I don’t often take personal looks back at the work I’ve accomplished in my life. I’ve had a number of great opportunities, both professionally with my 9-5 and in my growing attempts to make this hobby of mine become something a bit more. There have been tough moments in both, but I can honestly say that the last seven years of my life have been the luckiest years I’ve had so far. The opportunity to take an activity I enjoy and combine it with spending time with the person I love most in the world has been a great joy of mine. So, while this post is looking back at the journey so far, it’s also closing the chapter as well.
Just a couple short weeks after the seventh anniversary of starting this blog, I’m going to embark on an even greater adventure: parenthood. It’s an adventure that’s been in the making for a while, and I’m so excited to take it on. Life is a constant battle between time moving forward, and seeking to preserve the moments we have experienced. The challenges, joys, and unexpected moments of becoming a father will be the moments I seek to preserve now. The travels I’ve embarked on with my wife, will now have a new meaning, as we bring our kids along for the adventure as well. What I’m least sure of, for now, is what that means for this place and how I choose to share these adventures in the future.
Only time will really ever tell our stories. I’ve had seven lucky years of traveling and getting to share those travels with you. I hope you’ll enjoy the stories that come from the next seven years of journeys. Yet, before those get here, let’s look back at what I’ve learned about life, love, and my place in the world over the last seven years.
Making Memories of the Life I want
As I’ve developed my passion for traveling, it’s also become a key way that I make memories to share with my wife and family. While the everyday memories are important and cherished, the ones we make on the road become a unique way of bonding.
When I was growing up, I barely left the state of Florida. There was plenty of travel to visit places all across the state, but never beyond it’s borders. In fact, that very first trip to Brevard, NC was also the first realization that those were the memories I wanted to make: a life seeing special places, and spending time with loved ones while doing it.
It’s that desire which transformed into the trip which birthed this blog: our adventure along the Pacific Coast Highway. I wanted to see breathtaking places and plan on having grand adventures crossing the country. Not every trip has been that (and that would be exhausting), but we’ve had more than our fair share of wonderful road trips.
In every case, its another step closer to the life I want to live. One that is free to enjoy the simple, everyday moments knowing that the next adventure is always around the corner.
Looking Back at Seven Years of Traveling
I think it’s always good to look back at where you’ve been because it helps you to understand exactly where you are. Then you can take all that knowledge and head off into the unknown of the future with at least a little certainty of the journey or destination ahead. So, let’s all take a trip down memory lane from the last seven years!
2018: A Classic Road Trip and a New Beginning
Before I ever had the idea to start writing Florida Man on the Run, I had an idea for planning a big trip for our first wedding anniversary. It started with an idea to simply visit my sister in Los Angeles, which morphed into a trip up the California coast, and eventually into the epic drive from LA to Portland. In fact, my very first post here was all about the build up to that trip!
It was a pretty ambitious trip to plan when I’d never done something like that before. Obviously, I’d begun reading a few blogs and thought to myself, I could write one of those too. My wife suggested the name, and boom, a blog was born.
2018 ultimately became a fantastic year of travel for us. Two weeks along the Pacific Coast Highway, Redwood Highway, and Oregon Coast Highway kicked it all off in the spring. We weeks over the summer visiting the awesome city of Asheville, and taking smaller day trips from home. Then wrapped it all up with another week soaking in the history around Boston. It was an absolutely amazing start and I couldn’t wait to turn it all into some awesome content!
2019: How do you write a travel blog?
As I turned the corner into the new year, it became apparent that I actually had NO IDEA what the heck I was doing. 2018’s blogs were largely written in the days immediately after each part of the trip, which meant many of my PCH posts were written in the hotel room on the trip!
2019 was still a fairly busy year for traveling, even though I was still working out how to do this blogger thing. I was (and am) still working a regular job and big trips can be a little expensive if you try to do them yearly. However, the, now annual, pilgrimage to Brevard, NC still got underway, plus a quieter camping trip to Tallulah Gorge, and a big adventure to Denver and Albuquerque. I still haven’t written about the ABQ!
This year ultimately gave me time to think about how do I actually want to approach my own writing. I stopped the insanity of writing things almost immediately after, and instead had a more deliberate approach. The tone of my posts began to develop, and I started to find my voice. I even realized the importance of social media, though that still is a bit of a weak spot even to today.
However, I felt like there was a lot of momentum and 2020 was going to be a BANGER of a year for travel!
2020: you can isolate on a road trip right?
Well… we are all pretty aware of how 2020 went for most of the world. My mom and I had planned an epic trip around Newfoundland that was set to kick off in May, which was pushed to June, then canceled altogether. Yet, she had a van all decked out for camping and ready to go. We both had pretty much the same idea: be safe, mask up, and spend time in the great outdoors.
We embarked on a fantastic trip across the American Southwest. I had the opportunity to see six national parks across Colorado, Utah, and California. Not to mention spending more quality time with my mom than I had at any point since I was a kid. It was beyond making the best of a bad global situation.
2020 was also the 10th anniversary of my wife and I meeting, and I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to celebrate that. So, if my camping road trip across the southwest was a success, then we could celebrate that way!
Two years removed from tackling one classic American road trip, we knocked another off our list. We spent a wonderful week enjoying the curves of the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive, camping in the back of our Subaru Forester. It truly engrained in me a love of camping simply and without all the fuss of a tent.
The year was packed with uncertainty and not a great year for much of the world, but it was still a year of growth for me.
2021: the year of writer’s block
Odd numbered years have a way of draining away my energy. While 2020 was fantastic for traveling, 2021 was a quiet year. I only managed to publish two posts during the entire year, with overall visits to the site way down. Writer’s block struck me hard, with a constant feeling that what I was doing didn’t really matter in the end.
We took quite a few trips to the mountains and to Tennessee in 2021. Our annual trip to Brevard, included some time in Cherokee, Pigeon Forge, and Southwest Airlines ran some great deals, so a flight to Nashville was a cheap way to celebrate my birthday. Then we still had more to do in Nashville, which necessitated another road trip with a stop in Chattanooga for my wife’s birthday.
That depressed feeling really started to go away after a trip to Baltimore that fall. It reminded me of visiting Boston back in 2018, a chance to just enjoy a city for everything it offered without spending a lot of time on the road. Baltimore is a fantastic city, yet my writer’s block even extended to trips I really enjoyed taking.
2022: revitalized by the great river road
That all really changed with our regularly scheduled, even year major road trip. We’d tackled the Pacific Coast Highway, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and set our sights on the Great River Road next. It remains the longest road trip I’ve ever planned and was an epic two weeks following the Mississippi River from start to finish.
The Great River Road trip ultimately served a dual purpose for me. The first was refinding my passion for adventure and experiencing placed I’d never scene before. The second was giving me a wealth of content to write about. 2022 easily became my most productive year as a result and fully defeated my writer’s block from 2021.
In addition to that, I took a new approach to what kind of content I could produce. Not every article needed to have first hand accounts of places I’ve seen. I accepted that research was a-ok to supplement my own knowledge of a location, because otherwise I’d never be able to write articles as thoroughly as I wanted. This was honestly the most refreshing aspect for me and I felt freed to write about what I wanted to.
2023: a new kind of adventure
On December 23rd, 2022, I got news of an early Christmas present: a long sought after promotion at my 9-5. Which meant that this Florida Man wasn’t just on the run, but on the move as well to Chattanooga, TN.
While I loved living in Florida, it wasn’t the most convenient for reaching a large number of places by car quickly. Chattanooga was far more centrally located, opening up a host of new places for us to visit quickly. That included state parks, small towns, and scenic site all around the state of Tennessee.
We also worked in a smaller, more intentional road trip to West Virginia. This was another new approach, focused on taking in as much of the state as possible rather than stretching out a long, snaking trip in one direction. It was by far the most chill road trip we’d ever taken, and one of the most beautiful.
2024: ready for take-off
I started off 2024 with high hopes. The previous year had been full of adventure, TONS of written content, and still more waiting to be done. From a purely performance perspective the blog absolutely exploded. Multiple posts took off, and the momentum truly hasn’t stopped.
Despite some pretty grand travel plans at the beginning of the year, I ultimately scaled things back. We still made a super fun trip to see family in Chicago, and we explored Tennessee even more as as well. However, work and life in general limited our ambitions. It was a year taken to focus on travel for us, not anyone else.
As I reflect on 2024, I see it as a turning point for me. There was time to reflect, and understand, exactly what is important in life. Success with this blog was finally around the corner, and so was new places to find joy with finding out I was a dad to be. It established so many new expectations that I can’t wait to see what all is in store for the future.
The Future of Florida Man on the Run
I’d honestly be lying to myself if I knew what was next. The last seven years I’ve largely traveled in a very specific way, and without many constraints on when, where, how, or why. Yet, that all changes as I become a new dad.
The travels don’t stop, but so many more variables are added to the equation. Those variables ultimately affect what I’ll write about in this space, which in a way has become a place of personal expression. I don’t know if becoming a “family travel” blogger is the right move here, or if that’s even an angle I want to consider writing from at all, here or anywhere else.
What I do know is that I’ve got a massive backlog of content to produce based on more than a dozen trips large and small over the last seven years. Hopefully, I’ll find some time on my paternity leave while the baby sleeps and the chores are done to get through that backlog. No matter what, I’ll continue creating and writing. I truly enjoy it and have no intention on stopping. Heck, I already beat a whole year of writer’s block!
I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t thank all of you for reading and supporting this journey. I appreciate every view, comment, follow, and show of support over the years. So, keep it coming and maybe at the 10-year mark we will really have something to celebrate!
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