Back in the earlier days of blogging, blogrolls were a mandatory feature of blogs—it was the best way to discover other interesting blogs and websites.
Even though most of us moved away from blogrolls, they never really ceased to be a great way to discover other interesting blogs and websites. So it’s fun to see their renaissance.
Choosing what to include
Ok, so choosing a blogroll is a bit harder than it seems, in part because you’re 100% certain to leave out some folks you should have included and will feel bad about as a result.
While I follow a lot of folks, most of my friends have stopped posting to their own websites and instead rely almost entirely on social media accounts.
I’ve definitely been guilty of that myself, but it’s been especially disheartening while putting this together to see how few sites I can include because they’re essentially no longer regularly updated. The primary exceptions are people who are trying to make a living off their websites, but I rarely enjoy actually reading those posts so I haven’t included too many, at least to start.
Anyway, here’s my first shot at it in quite some time:
Note: this is a work-in-progress!
Travel Adventures
I gravitate towards blogs that detail personal trips that their authors have taken. Here are several in that spirit:
Travels with the Southwest Dude
Doc is a good friend, you’ll appreciate his simple narratives and great photos from his trips.
ADVENTR.co
I’ve been following Randy’s adventures for ages. He focuses mostly on backcountry adventures in the Colorado Plateau, which means you’ll see lots of amazing sandstone and archaeological sites coupled with beautiful photography.
Climb. Hike. Travel.
Lucie is one of my most favorite adventuring partners, though we don’t get to see each other nearly as often anymore. She travels internationally for much of the year, then summits peaks in the PNW in the summer.
100 Peaks
Derek posts regular trip reports from his adventures, many of which entail summiting 100 Peaks around the San Diego region.
Alex Kunz
A professional photographer who enjoys the outdoors. I really love his use of monthly “end notes.”
Bosque Bill
Trip reports with lots of photos, primarily from New Mexico and the surrounding region.
Lauren Danner
Lauren is visiting all the state parks in Washington and detailing the visits on her website.
52 Hikes with Mike
Mike aims to hike 52 times each year along with some other adventures and adds little summaries of each one on his site.
People I generally read regularly
- Derek Sivers
- Oliver Burkeman
- Semi-Rad
- Pluralistic
- Jason Kottke
- Platformer
- Cal Newport
- Own Your Web
- Stay Grounded
- The Honest Broker
- Alastair Humphreys
- Austin Kleon
- Everything is Amazing
- Garbage Day
- Taking Bearings
- Art of Noticing
- The Land Desk
- Steph Ango
- The Commonplace
- Jason Fried
- Twelve Mile Circle
Recent new finds:
Other outdoor and travel bloggers
Here are the sites of some of my friends’ sites who tend to take a more “influencer blogger” approach to their websites. Ok look, I know far too many of these folks so this list is going to be too long if I add them all…so I’ll have to figure out a better way to approach this.
If you’re interested in tapping into my larger travel network to research an upcoming trip, though, check out the next section.
- Wander the Road
- This Big Wild World
- The Detour Effect
- Our Wander-Filled Life
- McCool Travel
- Nightborn Travel
- Parks and Points
- Southerner Says
Personal search engines
Here are some personal search engines I’ve created to search websites I follow:
Fun personal website designs
I don’t regularly read these, but their website designs are fun and I’m sharing them for that reason:
- Jeff Bridges (yeah, you know the one)
- Kev Quirk
- Jason Velazquez
- Keenan