Backroad Planet’s very first post . . . .
You have to start somewhere, so this is it! We are jumping in with both feet, launching this new venture. Although this is the first post, the Backroad Planet web site and blog have been in the works for several months now. My sidekick Jerry and I have spent hours brainstorming, tossing around ideas, dreaming up ways to reinvent our lives and ultimately be able to do more of what we enjoy most . . . backroad travel. Not only that, we have been exploring alternate avenues, in hopes of discovering innovative ways to generate income to pay for our adventures in the process.
The past few years, on weekends, holidays, and summer vacation, we have traveled the East Coast backroads of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, DC, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and of course our home state of Florida. Earlier this year we traveled together internationally for the first time to Costa Rica during spring break. Our accumulated wealth of experience coupled with the encouragement of multiple Facebook vicarious travelers has led us to share our adventures, insights, and recommendations through the medium of this website.
Blogging is not entirely new to me. Several years ago my cousin Rhoda introduced me to blogging when she launched her successful Southern Hospitality site. I was eager to try my hand at it, and eventually got four different informational blogs up and running and kept them going for a couple of years. Having published several educational professional books back in the 1990s, writing was not the challenge. I enjoyed the creative process, but time management eventually got the better of me and became an issue. Although my schedule has not changed that much, I am excited about getting back into blogging and the prospects of this endeavor.
Travel blogging, it seems, is a competitive, yet friendly, market, and it is crucial to find a niche to generate readers and subscribers for your site. Although our niche has yet to evolve, we know it will eventually reflect the things in life we enjoy. We love adventure, but neither of us are adrenaline junkies. Jerry rides a Harley, and I have zip-lined once, and that’s about as extreme as we get. On the other hand, if there is a scenic or historical site to see, we’re there! Good food, especially from a local joint or hole-in-the-wall café only sweetens the journey.
Trying to find a concept and name for a web site that fits your style is not always easy, especially when you are wanting to be original in a niche that has yet to evolve. Travel terms such as “nomadism,” “globetrotting,” “roadtripping,” and “wanderlust” evoke images of adventure and wonder, but during the planning stages my web searches always turned up links to many travel sites already using those terms in their names. We finally realized that when it came to travel, our most memorable times were found on the backroads of this wonderful planet, and that was a web domain that had not yet been claimed.
And now you know the rest of the story . . . .
We heartily embrace evolution, change, reinvention, and the countless benefits we anticipate on this venture, out the backdoor, across the backyard, and down the backroads of this amazing planet. We have much to learn about web design and the blogging world, but we envision a distinctive site with helpful engaging content and a graphically-pleasing experience for our readers.
We are not quitting our day jobs . . . yet, and we look forward to sharing the journey with you . . . .
Howard & Jerry
Best of luck, looking forward to reading.
Thanks, Rusty! That was our very first post almost four years ago, but we need all the luck we can get.
Thanks for the good word, bro! Here’s hoping for a few hundred more . . . .
Your blog looks great…excellent idea…wishing you much success on your new venture!