Comfortably Wild with HoneyTrek
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What farflung and exotic locales have you dreamed of exploring? "Life is short, the world is big, and the value of travel is too great to wait..." say National Geographic authors Mike and Anne Howard. Though COVID restrictions may have kept many of us at home for the past year, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Now is the ideal time to consider your next adventure.
WARNING: The following experience and advice may spark your free spirit to travel far and wide (on any budget!).
“We were deciding where to go on our honeymoon and the list of destinations was running off the page…so we thought, why choose? If we want to have all these experiences in our lives, we should prioritize them and get moving. We set out on an honeymoon around the world in January 2012 and nine years later, we’re still on it. HoneyTrek started as a blog to share our travel experiences with family and friends. Though when Condé Nast Traveler, Los Angeles Times, and more media outlets took notice of our journey, we realized it could become something bigger." — Mike & Anne Howard
Whether you're honeymooners, or not, are you ready to get comfortably wild? Take a step towards turning your travel adventure dreams into reality by diving into this interview with Mike and Anne Howard, founders of HoneyTrek and authors of Comfortably Wild: The Best Glamping Destinations in North America.
Interview with HoneyTrek Founders:
Describe your perfect day as Wildpreneurs.
We draw the curtains surrounding the bed of our vintage camper and watch sunrise over our backyard du jour—be it a mountain lake, red rock canyon, or sand-dune beach. We start our day stretching in the morning sun, hike in any direction that begs exploring, then find a viewpoint to enjoy a picnic breakfast. During the heat of the day, we work on HoneyTrek—writing a blog, editing photos, or pitching new projects. An hour before sunset, we take down the kayak for a paddle and happy hour on the water. On shore we make a campfire, cook over the flames, and stay up until we’ve seen a dozen shooting stars.
Tell us about your wild business! What was your inspiration to create HoneyTrek?
HoneyTrek started as a blog to share our travel experiences with family and friends. Though when Condé Nast Traveler, Los Angeles Times, and more media outlets took notice of our journey, we realized it could become something bigger. We’ve used HoneyTrek as a vehicle to inspire arm-chair travelers, help people plan their own RTW trips, consult for glamping camps, promote underrated destinations, and author two travel books. Helping people follow their dreams is what keeps us (and HoneyTrek) ticking.
What do you wish you’d known prior to getting started as Wildpreneurs?
The importance of SEO. If you don’t create content with an SEO strategy in mind, it might as well be a hidden diary entry. So much of our early content, no matter how sensational, barely got any traction because we didn’t think about what people were searching for and what keywords could bring that article to the first page of Google. This is not to say write for robots; having your own voice and creating a compelling story is still paramount. Learn the basics of SEO and give your work a better chance to find its audience.
What advice would you give to someone who is considering turning their passion into a business?
Start paring down your life immediately. Learn to live simply and find happiness with less. When you lower your expenses, financial success will be that much closer. And when you do start making more money from your business, you won’t be as tempted to spend it on frivolous things and have funds for even greater endeavors.
Do you have a favorite motivational quote?
“Then there is the most dangerous risk of all—the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet that you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”― Randy Komisar
Anything else you’d like to share about your journey?
As horrendous as 2020 was, HoneyTrek was able to celebrate a few milestones...Our 3,000th day as digital nomads, 3 years RVing North America, road tripping to our our 50th-state, receiving a Lowell Thomas journalism award for our glamping book Comfortably Wild, and more. We had plenty of curve balls come our way—like getting stuck in Poland for 7 weeks at the start of the pandemic and nearly blowing up our camper driving with a leaking gas tank—but hey, we're stronger for it and excited for 2021!
What are you working on right now?
This is in the early stages, but we’re working on a second edition of our National Geographic book, Ultimate Journeys for Two: Extraordinary Destinations on Every Continent. Our initial proposal has been met with great enthusiasm from the Nat Geo editors and we have an outline due at the end of the month! This would allow us to add dozens more of our favorite destinations to the book, visit some far-flung regions we’ve always dreamed of exploring, feature new inspiring “power couples,” and release the book as a hardcover edition.
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Keep the wild inspiration flowing!
