Alex Culley was trying to put together a vacation that would surprise his wife — and himself, too.

He found someone to do the job for him.

“We would have never thought of going south,” says the Columbus, Ohio, resident whose trip went to Charleston, S.C. “We just never wanted to go there. And the best part was that it was a surprise.”

He became a client of Pack Up & Go, a surprise travel agency based in Lawrenceville that has put together 700 trips to 47 places in the continental United States it its first year of operation.

“That far exceeded what I ever thought,” says founder and CEO Lillian Rafson, who runs the company out of her home.

“Sometimes if you are a hard-core working person, you get so caught up in your corporate thing you can’t find the time to plan a trip even if you really need one,” says another client, Sarah Finegold, a Squirrel Hill native who now lives in Brooklyn.

The demands of a busy schedule are one of the everyday-life tests that inspired Rafson to set up the agency.

Pack Up & Go doesn’t set up week-long trips to Paris or the Grand Canyon. It arranges three-day trips that a person can squeeze in between that last meeting on Friday and the customer you have to see first thing Tuesday.

Here’s how it works: If you are hunting for a quick getaway, you fill out the survey on the agency’s website — packupgo.com. It asks how you want to travel, when you want to go, some recent trip sites and plans, and a great deal of personal interests.

It also inquires on what kind of pace you would like, dietary restrictions and personal matters such as addiction to doughnuts and the like.

After some research, Rafson and her crew will put together a trip, arrange a flight and book accommodations. They also will provide a list of recommended activities and highlights of the destination.

Because the trips are three days long, she keeps travel to four hours each way. Direct flights are the key, but often can be impossible.

Cost for trips can vary greatly, but she says the average is $750 for each person, covering flight and accommodations.

The company also will arrange road, bus or train trips if that is what the customer wants.

But the big element is the surprise.

In the best-case scenario, a client would not open the envelope with the target city and plane tickets until getting to the airport.

A few days before the trip begins, the client gets an envelope with boarding passes — if necessary — and all the information. A cover letter of sorts, suggests the type of clothes to take, best shoes to bring, anything a traveler would need to know about the visit.

“When we went to Savannah (Ga.),” Finegold says, “they told us to bring good walking shoes and that it was a good food city, which is just what we wanted.”

Finegold says she played by the rules and didn’t check to see where her trip was going until she got to the airport. The odd twist about that trip was that it was with her mother, Judy Esman, a doctor from Squirrel Hill.

The doctor flew from Pittsburgh; Finegold from New York City. Then, they had a rendezvous in their mystery city.

Culley says he was planning a type of almost-surprise when he stumbled on Pack Up & Go online. He and his wife, Ebony, travel a couple times a year and were thinking of packing, going to the airport and picking out a place to go on a whim when they got there.

Pack Up & Go made it simpler, he says.

Rafson says she got the idea for the firm when she quit her job in sales at a New York City startup. The Squirrel Hill native then decided to travel in Eastern Europe. On a stay in a hostel in Riga, Latvia, she met two young women who had been sent there by a Dutch surprise travel firm.

“I got intrigued, and thought maybe it was something I could do,” she says. “Then, trying to be smart about it, I thought: Keep it simple. Three-day trips. Only in the United States.”

She got some advice from her business-owner parents, Roger and Sally Rafson from Squirrel Hill, and took part in the Invest in Her entrepreneur competition held by Coro Pittsburgh, a civic leadership group.

Pack Up & Go got going in January 2016.

Word has spread from people coming across it online, media stories and word of mouth, she says. That chatter has been widespread enough only 20 of her 700 clients were from the Pittsburgh area, meaning the four-hour trips have been all over the Lower 48.

So far, she says, there haven’t been any real disasters. But problems can happen.

Finegold says her trip to Savannah was extended because of mechanical problems on the plane. For the Culleys, bad weather lengthened the trip home.

“But it was nothing they did,” he adds.

Both clients say they are thinking about a return engagement.

“I’m looking into a road trip next time, just to see where they send me,” Culley says. “And if she does anything international, I’d be interested.”

Details: 412-448-2700 or packupgo.com

Bob Karlovits is a Tribune Review contributing writer.

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