Well, it’s been a minute.

My last post on Travel is Fatal was all the way back in 2021. Three years between blog posts is not a recipe for success. But I feel like I should explain myself, because the truth is I’ve been very busy since then. And it’s all been good stuff. So today’s post is all about catching up. I’ve had some really incredible writing opportunities over the last few years that I’d like to share with you. And with God’s help and a little caffeine, the idea is that with one post will come another one, and then maybe one more, and another, and another, until I’m back to writing on a regular basis. Because I’ve got some awesome travel to share.

First, if you read any of my latest blog posts, you read that I’d been busy traveling and writing a brand new edition of Moon Ohio. That was a long project, with the editing continuing all through 2021, which is about when I stopped posting on here. It was finally released in June 2022, delayed about a year because of Covid. But I really couldn’t be more pleased with it. And I was even privileged to attend the inaugural Columbus Book Festival as a featured author! I got a whole hour to talk about the book, and give some travel advice to a packed room. Since then, I’ve been invited to speak at libraries and historical societies. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the book. If you’ve enjoyed the book, then please take the time to write a review or rate it on Amazon or Goodreads! It really does make a difference, especially when someone anonymously leaves a bad rating without any sort of review (as you’ll see if you look it up on Goodreads).

As a featured author at the 2023 Columbus Book Festival, I gave a presentation on Moon Ohio and local travel.

But then my writing career took a new and exciting turn. Starting in early 2022, I joined Shaka Guide as a full-time tour researcher and writer. Shaka Guide designs self-guided driving tours that utilize your phone’s GPS. The tours tell you where to go, where to turn, provide advice on where to stop and what to do, and entertain you along the way with stories and history about where you’re visiting. I was hired to research these tours and write the scripts. Research includes visiting the sites and exploring the destination myself. Pretty awesome job, right? I was later promoted to an editor, to help some of our other writers bring their tours to life.

Shaka Guide started in Hawaii, so I was hired to help bring the company’s tours to the mainland. We primarily stick to National Parks, but sometimes we also build tours for popular scenic drives. My work has taken me to incredible places like Yosemite, Sedona, Death Valley, Big Bend, and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Exploring White Sands National Park for Shaka Guide

As an editor, I don’t get to travel to the destination. But, I still get the opportunity to learn about these places so that I’m almost as familiar with them as the writer themselves. So I’ve had my hand in at least a dozen other tours, including Olympic, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Crater Lake, Shenandoah, and Redwood national parks.

Enjoying another sunset at Big Bend National Park. A real stunner!

It’s been such an incredible experience working as a tour researcher, writer, and editor. I get to learn new things every day, because our tours cover topics like geology, wildlife, human history, and indigenous cultures. So if you’ve got a trip coming up and you’re headed to a national park, check to see if Shaka Guide has a tour for you. I may have worked on it!

Research trip in New River Gorge National Park

After working at Shaka Guide for over two years, I finally got to experience one of my finished tours in person this past June, when my family and I took a trip to California. We drove much of my Yosemite tour, and I was incredibly proud of the finished product. My son, not so much. Oh, another relevant reason I haven’t posted in a while…some of my older posts referenced The Boy. Well The Boy is now The Boys. So having two young kids in the house, plus writing full time, doesn’t leave much in the way of time, energy, or interest in spending more hours in front of a computer. But, the youngest Boy is now two, so things are getting a little easier (and yet, harder at the same time).

Tunnel View at Yosemite National park. 0/5 stars. Not enough toy cars.

I have some travel lined up in the near future, both for work and for pleasure. And I have a wealth of travel experiences from the past three years to draw back on. So the goal is to start posting on this thing more often again. If there’s a national park you’re interested in, let me know in the comments! If I went there for Shaka Guide, I’d love to share what I know with a new post. Because frankly, with this job, I know a lot. Like, I’m pretty good at trivia.

And of course, I’ll keep exploring the state of Ohio. Because that’s where we still live, and there’s so much to see and do.

Thanks for reading!