Travel to Live, Live to Travel
By: Esther Julee, Chem 06, Jacob Fu, Mgt 05 | Categories: Alumni Celebrations
I stared out my apartment window watching the glow of the sunset behind Manhattan’s skyline. As the last spatters of red in the sky disappeared, I turned back to my computer to continue my all-day editing session. Not the typical life you would imagine as a full-time travel blogger.
When people find out that my husband Jacob and I run an online blog—and actually make a decent living at it—some of the most common comments and questions we get are:
“Wow, you’re living the dream!”
“It must be nice to vacation all the time.”
“So how do you make money doing this?
“Wait, how can I do this, too?”
We realize we are very fortunate to be doing this as a profession, especially when not everyone has the luxury to travel. We wouldn’t give it up for anything else, but it’s not as glamorous as it seems.
The reality is that more than three quarters of our time on Local Adventurer is spent at our desks, in front of our computers, working on the site and our social media presence, writing content, editing photos and video, and corresponding with brands and clients. We don’t always get to head out to a new destination every week, but we love the whole process and building something we can call our own.
If you had asked me five years ago what my life would look like now, I would’ve never guessed that I would be doing this. After graduating from Georgia Tech with a degree in chemistry, I spent a year working in a lab with a plan to go on to med school the following year.
Our National Parks/White Sands
One of our favorite things about the U.S. is the amazing National Park system. We have such beautiful and diverse lands all throughout the nation, but most of us have only seen a small part of them. We’ve been working our way through all 400-plus National Park locations (59 major sites), but we definitely have some of our favorites already. Joshua Tree National Park, convenient to Los Angeles, changes each time we visit—it reminds Jacob and I of a huge playground. Another, less-visited location is the stunning White Sands National Monument (pictured) we saw while visiting friends in New Mexico. We spent all afternoon trotting through the endless white dunes and even brought a sled with us. Can you even tell if it’s snow or sand?
Blog Post: Local Adventurer
But that’s not what happened. Instead, like what happens with the best adventures, I took a detour. I turned my weekend shutterbug hobby into a full-on wedding photography business. And then, after eight years, I decided to take yet another detour when we moved from Atlanta to Los Angeles.
Jacob took us there so he could ramp up his YouTube projects (which included creating original music videos and a kids’ puppet show), and I was left with zero direction in my professional life. I didn’t want to give up on photography altogether, so with my free time, I decided to start editing my endless folders of travel photos that I just never got around to—sound familiar to any of you?
Havasupai Falls (Top photo)
We also got the chance to join some friends on a backpacking trip to Havasupai Falls. It’s located on an Indian Reservation in Arizona near the Grand Canyon, and the series of turquoise blue waterfalls is perfectly backdropped by the red rocks of the canyons. It has grown exponentially in popularity, which means it’s always a race to get permits every February.
Blog Post: Local Adventurer
And then I started posting the pictures on my wedding website, creating something of a travelogue of my adventures. As I delved deeper into the world of blogging, I soon discovered that people were doing it for a living, and it completely blew my mind that you could make a career out of it. It intrigued me enough to pursue it for a year while we were still in transition in L.A.
It turns out I can never keep a hobby just a hobby.
White Sharks
On one of our warm-weather journeys, we traveled to the remote Derawan Islands in Indonesia to search for wild whale sharks. It was one of the most surreal and scary moments of my life. I still remember the moment when we spotted them: Jacob was in the water before I even had my fins on, while I had to muster up the courage to get in the ocean. Once I was in, I watched these majestic creatures glide past me. I looked over and Jacob was free diving with them, so I scrambled to snap a few photos with our camera. Every time I got close to the sharks, I felt so tiny and powerless next to them. I opted to spend most of my time capturing them from a distance.
Blog Post: Local Adventurer
At the beginning, I blogged about anything and everything that interested me, but eventually I narrowed my focus to travel and rebranded the site to what it is now, Local Adventurer. The idea was hatched when we moved out west and found out we regretted not exploring more of Atlanta, the hometown we had lived in for most our lives.
We had gotten too comfortable with our daily routines and took where we lived for granted. The more people we discussed this with, we realized that many others felt the same way about the places they lived. It’s too easy to go through life and never explore your own backyard. But with Local Adventurer, I set off to practice finding adventure in the common and everyday. And to see the mundane with fresh eyes. Jacob was my partner in all these excursions.
Fast-forward to present day, and we’ve spent the last five years living in five different cities. We since moved from L.A. to Las Vegas to San Diego to Portland to New York City, spending about a year in each of them. In every new location, we’ve explored iconic sights and out-of-the-way treasures.
But we also made some time for more exotic journeys, too.
We’ve traveled abroad and hiked mountains in Patagonia, the Andes and Kyrgyzstan. I learned to rock climb to conquer my fear of heights and got dive-certified to get over my fear of fish. We even spent three months living in an Airstream trailer, driving all over the United States.
Iceland
Although our preferred passion is exploring our own backyard and country, we still do travel internationally a few times a year. One of our most memorable overseas trips in the past couple of years was to Iceland. We went in search of the Northern Lights, but while there we explored the beautifully icy winter wonderland. We visited many waterfalls, and even climbed into some ice caves. I still get cold just seeing photos of it.
Blog Post: Local Adventurer
The Wave
During our time living in an Airstream trailer, one of our goals was to get a permit to see the Wave—beautiful rock formations that look like waves—located in the Coyote Buttes near Arizona’s northern border with Utah. To protect the site, only 20 permits are given out to visitors per day. Jacob and I eagerly lined up with nearly 100 other people each day hoping we were the chosen ones. Fortunately, we got lucky enough to win the permit lottery on just our second day. We left in the morning and hiked in, following the map provided us until we found the Wave. It had rained the day before, so we were even lucky enough to have a pool of water to get reflection shots. The two of us spent hours exploring the terrain and found so many amazing spots—all without crowds of people.
Blog Post: Local Adventurer
When Jacob saw potential for more growth in Local Adventurer, he quit YouTube and fully joined me in 2015 to help with the business side. In 2017, the blog brought in over six figures, and we continue to grow the readership and partnerships every day.
We have more than 8.8 million unique visitors to the blog, and average 450,000 page views a month. On social media, we bring in 7 million views a month on Pinterest alone (from nearly 28,000 followers), and we have strong presences on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
We’ve worked with travel companies and consumer brands like Airstream, Toyota, REI and Patagonia, creating revenue through advertising, sponsored posts, reviews and product giveaways. Such corporate relationships are one of the key ways bloggers can monetize their sites, but you have to make sure you follow FTC guidelines (which of course we do).
The good stuff, however, is sharing our travel and experiences with our readers. We aim to both entertain and educate. We hope you’ve enjoyed seing some of the amazing places we’ve visited on the the preceding pages.
Be sure to read more about our expeditions at LocalAdventurer.com.
