I’m currently sitting here watching a Booksandlala video where she rereads her favorite books over her last ten years on booktube and I thought, wait a minute, I’ve been blogging for ten whole years (more than!) now and that’s absolutely wild!

So, inspired by the series she’s doing over the year, I’m going to be sharing at least one post a month (sometimes two because timing) looking back over the last ten years of blogging!

This first post will just be looking back at how many places I’ve been, highlights of travel and blogging in general, and whatever else I decide.

And over the next year I’ll share my top tens of a variety of things, like cities, parks, hikes, pictures, you get the idea.

Travel over 10 years

Countries visited

Technically I’ve been to 12 or 13, depending on how you count it, but two or three were just passing through or like, very extremely briefly on the border, so I count it as 10 but I listed all 13.

• Slovenia
• Italy (literally just standing at the border)
• Mexico
• Belize
• Guatemala
• El Salvador (driving through, stopped in El Tunco for a few hours)
• Honduras (driving through, no stops)
• Nicaragua
• Costa Rica
• Panama
• Taiwan
• Japan
• Philippines

States visited

I always struggle how to count what states I’ve been to. I’ve been to (technically) quite a few but I haven’t actually done things in a lot of them. So, I split that into two sections below!

I actually did something in 25 states and drove through an additional eight.

States I actually did something in:

• Wisconsin
• Minnesota
• North Dakota
• South Dakota
• Colorado
• Wyoming
• Montana
• Nevada
• Utah
• New Mexico
• Arizona
• Texas
• Florida
• South Carolina
• North Carolina
• Tennessee
• West Virginia
• Virginia
• Ohio
• Indiana
• Illinois
• Georgia
• California
• Michigan
• Arkansas

States I just drove through:

• Iowa
• Missouri
• Louisiana
• Alabama
• Kentucky
• Mississippi
• Idaho
• Oklahoma

National parks visited

This one is easier, as all of the national parks (of the main 63 parks) that I’ve been to (33/63!) were in the last ten years!

So instead of listing them all here, you can find them all on my national park page (plus Theodore Roosevelt NP, posts coming soon!)

Here I’ll list a few notable park things from the last ten years.

First park visited: Arches (Utah)

State with most visited: Utah (five)

Top five (I can’t pick one, no particular order):

• Great Basin
• Grand Teton
• Capitol Reef
• Saguaro
• Theodore Roosevelt

Bottom five (also no particular order):

• Indiana Dunes
• Shenandoah
• Hot Springs
• Congaree
• Cuyahoga Valley (except the Ledges Trail is one of my favorites ever)

Five most anticipated (again, in no order specifically):

• Lake Clark
• Olympic
• Acadia
• Dry Tortugas
• American Samoa

State parks visited

This one was harder to tally up but I believe I’ve been to 41 different state parks in seven different states!

• Interstate (Wisconsin/Minnesota)
• Willow River (Wisconsin
• Devils Lake (Wisconsin)
• Makoshika (Montana)
• Edge of the Cedars (Utah)
• Anasazi Museum (Utah)
• Escalante Petrified Forest (Utah)
• Rocky Fork (Tennessee)
• Custer (South Dakota)
• Goblin Valley (Utah)
• Big Shoals (Florida)
• Goosenecks (Utah)
• Snow Canyon (Utah)
• Dead Horse Point (Utah)
• Sand Hollow (Utah)
• Kodachrome Basin (Utah)
• Lost Dutchman (Arizona)
• Fort Clinch (Florida)
• Goldhead Branch (Florida)
• Devil’s Millhopper (Florida)
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Florida)
• Dudley Farm (Florida)
• Myakka River (Florida)
• Fakahatchee (Florida)
• Lover’s Key (Florida)
• Delnor-Wiggins Pass (Florida)
• Caladesi Island (Florida)
• Honeymoon Island (Florida)
• Ichetucknee (Florida)
• O’Leno (Florida)
• River Rise (Florida)
• Paynes Prairie (Florida)
• Anastasia Island (Florida)
• Crystal River (Florida)
• Crystal River Archaeological Museum (Florida)
• Alfred B. Maclay Gardens (Florida)
• T.H. Stone Memorial St. Joseph Peninsula (Florida)
• Valley of Fire (Nevada)
• Big Talbot (Florida)
• Blue Spring (Florida)
• Gilchrist Blue Spring (Florida)

Miles driven

Too many to count! Thousands! I think I’ve driven across the US in some way (usually between Wisconsin, Florida, and Utah) nearing on 30 times?

This includes the 2020 trip through Appalachia and the fall 2024 trip out west. I have two posts on lessons learned from driving across the US, here and here.

Blogging over 10 years

Total posts published

A whopping 619! Some of the really old ones are just not good, and some I’ve deleted and sort of wish I didn’t but here we are.

I still think this is pretty impressive and really great for just keeping track of everything I’ve done and where I’ve been.

I love having something to look back on even if I don’t necessarily love the posts themselves. But at the same time I miss OG blogging and am trying to return to that a little bit but in an improved way.

And just as impressive as the number published, I have a (totally manageable) 430 drafts too!

Average posts published per year

Just remember, the first few years the posts were significantly less.. good and the information in it was far less helpful so it didn’t take long to write and publish them.

2025 – 2 (including this one)

2024 – 32

2023 – 51

2022 – 81

2021 – 55

2020 – 67

2019 – 59

2018 – 54

2017 – 94

2016 – 57

2015 – 50

2014 – 12

Highest year of views

2021 was my highest year with 311,000 views! Travel blogs took a major hit during the pandemic, especially the beginning of it, but up to that point, 2020 was my highest year (242,000 in 202 vs 107,000 in 2019), then 2021 beat it significantly!

Total views over 10 years

From beginning to now, the day I’m writing this (2/14/25) I’ve had 1,666,047 total views, which is absolutely wild to me!

1,239,537 people have seen what I’ve written and put out on the Internet and I still can’t believe that. I know some people get that in a year, or even a month, but I’m still amazed by this for myself.

Views in 2015 vs 2024

I went with the first and last full years and had 3,377 total views in 2015 versus 301,799 in 2024! Not a bad improvement there!

Number of photos uploaded

17,562!! And I still have a few thousand more to go through from moving back to Wisconsin!

Other things of note

I wasn’t really sure how to subtitle these so here are a few other notable things that have happened over the last ten years.

I’ve lived in five different states (Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, Florida, and Wisconsin). I got two cats (I miss you Henny!), I’ve read over 800 books, and I’ve had four different cars.

I’ve found all kinds of new hobbies which has been very fun. I’m currently working on making 1000 paper cranes, am regularly making stained glass projects, and have taken two pottery classes, which I’ve loved. (I still occasionally paint and do embroidery, too).

And a very exciting thing is that I’ve finally found my personal style and I love it so much! It’s weird and fun and not what I ever expected it to be but it feels just right.

Whats to come?

Good question! I’ll definitely keep blogging as long as I enjoy it, and even if that stops I’ll keep everything up because I love being able to look back at it.

The blogging world is changing fast and I really love the idea of more of a return to the OG blogging days of writing what you want because you want to so I’ll be doing more of that.

I’ll still have a mix of other things that the search gods may like but I’ll switch them up and maybe focus on that a bit less.

At the end of the year I’ll do a post with some fun goals for the next ten years to look forward to and, eventually, back on.

How long have you been reading here? What are your favorite posts to see? What do you want to see more/less of?