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Beyond the Itinerary

Cara Napolitano ’18 and Tristan Hollenbaugh ’18
Cara Napolitano ’18 and Tristan Hollenbaugh ’18 standing atop Mount Rainier, with a snow-capped mountain and clouds behind them.
Photo: @TC.Travels

For Cara Napolitano ’18 and Tristan Hollenbaugh ’18, the path to building a successful travel brand began in 2020 as the couple’s daily life in Hoboken slowed to a halt during the early days of the pandemic.

“We were bored. We didn’t know what to do,” Cara recalls. “So, we thought, what if we went camping?”

Neither had ever been camping before. They searched online for what they would need, packed what they thought made sense and drove north to the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. The trip was at times uncomfortable (it rained during the overnight trip!) and unforgettable because of it. What surprised them most was how much they wanted to do it again.

That moment marked the beginning of TC Travels, the travel and content business the alumni couple now runs alongside full-time careers. Cara has spent her entire post-Stevens career at EY, while Tristan has built his career in engineering, most recently as a sales engineer at Gil-Bar, an HVAC solutions firm.

As their trips expanded from camping to camper vans, from nearby destinations to international ones, their audience widened with them, inspiring them to launch @tc.travels, which now boasts nearly 500,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok and a growing presence on YouTube.

Some of the DMs that we get [are] people telling us, you inspired us to take our first trip.

Cara and Tristan turn their trips into practical resources for others looking to travel more intentionally. In addition to sharing planning and destination insights across social media, they offer downloadable travel itineraries (including for Guatemala, Utah and Italy’s Dolomites, as examples) designed to help travelers replicate trips on their own schedules and budgets. They also leverage their ever-growing following to provide value to brands through sponsored content and brand ambassadorships. These partnerships align with the couple’s emphasis on accessibility rather than luxury.

“Some of the DMs that we get [are] people telling us, you inspired us to take our first trip,” Tristan says.

“I think a lot of the times people think vacation automatically means luxury and money,” he says. Their content instead emphasizes short trips (most of their travel is done over long weekends), careful planning and realistic budgets. “There’s ways to do it cheaply, and I feel like people don’t always know that.”

They credit Stevens with preparing them for a life built on constant adjustment. “Stevens taught us the time management needed in order to do this,” Cara says, pointing to the demanding sched-ules they navigated as students: juggling academics, activities and leadership roles.

Now married, Cara and Tristan continue to grow TC Travels, not as an escape from reality, but as a reflection of it. “We’ve always had that underlying desire to capture a moment,” Cara says, “and really just freeze a moment in time to be able to look back on.”

– Charles O’Brien

Photo Gallery

Bride and groom stand in a field, with snow-capped mountains behind them.
Man and a woman walk in a canyon, beneath a huge rock formations.
Man and a woman walk along a snow-covered plain, with snow-capped mountains in the background.
A man lifts a woman in the air in the distance, as they stand near an ornate wall, with a body of water in front of them showing their reflection.
A man and woman stand and smile on top of a mountain, with rock and mountain ranges surrounding them.
A man and woman walk along a snowy path toward a light green and blue-streaked sky of the Northern Lights.
A man and a woman are seen in the distance standing high atop a rocky mountain, surrounded by the high rocky peaks of the mountain range.
A man and a woman stand at the summit of a mountain, surrounded by rocks, a mountain range, with a blue sky and clouds above them.
Bride and groom stand in a field, with snow-capped mountains behind them.
Man and a woman walk in a canyon, beneath a huge rock formations.
Man and a woman walk along a snow-covered plain, with snow-capped mountains in the background.
A man lifts a woman in the air in the distance, as they stand near an ornate wall, with a body of water in front of them showing their reflection.
A man and woman stand and smile on top of a mountain, with rock and mountain ranges surrounding them.
A man and woman walk along a snowy path toward a light green and blue-streaked sky of the Northern Lights.
A man and a woman are seen in the distance standing high atop a rocky mountain, surrounded by the high rocky peaks of the mountain range.
A man and a woman stand at the summit of a mountain, surrounded by rocks, a mountain range, with a blue sky and clouds above them.
Bride and groom stand in a field, with snow-capped mountains behind them.
Man and a woman walk in a canyon, beneath a huge rock formations.
Man and a woman walk along a snow-covered plain, with snow-capped mountains in the background.
A man lifts a woman in the air in the distance, as they stand near an ornate wall, with a body of water in front of them showing their reflection.
A man and woman stand and smile on top of a mountain, with rock and mountain ranges surrounding them.
A man and woman walk along a snowy path toward a light green and blue-streaked sky of the Northern Lights.
A man and a woman are seen in the distance standing high atop a rocky mountain, surrounded by the high rocky peaks of the mountain range.
A man and a woman stand at the summit of a mountain, surrounded by rocks, a mountain range, with a blue sky and clouds above them.

From “Cringe Mountain” to 36 Parks

For Cara Napolitano ’18 and Tristan Hollenbaugh ’18, getting started wasn’t about booking flights or mapping routes. It was about getting comfortable being seen.

“We call it ‘Climbing Cringe Mountain’,” Cara says.

In the early days of TC Travels, sharing content publicly felt like a risk. Moving from private photos to a public platform meant confronting something many people recognize but rarely name: the fear of putting yourself out there.

“I think a lot of people, it’s like, you’re putting yourself out there,” she says. “The whole idea of being perceived… that’s a scary thing for a lot of people.”

That hesitation wasn’t about the travel itself.

“We never thought of ourselves as content creators,” Tristan says. “So, it was kind of just that initial thought that we might be judged.”

But pushing through the discomfort proved essential. The phrase stuck because it captured both the difficulty and the payoff.

“The climb up is tough,” Cara says. “But once you get to the top… it’s like, wow, all of that was absolutely worth it.”

Getting over that initial hurdle didn’t just change how they shared their experiences — it changed how far those experiences could go.

Since that first camping trip, Cara and Tristan have visited 36 of the United States’ 63 national parks, a goal they’ve pursued over roughly three years. It’s a number that stands out not just for its scale, but for where they started.

Before traveling together, Tristan had never been to the western half of the country.

“That used to be me,” he says.

What began as a way to fill empty weekends has turned into a sustained effort to explore — and document — some of the country’s most remote and iconic landscapes, often while balancing full-time careers and tight travel windows.

For Cara and Tristan, the distance they’ve covered is measured in more than miles. It’s measured in the gap between what once felt out of reach and what now feels possible.

– Charles O’Brien

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