About us

Hi everyone!  We are excited to have you following along with us on our travels and other adventures. To let you know a bit more about us, here is our backstory.

We actually met as freshmen in high school... but we weren't high school sweethearts.  Lindsey was a close friend of Dustin’s sister, and he did sign her yearbook... upside down (he was odd like that).  It wasn't until 6 months after high school that we realized we had chemistry.  It all started on a fateful evening at Lindsey's house, watching a movie followed by an entire night talking (the sun was literally coming up before Dustin went home) when we finally began to realize that we just might be perfect for each other.

We dated long distance throughout college and managed to keep the flame alive with plenty of weekend trips, long phone conversations, and school breaks spent together.  While we had some minor traveling adventures as poor college students, our first major trip wasn't until after college when we went to Ireland.  That trip both broadened our horizons and made us realize just how much fun we had traveling together!

After many more adventures, we got married and set up home base in Roanoke, Virginia, a beautiful small city tucked among the Blue Ridge Mountains. We share our home with our three (formerly four) Labrador retrievers, each with their own unique personality.  Over the years we have found that in addition to travel, we share a love of food, conversation, photography, learning endless new things, reading (check out travel destination inspired books here) and all of life's adventures, whether planned, spontaneous, or entirely unintentional. 

Home Base

P.O. Box 668
Vinton, VA 24179
USA

Contact Us

The easiest way to get in touch with us is to fill out the form to the right.  We will respond as soon as possible.

How to support us*

*including how to support us at no additional cost to you!

We put an extraordinary number of hours into pulling together all aspects of To Make Much of Time. Honestly, these are some of the most enjoyable hours of the day, so we have no complaints.

Every bit of what you see is 100% us - all of the photography is ours (no stock images here!), all destination-based posts reflect trips we have taken (unlike some bloggers who write posts based on research only), and all book reviews and book recommendations are based on the books literally gracing our overflowing bookcases. We do our own thorough research to make our posts interesting and informative in addition to sharing our own experiences and perceptions.

All of the above - photography equipment, travel expenses, book purchases, website hosting - come at a cost, even without factoring in our time. Our goal is to make To Make Much of Time fiscally sustainable and to help it grow so that we can achieve our big dreams for this blog. One way to do that is to explain how we make money so that you, our readers, can support us in any ways that make sense, including a number of options that come at no additional cost to you.

But most importantly, thank you for supporting us by following our posts and adventures! Sharing this part of our lives with you brings us endless non-monetary enjoyment, and we hope you get something positive out of what we share and that it brings you enjoyment, too.

How to support us for free!

We have an ever-growing list of affiliates, companies whose products we personally use. Whenever you purchase something from one of their sites through our unique affiliate link, we receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. How does this work? Simply click on the link below, and then shop as you normally would on the merchant’s website. A tracking feature tells the site that you accessed it through our link. As simple as that!

Here are our current affiliates and our corresponding affiliate link. We also occasionally receive special deals through the affiliates, for example a special sale or percentage off purchases. We will pass that information along to you on this page here (scroll down to the ‘deals’ section to see what’s new).

check out our affiliates

How to support us by purchasing our products

• Order a limited-edition print of one of our photographs. These are offered in a multitude of sizes and printed on various formats (canvas, metal, wood, and more) through our printer, Pictorem, and shipped directly to you. These make great gifts for others and may just make you want to freshen up one of the walls in your own home!

• Want art to carry with you? Check out our merchandise, which we sell through our storefront on Society6.

• Flip through a year of travel-inspiring photos with our annual wall calendars, printed and shipped through Lulu.com, a well-established publisher. View each month’s photos so you know the exact product you’re buying before you make your decision. We have designed and used our own calendars for over a decade and love to travel vicariously through them! These make great gifts, too.