By Caroline Benjamin 

“Absolutely incredible, nothing like anything you will ever do, crazy places, cool people, a must do.” These are the words of a Moondance student, describing their experience on the company’s instagram post. 

Image courtesy of Moondance Adventures.

Moondance Adventures is an adventure travel company for teens based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company was founded by Hayes Hitchens in 1996 as a way to share his love for outdoor adventures with young people. Since then, Moondance has provided thousands of kids the opportunity to explore five continents and over 20 countries. This summer they are offering 27 trips around the world. Addison Barnes (‘26) is a returning Moondance camper, and she stated that “there’s a lot of amazing trips. This year, when I applied for the upcoming summer, I didn’t know which trip I wanted to put first, because I had so many great options.” 

Similar to Collegiate’s core values, the mission of Moondance Adventures is centered around four core values: relationships, transformation, the extra mile, and hospitality. The company also states via their website that “sustainable travel practices, community service, and leave no trace ethics are common themes throughout the Moondance curriculum and we are proud to pass the torch to the future of conservation minded explorers.” 

Photo credit: Caroline Benjamin.

Whether or not the activities on Moondance trips can be considered community service is debatable. On one hand, I can confidently say—having gone to Kenya and Tanzania with Moondance Adventures last summer—I was directly exposed to global issues, such as wildlife conservation, that I would not have encountered in Richmond. In Kenya, my group and I spent a portion of the trip living on Ol Pejeta Conservancy and learning about the animals that it protects. Their zoologists informed us of the struggles that rhinos, lions, and chimpanzees were facing in the wild and the efforts that the team was making in order to save these vulnerable populations. The conservancy team immersed us in their work by getting us involved in tasks like helping vaccinate the cattle on the property. 

Additionally, in another segment of our trip, we visited a local school to play with the kids and see how their education was similar to and different from our own. While the economic support from ecotourism is vital to maintain places like Ol Pejeta, visiting groups should be realistic about their contributions to these projects. We learned about the salvation process of many endangered species; however, we did not affect the community as much as one might through a more sustained service project. For example, my peers at Collegiate who participate in the STAR program are able to impact the kids from Quioccasin Middle School by building relationships with them over many weeks; STAR would not be as effective if it was a one-day event.

Moondance trips and many similar travel-based camps are typically exclusive to those who are able to afford the tuition, flights, and equipment. The average cost of tuition for a Moondance Adventures trip is $6,258, with their most expensive trip, a “Mystery Trip” for Moondance veterans, being over $10,000. Due to this cost, Moondance attracts a certain clientele that lacks diversity. Carter Quigley (‘26)—a seasoned student of Moondance Adventures—commented on this limited representation: “a lot of people that go on the trips have similar backgrounds or know similar people.” On my trip, there were no non-white students in our group, or any that lived farther north than myself—the others were from Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina. However, Quigley also stated that “I don’t think that, by any means, everyone is the same” just because of their identity or hometown.

While quite a few Collegiate students have participated in or heard of this program, Moondance is less popular in Richmond than it is in other southern cities. Barnes stated that “there’s a few people [from Richmond] who go, but Moondance is such a close-knit community; after you’ve been on a trip or two, you kind of know everyone, you’ve heard of everyone.” Because Moondance typically pulls from the same areas, the students that participate are very interconnected. Barnes said that, “on my Slovenia trip, I was with people who were close friends in their hometowns with people from my Maui trip.” Quigley agreed, stating that “it’s common to be on a trip with someone who knows someone else from your hometown that’s done a trip with them—or is friends with someone who has done a trip with them—just because a lot of the very popular trips combine together.”

When traveling to your trip destination, it is common to run into other Moondance students in airports along the way. In my experience, I met the majority of my group members before we had arrived in Nairobi, Kenya. When I would introduce myself as being from Richmond, I would immediately be asked “Oh my gosh! Do you know so-and-so? They were on my trip last summer?” The name game goes on until you realize that they know just as many people from your hometown as you do. 

For me, the travel itself was the most daunting part of Moondance. In the summer of 2023, I flew with a friend to Costa Rica to do a similar trip through a different program, Apogee Adventures. At the time, I was still required to be an unaccompanied minor— I had a flight attendant leading me to and from each gate, and I would board the plane first to ensure that I was fully situated before takeoff. However, last summer I exceeded the age threshold for these accommodations, and I was thrown into navigating unfamiliar international airports alone. 

I had traveled internationally with my family before and was used to just following my dad through the terminals, with my only responsibility being to remember my passport. I quickly learned that solo travel is less easy-going and requires being on high alert. Suddenly, I was not just in charge of my passport but of completing a 16-hour journey through many different time zones and three different countries, just to reach a group of strangers on the other side of the world. Barnes said that on “both trips, I had major travel struggles.” She explained that on her first Moondance trip, her flight was canceled, and she had to rebook everything to meet her group in Maui a day later than everyone else. 

Many former Moondance students will rave about the places they saw and people they met, but there are also aspects of the programs that can be challenging. One of the philosophies commonly promoted by Moondance is “live in the moment.” In order to fully embrace this idea, the company limits students’ communication with their family and friends from home by taking away cell phones and any other forms of technology. While I was content to go without social media, news sources, and mind-numbing games for 17 days, I found it very difficult to disconnect from my parents. Moondance gives the trip leaders’ phone numbers out to families in order to facilitate “mid-trip check-ins.” Family members and friends are able to send a message to their camper that they will receive about halfway through their trip. For me, this one-sided communication was not very comforting and just reminded me of how much I was missing home, despite all of the activities I had to look forward to on my trip. The amount of homesickness I felt impacted my decision of whether or not I would enroll with Moondance again this upcoming summer. Ultimately, I decided that doing another trip would not be the best decision for myself or my family—mostly because I do not have two or more weeks to devote to another trip.

While many of my group members went through travel issues, homesickness, and illness from being in a foreign country, Moondance understandably does not advertise these struggles in their marketing. As their trips are designated for teens, Moondance targets this age group by promoting the adventures on the company’s Instagram account, which has amassed over 24,000 followers. I had followed the account months before my first trip, and the photos they posted of kids doing amazing activities, like scuba diving, cliff jumping, and ziplining, got me excited to go on an adventure of my own. 

Image capture from Moondance Adventure’s Instagram @moondanceadventures.

Moondance also uses the phrase “Got FOMO?” in many of their posts. FOMO is an acronym that stands for “the fear of missing out.” This phrase was popularized with social media: it summarizes the anxious and/or lonely apprehension that many people feel when they see others’ social media posts and feel as though they are missing out on information, events, or experiences. Moondance’s model of advertising plays off of this feeling and causes the thousands of kids following the account to be inclined to sign up. The Instagram account features captions such as “Right here. Right now. This is what FOMO looks like. #gotFOMO?” and “Do you know what FOMO looks like? You will if you don’t sign up for a Moondance trip! Sign up today as we have very limited availability!”

Barnes mentioned that “I think that [the account] is effective to the extent that it gets people excited to see all these kids having fun,” but “it definitely doesn’t capture all of the real moments.” Additionally, Barnes stated that one of her Moondance leaders on her Slovenia trip was a photographer for the business and was required to capture a certain amount of photos and videos of the group: “he would have us pose on rocks or something” in order to get an eye-catching picture. Quigley added that he has appeared on the Instagram account multiple times, and that Moondance is “certainly trying to create a culture” through the “curated selection” of images they display. He said, “I don’t think that culture is fake in any way,” but the posts are definitely more purposeful and polished. 

The Moondance culture that Quigley referenced alludes to the idea that their trips will be the best weeks of your life. In my experience, I found this idea to hold true to me. I am extremely grateful to have been able to travel as a teenager and learn about lifestyles so different from my own. On my trip, our visits to a village and school in Maasai Mara were technically considered service. However, I feel as though the village woman that welcomed us into her home to try traditional Kenyan food and the young kids that attempted to teach us Swahili phrases taught me much more than I could them.

Here is a video compilation of clips and photos from my trip. 

Featured image credit: Caroline Benjamin.