked me to go to Germany, which in turn sparked me to go to Ireland a few years later. It’s always just been like, “here’s this great opportunity so I’m going to go check it out.”

What do you focus on when you travel?

Before I go I try to read a book or two about the history of an area or a country, and then make sure I hit most of the major museums or attractions, like The Pyramids or The Great Wall or The Acropolis in Athens- the landmarks that people can identify themselves with.

I also like to go out and have some fun at night, and do what the locals do in terms of going out to restaurants or clubs or whatever. I always joke that when I get back from a vacation I need a vacation, because I just don’t sleep much.

Why do you blog about your travels?

If I had just wanted to keep things to myself I would just do the journals or put things in a word document on my computer Doogie Howser-style. But I want to share the ideas of different places with different people whether it’s in Colorado or some other part of the country or the world. I just want to give people an idea of a place that I have been.

It’s great to read about places in an objective travel book, but they rarely tell you everything you need to know. Whereas my blog is about things that I have seen and done, I’ve gotten the t-shirt, and people can read about it and see if it’s something they might like based on what they know of me and my writing.

You have a huge internet presence within the travel community. How much do you use the computer as a tool for your own travels?

I will always get a guidebook for wherever I may go, but I am going to do most of my research on free travel sites such as Wikitravel and talk to people on twitter and learn about places that way.

There is so much out there to do and see that you just can’t fit it into a book or a newscast. You’ve got to rely on the broad strokes of what you can find on the internet. It’s just depending on what you are looking for and what you are active in and enjoy and trust.