Shalee Super chats with PEOPLE about her unconventional vacation partners

NEED TO KNOW

• When Shalee Super and her husband Josh adopted their cats, they knew they would have to find a way to bring them on their wilderness adventures
• “Now they’ve been adventuring and traveling with us for almost a decade,” Shalee tells PEOPLE in an interview
• The travel influencer chats with PEOPLE about her unconventional vacation partners and how she manages their safety on the road

It was a classic foster fail.

Shalee Super and her husband, Josh, took in two cats, but when it was time to give them back to the adoption agency, they couldn’t bear the thought of letting them go. But adoption presented the couple with a predicament: Shalee and Josh spend nearly half of the year on wilderness expeditions around the country, and they couldn’t simply leave their furry friends behind.

“Now they’ve been adventuring and traveling with us for almost a decade,” Shalee tells PEOPLE in an interview.

Shalee — known on Instagram under the handle @shaleewanders — has made a career out of travel with her husband. The Wyoming-based couple, who fittingly met on a camping trip 14 years ago, have traveled all over the world, sharing their experiences from the icy glaciers of Alaska, the backcountry of the Canadian Rockies, the urban center of Florence and everywhere in between.

But what sets them apart is that they often bring their three cats — Maverick, Aspen and Tortilla — along with them.

Shalee and Josh started training their cats when they were young, first by getting them accustomed to short trips out of the house (a favorite was trips to the Starbucks drive-thru). Then, they started introducing them to the woods behind their house for short daily walks, teaching them to follow along. And eventually, they felt that their cats were ready for the road.

When Shalee and Josh travel with their cats in their camper van, there is one main difference: Their camper is outfitted with a cat nook that has a spot for their litter box.

Each of their cats has a different relationship to travel.

Maverick is their “adventure cat,” says Shalee. “He wants to come on every hike. He gets pissed off if we leave him behind.” They think of Aspen as their “bougie traveler” — he likes to hang in the cabin and prefers to hang back when the family goes on hikes. And cat no. 3, Tortilla, is “just happy to be anywhere,” Shalee says. 

On their trips, they don’t bring leashes, instead leaving the door to the camper open to allow their cats to roam freely and retreat to it as their safe space. 

“The cats are kind of free to do whatever they want,” she says. “They have access to the camper whenever. So if a car goes by and drives too loud, they usually jump in the camper because that’s their safe spot.”

They’re similarly leash-free on hikes — but are trained to follow closely behind, just like a dog would. And, of course, they’re very popular with the people they pass on the trails, many of whom want to say hi, give them a pet and even take a picture.

Naturally, one of the biggest concerns when bringing Maverick, Aspen and Tortilla on a camping trip is safety — but Shalee says that a casual viewer might not fully understand the considerations they are taking.

“They’re like, ‘What if your cat got lost on a hike?’ ” she says of internet commenters. “I’m like, ‘That cat would survive longer than I would. He has way better senses than I do.’ ” (She adds they sometimes even trust their cat’s safety instincts more than their own.)

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Sure, Shalee and Josh occasionally worry that something might happen to one of their cats, but to them, the benefits of bringing them along for the trip far outweigh the risks. “They are living such a happy life,” Shalee tells PEOPLE. “If we wanted to make sure that our cats were as safe as possible at all times, they would never leave the house.”

And their closest calls, Shalee continues, have actually been with other hikers’ dogs — which they encounter far more frequently than most wildlife.

While the pair have gotten their cat camping trips down to a science, Shalee says there are a few extra considerations that they have to take before embarking on an expedition. They have to be cognizant of the temperature: Without air conditioning in the camper, it’s simply unsafe to leave them inside when it’s 95 degrees. And they also often camp in areas that are less frequented by people, so there’s less stimulus to bother them.

But above all else, Shalee has learned that, when it comes to bringing your cats on trips of any nature, “consistency is key” — whether it takes the form of a monthly camping trip, a trip to the grocery store or a coffee run. 

“If you get them as a kitten,” Shalee says, “those cats are entirely trainable.”

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