What I’ve been up to in Wisconsin

I haven’t been posting much since I’ve arrived in Wisconsin, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. Unfortunately, the work I’ve been doing just hasn’t manifested itself on the front page of my blog yet.

1) I’ve gone through about nine months of blog posts and photos reformatting everything and removing all the links to my old, self hosted photo site. This is something which most of you will never even notice unless you are digging around the archives. This was a very tedious process, but now that it is done it will reduce my hosting fees and cost dramatically, make my site much more portable if I ever want to switch web hosting companies, and can easily move all my daily photos to a 1000 pixel wide format in the future. (this is high on my priority list).

2) I’ve finally begun processing all my photos from Europe. I’ve finished everything I took in Rome and at the Vatican and have now moved on to Florence. This too is a time consuming process, but not nearly as bad as reformatting all my old posts. You will be seeing a lot more European photos show up on the site over the next few weeks.

3) With the aid of Chris Christensen of the Amateur Traveler Podcast, we’ve launched a new weekly audio travel podcast called This Week in Travel. We just released Episode #1 this week. Take a listen:

4) Meeting people. I’ve been meeting people in the Appleton area every few days, which has been enjoyable. There are a lot of people out there who dream of traveling for an extended period of time and have questions about it. I’m happy to help, especially if they are willing to buy me lunch :) I’m also speaking at the Appleton Public Library next Monday (August 17) at 6:30pm if you are in the area.

5) Planning my West Coast road trip. I’ll be leaving in early September for a two month trip through the Western United States, visiting various National Parks with a focus on photography. I’ll also be visiting the annual hot air balloon fest in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and also attend BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas. If you live out west, hopefully we can meet up when I come through your town. If anyone has suggestions for what to see on my trip, I am open to suggestions.

6) I have a ton of half written articles on my laptop. I’m waiting to finish processing my photos before I publish them. I like to integrate my photos into the articles, so I’m going to wait until everything is ready. There should be a flood of articles once I’m caught up on my photography.

I’m also going to be going on a week long cruise in early November. I was invited by Princess Cruise lines and I of course said “yes”. I’m going with Brett from Amtrekker, and we will be shooting a ton of (hopefully) entertaining video. I have never been on a cruise before, nor have I ever really considered taking one, so it should be an interesting experience. Certainly something totally different from the type of traveling I’ve been doing the last two and a half years.