It was a cooooold game, and well, to keep warm during tailgating, we had availed ourselves of a not insignificant portion of Becci’s homemade apple pie moonshine. ASU won the game, and we returned to our hotel, a cheapish place near the airport.

After a long day, Becci was pretty exhausted, but I can’t sleep for several hours after an ASU football game. We were sharing a room with a single queen bed. No big deal, but it also meant that I’d probably keep her up if I stayed in the room. As we were walking into the hotel, I had overheard a few other ASU fans mention that they were heading to the hotel bar, so I decided to let her sleep while I unwound at the bar.

When I walked in, though, I didn’t see any ASU fans. In fact, I only saw two Duke fans; the place was otherwise empty. So, victory in hand, I saddled up to the bar right next to them. I’m a good sport—and also entirely comfortable and proficient in trash talk, when needed—but we had a friendly and enjoyable conversation over a beer. They retired after their beverage, but I wasn’t tired enough to return to the room yet.

So I wandered to the restroom to make some more room, and in doing so, noticed an entirely different half of the bar. It was a split level (huh?), which effectively obscured the two sections from one another. There was a large table of ASU fans, presumably the ones I had overheard earlier. After the restroom, I made my way to the table and asked if I could join. “Sure, grab a chair and hop on in!”

The group was primarily comprised of older band moms—a surprisingly feisty bunch, actually. They had been tailgating together for a few years while their kids were members of the Sun Devil Marching Band. In fact, one of the kids at the table, Rob, was the current drum major. We got to talking and—like fresh meat—all the attention focused on me. They were fascinated by my long-term fandom (I had been a season ticket holder since fourth grade), my job in conservation, and my national parks quest in particular. It was an enjoyable time, and they were much more fun than I had anticipated. When it was time to head back to the room, I thanked them for letting me crash their table and said goodbye. I figured that was the end of it.

A few weeks later, I started noticing some posts from people I didn’t immediately recognize on my Facebook feed. It took me a bit to figure it out, but…it was the band mom crew from El Paso. They had apparently snatched my unlocked phone when I went to the restroom, and each had friended themselves from my Facebook app. I laughed—how sneaky!

The following season—On This Day in 2015—Becci and I, and my other buddy Scott who had season tickets with us, decided to meet up with them for a pregame tailgate at an ASU-sponsored venue. We had a blast, and decided that we’d combine our tailgates.

So this is our tenth year of tailgating with them, always at the same location overlooking the stadium. Our tailgate crew has ebbed and flowed over the years. We peaked around 25 regular participants each week several seasons ago, but it’s shrunk quite a bit since then as folks have moved away, or moved on. And my commitment to college football—which has undergone some disheartening changes in the last few years—has waned considerably recently as well.

Our tailgates are a lot of work, not just in the prep and coordination (which is considerable), but also in the day-of execution. It’s a twelve-hour affair each home game: we prep, pack up the Subaru (we have to add our rooftop bin for the extra cargo space), and arrive five hours before kickoff, the game lasts another 3-4 hours, and then we do a post-game tailgate for another 30-90 minutes to let the traffic pass (we also have champagne toast after wins), plus unpacking when we get home (after our traditional stop at In-N-Out Burger on the drive back, that is). A very full day, often concluding well after midnight.

We considered opting out of ASU tickets this year, as we’re trying to reduce our investment in the team, and in sports in general, to open up more weekends for fall travel. And while I’m far less interested in it these days, it’s also hard to simply walk away from. After all, this has been a part of my life since I was eight.

And since my parents’ bitter divorce back in college, ASU games—including pregame tailgating—had been the only occasions we spent as a family. So, yeah, I have loads of memories; it feels a bit weird to step back.

That said, it’s probably the tailgate that helped seal the deal on renewing this year. With the addition of HD broadcasts, the at-home game watching experience has vastly improved over the years, and is more attractive each subsequent year. But the in-person experience still rules supreme, at least when you can share it with others.

The post How I met our tailgating crew appeared first on rscottjones.

I’m considering shifting this to more seasonal or quarterly approach, possibly offloading those more frequent distillations as mid- and end-month notes¹, which will include much more specific things like what I’ve been watching, any outdoor adventures I’ve been doing, and so forth.

What I’m doing

Our big focus right now is preparing for our 100 day trip around the world. We’re wrapping up the last reservations, and frantically trying to figure out what we need to bring. It’s going to be an incredible experience, I’m sure of it, and also waaaay outside our comfort zone.

I’m still a little shocked that we’re able to pull it off. We came up with the plan, started saving, and strategizing on how to get the time off work way back in 2020, and well…here we are.

We’ll be sharing photos and posts about the trip on our website AdventuresAroundThe.World when we can.

After three months of dealing with financial and legal stuff after my dad’s death, as well as helping my mom with a bunch of stuff, I’ve continued to put some of the dad remembrance stuff on hold, for now. I’m just not ready yet. And the trip is both a pressing and a useful distraction right now.

1. I’ve been experimenting with these on another blog platform, after enjoying the “weekly notes” that some of my friends post. ︎

The post September 10, 2024 appeared first on rscottjones.

The first is finalizing my dad’s stuff. He passed away last month and there’s still a lot to do, from planning and hosting the memorials, taking care of financial and legal obligations, and dealing with the remainder of his stuff. And, grieving, of course—that’s obviously been ongoing.

The second project is planning some travel. We’ve been restricted in our travel since my dad’s health crisis in 2020. We are no longer limited by that. So that means being able to plan out more weekends away, as well as some longer trips. We could really use the time away to refresh after this big life change.

The last project is getting back to posting regularly on my own personal websites—especially this one right here. In addition to posting more (I’m participating in #100DaystoOffload), I’m also in the midst of redesigning and updating the site design. I’ve been including lots of updates at rsjon.es, too.

Coming up

I lost motivation to keep up the prompts for One Photo Club when my dad passed. I’m not sure why. But given the small percentage of members who transitioned to the fediverse version from the one we had going on Mighty Networks, maybe it’s time to call the project done? At least in its current form. Or perhaps I’ll shift things to a broader photo prompt that’s not limited to travel or outdoor adventures, but I haven’t decided yet.

Consuming

We’ve been watching Killing Eve on Netflix, and are finally nearing the series end. I finished reading Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity during our April road trip, and while I’ve started a few new books since, nothing has really captured my interest.

The post June 20, 2024 appeared first on rscottjones.

I get it. When I finally (re-)published mine awhile back—after a decade-long absence—I found it far more stressful than I had anticipated. And I wondered if its utility was actually worth it.

Back before sites offered rss feeds, I’d use my own blogroll to surf my favorite sites as an easy way to find the latest posts, more like set of public bookmarks than a recommendation list. We don’t really need to do that anymore—rss works much better for keeping up-to-date on what’s been posted on the sites you read.

But we still need easy ways to discover new sites, and to share interesting sites and pages. I still want to be a part of a human-curated network, sharing the great things that people are doing and writing about.

Recommending friends

Part of my own angst in putting together a new blogroll was that I wanted to link to a lot of people I really like—many of them are “we travel to see each other” level friends, but…I don’t actually read their stuff very much. This made me sad.

Most strikingly, it’s because so many of them don’t post to their own website regularly at all anymore. They did, at one point, but of course that all got swallowed up in social media, back when the platforms were still centered around social interaction—not general entertainment or shopping apps that had simply duped us all into providing an endless stream of free content.

And the ones that did regularly post are doing so because they view it as a business—they’re specifically building an audience they can monetize. It’s not about their own lives or thoughts or ideas or dreams or projects, it’s about The Top Five Things to Bring On Your Next Trip – Summer Gift Guide 2024, or The 7 Best Summer Activities in [someplace I won’t be visiting this decade].

“It’s nothing personal, baby, it’s just business.” For me, these seo-heavy posts aren’t things I’m dying to read, unless I’m actively looking for that specific information¹. Even if they’re something my friend wrote after going there (oh, if I could have just seen a trip journal post instead!)

I mean, I dearly want to support my friends, but I’ve been having a severe allergic reaction dietary intolerance to the whole influencer/social-media-side-hustle for years now. Perhaps I should just avoid it for a while and give my digestive system a break.

Recommending writers

I also included a long list of newsletters I have enjoyed. Of course, as soon as I started listing them out, I realized that I’m in a bit of a lull in newsletter reading this last half-year or so, and that I don’t actually read even half of issues I’m sent right now. That’s not because any of them have gotten decidedly worse, it’s just that my interest in their main topic has chilled a bit. They’re still good reads I’d recommend; I’m just browsing in a different aisle of the bookstore now, that’s all.

But…hmm. It feels a bit odd—maybe even performative—to recommend others read something that can’t be bothered with, at least right now.

But, again, I want to help others find good stuff online, outside of Google or corporate social media. I need some way of sharing what I like and have found valuable.

It’s really two blogrolls, not one

Then I realized that I really have two different sets of blogrolls.

One blogroll is more ephemeral: things I’m actively reading and enjoying right now. It’s the /now version of what I’m consuming. For example, I’m reading a bunch of folks right now who are participating in something called Junited2024, many of whom I followed last month during WeblogPoMo2024. That’s put my reading on hold for some of my normal go-to sites I do actually read all the time. I see this list as being frequently updated, and it’ll be shorter to better reflect how I’m actually spending my recent reading time.

The other blogroll is more semi-permanent: things that I have enjoyed and think you might find valuable too, but that I’m not actively gobbling up right now. Perhaps that’s because I’ve delved much deeper into the personal web recently and there simply isn’t enough time right now, or because I was interested in completing a specific project and now that I’m done with it, the posts aren’t as relevant to me anymore. But they include links I want to keep on the list.

These are more like /bookmarks (some subset of them could even be added to a topical /resources page). But they can also include links to the people I care about and don’t want to leave out, because I really do want to support them even if I’m not reading their latest sponsored trip. I imagine this list will keep growing and growing, as more links get added but only removed if the site disappears or changes dramatically.

A rebirth, not a death

So I’m not going to kill off my blogroll.

But I do think I’ll rebirth it, by splitting it into those two components. I’ll have to consider a bit more what this might look like: whether they become two entirely different pages, or are integrated into other existing pages, or are simply more obviously separated on my current blogroll page. Hmmm.

1. Though I will add them to my own personal search engine to tap into later. ︎

The post Some thoughts on killing your blogroll appeared first on rscottjones.

Welp, everything has changed.

I essentially tossed my old /now page away, moving it to the /then archive I recently started.¹

That’s because my life changed quite a bit earlier in the week.

My dad died.

That’s usually a big enough event in someone’s life to warrant a complete rewriting.

In the case of mine, it feels doubly so, as I’ve served as his main caregiver for the last 4+ years. Since January 2020, I’ve managed nearly every aspect of his life, with help from my amazing wife.

Yes, even though he was in an assisted living facility that allegedly provided for his needs (this is the cruel reality—you pay an ungodly monthly sum for basic care, but constantly need outside management/eyeballs/follow ups/advocacy/socializing efforts).

For four years, I would think about him many times throughout the day, checking in via camera, perhaps attempting to reach him by phone, planning my weekly schedule around his ubiquitous doctor appointments and the 2-3 times a week I’d wheel him to the local bar for happy hour. Even when I wasn’t consciously thinking about him, the background stress of managing his life and various ailments was omnipresent.

But no more.

Everything has changed.

Mourning, remembering, and wrapping up

There are countless tasks you have to complete when someone dies. It’s incredible how many things there are to do, especially when you’re already exhausted from the crisis before the death, and then trying to process the finality of the event.

And since there are ancillary tasks as well—we need to help my mom with a bunch of new financial stuff that is triggered by his death—it’s a bit…much. Luckily for me, my wife has taken the lion’s share of these tasks, as planned when this day finally struck.

But even the list of things I’m working on—the stuff that she can’t really help with—feels like too much. It all just sorta sucks. I’m struggling to even build the remembrance site that felt so immediately necessary.

This is my first “close death” and given my central role in his life, and therefore his role in mine, I feel some additional responsibility for the outcome, even though I know full well that I’ve given him many years he wouldn’t otherwise have gotten—at significant expense to myself.

I mean, hell, we got him through his initial health crisis, through a global pandemic, and then through hospice (yes, he graduated a couple years ago)…all while making him the only assisted living resident in the neighborhood that is on a first-name basis with a handful of 20-something bartenders, who refer to him as a “fucking legend.”

He certainly wasn’t “living the dream,” but boy, the outside world certainly thought he was. 

Figuring out what’s next

While I’ll always miss my dad and I’m so glad we had many great happy hours together, managing his life these last four years has been pretty difficult for me.

I’m looking forward to figuring out what comes next. More travel, certainly. Perhaps more writing? Perhaps a foray back into public lands conservation? Perhaps just recovering for a bit, (re-)focusing on our physical and mental health after a rough four years? Perhaps all of these…

I’m not yet sure.

1. I thought it’d be fun to keep an archive of my old /now pages ︎

The post May 19, 2024 appeared first on rscottjones.

Since online reviews are so gamed and broken these days, I wanted to post my stuff so you can ask questions of an actual user of these items. I also post product reviews on my Public Notes website. Please note that these are not necessarily my recommendations, just what I own and use.

So if you have questions about any of these items, please feel free to contact me.

I’m still adding items! Last (partially) updated on February 28, 2025

Devices + Hardware

• Apple MacBook Air M3 (24GB RAM, 1TB SSD)
• iPhone 13 Pro Max
• Apple AirPods Pro (v2)
• Anker Life Q30 headphones
• Apple Watch Series 8 (45mm)
• Kindle Paperwhite (2024 version)
• Blue Yeti mic
• Synology DiskStation DS224+ NAS (Seagate Ironwolf 12TB RAID)

Software

Some of my favorites apps are:

• Obsidian – home of my second brain, personal memories vault, and travel journal
• Drafts – quick notes and thoughts
• Notion – we use this to organize most of our life (including our travel dashboard)
• Things 3 – my task management app
• iA Writer – where I do my longer form writing
• Reeder 5 – my trusty RSS reader
• Libby – Ebooks and audiobooks from your local public library. Yes please!
• Mona – the primary app I use for Mastodon.social
• Ice Cubes – the primary app I use for OnePhoto.Club
• Avenza – downloadable recreational maps

Online Services

• Hey – paid email service, love their workflow philosophy
• WordPress – self-hosted, has run this site since its first release
• Micro.Blog – interesting blog/social service, I’m using it for rsjon.es and other sites
• ConvertKit – the email newsletter service I use for this site
• ForwardEmail.net – email forwarding/smtp for all my domains
• ButtonDown – Email newsletter I’m testing for #OnePostcard
• Dreamhost – have had this hosting account for 2+ decades now. Good enough for me
• Super – I use this to convert Notion pages into the #GoQuesting website
• Porkbun – domain registration, slowly migrating from now-defunct Google Domains
• Masto.Host – Use this to host the OnePhoto.Club mastodon instance
• Obsidian Sync + Publish (I’m a Catalyst supporter too)
• tinylytics – simple web stats that don’t require cookies or other tracking
• omg.lol – a weird mix of services and a fun community

Photography

• Nikon Z5 – my amateur entry into both mirrorless and “fancy” cameras
• Nikkor Z 24-200mm f/4-6.3 kit lens
• Nikkor Z 24-50mm f/4-6.3 kit lens
• Nikon z50 – an addition for Jen, but I’ll use it too
• Nikkor DX 16-50mm f/3.5-6.3 kit lens
• LowePro Photo Active TLZ 50 AW case – I use this with the 24-200 lens
• LowePro Photo Active TLZ 45 AW case – use this with the 24-50 lens, or z50
• Peak Design Slide Lite and Leash camera straps
• Olympus TG-4 Tough camera – I’ve long used “tough” cameras for outdoor adventures, but this one is primarily for snorkeling trips.

EDC items

I don’t carry much, but here are my items.

• Ekster Parliament wallet – [not an affiliate, but use code RPG-OWE-ERC for 10% off]
• Victorinox Signature Lite swiss army knife – tiny, very lightweight with scissors, small knife, small screwdriver, ballpoint pen, pen light
• Zebra F-701 ballpoint pen (0.8mm, black) – my go-to “cheap-ish” pen. I must have 10 of these stashed in bags, car, notebooks, etc
• Mini carabiner pill container – Lives on my keychain, contains an important pill for Jen

Electronics accessories

• Anker USB-C 735 charger – our primary travel charger
• Anker 715 (Nano 65W) charger – faster charging plugs that live in my laptop and bike pannier bags
• Anker Nano portable charger for iPhone – handy battery pack that connects directly to the phone
• INIU 20000mah ultra compact power banks – our primary travel power packs
• Wireless Portable Charger 30,800mAh battery pack – perfect size and capacity for our overnight charging kit during camping trips.
• Anker 737 power bank – big and fancy, but can quick charge my laptop during camping roadtrips, which is what we bought it for.
• USB-C portable charger for Apple Watch – we use these while traveling
• tomtoc tech pouch – our main “chargers and cords” kit that we bring on longer trips
• tomtoc storage pouch – I have several of these set up as kits. One lives in my laptop bag, we use another for our overnight “tent” charging kit
• Samsung T7 Shield 4TB Portable SSD (and pro case) – photo downloads/backups while traveling

Adventuremobile

• 2015 Subaru Outback 2.5i Limited – still what I consider the best all-around “roadtrip vehicle” – great gas mileage, can get us to 90% of the places we want to go, easy to drive/park/turnaround, easy to reach rooftop bins or toss a kayak up top, safe, reliable, and AWD.
• Thule Atlantis 1600XT rooftop bin
• Thule BowDown kayak rack
• Thule BigStack kayak rack
• Exped MegaMat Duo 10 sleeping pad – perfectly fits the Subaru
• Napier Sportz Cove 61000 SUV tent – we use this to sleep with the rear gate open
• Window screens – keeps bugs out and lights dimmed while sleeping in the vehicle
• 200W power inverter – primarily charge larger items like laptops

Travel items

• Eagle Creek Gear Warrior 37L international wheeled carry on
• REI Big Haul 30″ wheeled duffel – our primary “gear” bag for flights
• Eagle Creek No Matter What 110L rolling duffle bag – our secondary gear bag for flights
• REI Co-op Ruckpack 28 Pack – our primary “personal item” when traveling
• Eagle Creek Pack-It Specter Quick Trip toiletry bag – quick trips with flights
• Sea to Summit Hanging Toiletry Bag (large) – longer trips with flights
• Patagonia Black Hole Cube (Med 6L)
• Eagle Creek Pack-It Specter Tech Clean Dirty Half Cube
• LifeStraw Go 650 ml Water Filter Bottle (22oz)
• CamelBak Chute Mag Insulated water bottle (25oz + 20oz)- overall, the best water bottle around imo
• humangear GoBites Uno Spork – for carry-on baggage
• Full Windsor Magware Magnetic Flatware – we use these in checked baggage
• Philips One battery toothbrush (my review on travel toothbrushes)
• Matador FlatPak Soap Bar Case – great for shampoo bars
• Osprey DayLitePlus pack – our primary day/travel pack on trips
• North Face Flyweight Pack – lightweight, packable backpack
• North Face Flyweight Duffel – lightweight, packable duffel we use to organize items after we land
• Chums SurfShorts travel wallet
• Repel travel umbrella
• PackTowl – use body size for these for showering/water sports, and face size for hand drying
• Mini massage gun – always great after a long day of driving, flying, or walking
• JISULIFE handheld fans – a lifesaver during stuffy/warm hotel rooms, or otherwise hot weather

Clothing for travel and the outdoors

• Merrell NOVA 2 GTX shoes
• Prana Stretch Zion II pants
• Columbia Omni-Shade shorts
• Chaco Z/1 Cloud sandal
• Crocs – topo clogs as camp shoes
• KUHL Renegade convertible pants
• REI Co-op Active Pursuits t-shirts
• North Face Mountain Athletics Full-Zip Fleece Jacket
• REI Co-op 650 Down Jacket
• REI Co-op Flash Stretch Rain Jacket
• REI Co-op Screeline Cap
• Ex Officio Insect Shield wide brimmed hat (discontinued)
• Sunday Afternoons Ultra Adventure hat (my review)
• Arcade A2 Slim Adventure Belt

Camping, hiking, and backpacking gear

Look, after almost three decades of camping and backpacking, I have a lot of gear. Much of it is too inconsequential or too old to mention. So I’ve omitted a lot. You should also know that I tend to buy on the extremes: either premium offerings from name brand outfitters, or cheap stuff from Walmart or the Dollar Store.

This list tries to focus on things I use regularly, or that you might actually buy, or buy something similar to, these days.

Sleep

• REI Kingdom 6 tent – the “mansion” we use when expecting to spend extra time in the tent due to weather, bugs, or wind
• Big Agnus Big House 4 tent – our go-to for car camping
• Marmot Limelight 3P tent (old version) – our “travel camping” tent
• MSR Hubba Hubba NX 2 Tent – 2-person backpacking
• REI Co-op HunkerDown 20 sleeping bag – love this for car camping
• Marmot Meteor 15 down sleeping bag – my warm bag
• Mountain Hardware Phantom 32 sleeping bag – primary backpacking
• North Face Cat’s Meow (circa 2000)
• Exped MegaMat 10 sleeping pads
• Big Agnus Copper Spur HV UL 1P (2019 version) tent – solo backpacking
• Big Agnes Insulated Air Core Ultra sleeping pad – backpacking and travel camping
• FlexTailGear usb air pump
• Klymit Drift camp pillow – best car camping pillow
• Ikea Vitmossa fleece throw blanket – we bring 3-4 of these each trip to cover the coolers while driving and as extra warmth near the campfire and tent (and to block the full moon or morning sun)

General

• Mountainsmith Day lumbar pack (early 2000s model) with Strapettes
• REI Ridgeline 65 backpack
• Gregory Z30 daypack (old version)
• Black Diamond Spot-400 R (my review)
• Osprey Hydraulics Reservoir (3L)
• Leki Micro Vario Cor-Tec TA trekking poles
• Aqua-tainer 4 gal (and faucet kit)
• MSR MiniWorks EX filter
• Platypus GravityWorks filter
• Sawyer Squeeze filters
• REI Flexlite camp chair
• Camco 58041 propane firepit (and 11lb squatty propane canister) – a great alternative to wood campfires, and the only option during fire restrictions
• Morakniv Craftline Pro S Allround Fixed-Blade knife

Food

• Yeti Tundra 35 cooler
• Ozark Trails 25 cooler
• Coleman basic two-burner stove (25+ years old, still works great)
• GSI Outdoors Bugaboo cook set (original set, now discontinued)
• GSI Outdoors Infinity backpacker mug
• GSI Outdoors Halulite Minimalist II System cookset
• Jetboil Flash Java Kit
• MSR PocketRocket stove
• Camping stove fuel adaptor – use 1lb propane canisters with backpacking stoves
• CamelBak Chute Mag vacuum insulated water bottle (I use both 20oz & 25oz)
• Aeropress Go Travel Coffee Press
• BrüMate Hopsulator Trio insulated coozie – we use these things every damn day at home and bring them camping too

Kayaking

• Pelican Trailblazer 100 sit-in (2018 model, discontinued)
• Werner Skag-It paddle
• Astral V-Eight pfd (old version)
• Emotion Spitfire 9′ sit-on-top kayak
• Ozark Trail cooler (discontinued)
• S.O.L. Survive Outdoors Longer Rescue Howler Whistle

eBiking

• REI Co-op Cycles Generation e1.2 Electric Bike
• Laser Coyote Kineticore bike helmet
• Kryptonite Evolution 1090 Integrated Chain Lock
• Kryptonite 525 Kryptoflex cable
• REI Junction pannier – use this every time we bring our computers to happy hour to do some work
• NiteRider Lumina 900 Boost bike light
• Lezyne Sport Floor Drive Pump – ABS1 Pro
• LeafPond bike drink holder – best overall water bottle holder I could find
• Portland Design Works Sparrow Cage
• Tiakia Bike Phone Mount Holder
• Park Tool IB-2 bike tool

Personal care

• Henson AL13 Razor – so much better than buying disposable
• Green Bell G-1205 Nail Clipper – didn’t realize how much better “decent” clippers are than the cheap ones I’ve always owned

Home & household

• Wyze Cam Pan – we use these in my dad’s assisted living room, and at home when we travel
• Wyze Wireless Video Doorbell Pro
• Nixplay 10.1″ Smart Digital Photo Frame – we stream vacation pics
• Moen White Flo Smart Water Leak Detector (and sensor cables) – with audible alarm, app notification, text message, and phone call there’s no damn way to miss a water leak
• LUXE Bidet NEO 120 – living the bidet life

The post /Uses appeared first on rscottjones.

Last year, I launched One Photo Club, a free social community for people who love travel (come join us!). The site centers around sharing photos from your previous trips to various prompts, so it serves as a remembering practice for participants as part of a concept I call Return On Adventure (think ROI but for your adventures).

It’s a free, ad-free, algo-free, bot-free, influencer-free, no-bad-vibes community focused solely on travel and outdoor adventures, which is (whew boy!) a welcome respite. And it’s way more fun to scroll through your own fun memories than the shitposts of others.

Last month, I launched a “re-imagined” version of One Photo Club, which is fediverse-friendly and overall more social than the original version. That means that we’ll continue to have a travel-photos-only feed, plus be able to interact with the wider social web community.

I’m also relaunching #OnePostcard, a monthly postcard exchange for travelers who are traveling in the same month. (The April cohort starts in just a couple days if you see this in time)

As I’ve come to really enjoy One Photo Club, it’s scratched my social media itch enough that I’ve mostly abandoned Twitter and Instagram. I currently have 5-minute-per-day app limits for each and no longer find myself defaulting to either when I’m bored. 

The more distance I have, the more obvious it is that these don’t serve our lives the way they should. I haven’t written much about this yet, but boy…I think we’ve made a mistake in how/what we consume on social media.

The social web

So I’m also trying to get back to what made the social web so magical before the big social media advertising platforms emerged. That means thinking about how to (1) write here more, (2) build and maintain connections with interesting people online, and (3) keep track of friends that primary post on the social media platforms I’ve mostly abandoned.

I’m currently working on a major revision of this site. I recently made a “digital garden” of public notes available at rscottjon.es, and also starting sharing a few interesting links at rsjon.es.

I’m continuing to slowly build out #GoQuesting, a directory of travel quests that people can adopt. I have a lot more planned for Go Questing, but my first task is putting together some mini-guides for the 1500+ quest ideas I already have listed. This week I’m dealing with some errors that popped up unexpectedly when I moved hosting accounts, so if something seems off, please let me know as I get it all fixed back up.

Travel

After spending nearly a month in Portugal in December, we’re now planning trips for the remainder of the year. Our two big international trips for the year will be campervanning around Norway and finally getting to the Galapagos, after several canceled attempts during covid. 

But most of our trips this year will be road trips from Phoenix. Our next trip is a road trip centered around several days the French Quarter Fest in New Orleans, with additional stops at various national park units and questing objectives in LA, MS, MO, IL. We’re looking at scheduling other roadtrips to Yellowstone and Seattle/Olympic. If you “know me online” you can add yourself to my let’s meet up list that I consult when making a new itinerary.

Caregiving

Last but not least, I’m spending a lot of time at happy hour with my aging dad—who is now battling bladder and three other cancers—and in managing…well, his entire life, basically. Even with having him in an assisted living facility, I still find myself spending 15-20 hours a week on this.

The post March 28, 2024 appeared first on rscottjones.

Here’s a short reply I had to a message from a good friend on the role social media—specifically twitter—played in us meeting and becoming friends. He was gracious enough to let me respond.

“I mean, look at us–It took a big network like Twitter for our paths to cross, and ditto for a tons of baseball friends, national park friends, etc”

– one of the friends I met via Twitter’s #parkchat

Oh, I don’t at all believe that we needed a big network like twitter to meet! I believe the opposite is true, actually.

Sure, we happened to find each other there, but twitter didn’t enable it in some unique or special way. I mean, the web was already a very social place before twitter, and for the same reasons Twitter took off, there’s every reason to believe that the rest of the social internet would have continued to absolutely blow up too.

Even if twitter (or other large centralized social media) never existed, our meeting was just as likely to have happened somewhere in 100 other online communities–perhaps on the extremely active comments section of some road trip blog to a web forum on national parks or an online club organized on whatever replaced Yahoo Groups, or a photo-sharing site like flickr, or a mailing list of travel questers, or on any of the myriad other social networks that existed or would have existed, if not for twitter. Don’t forget the hundreds of competing sites that the big platforms acquired simply as a way to kill off any possible competitors. I’ve made friends on basically all of those types of communities.

On net, I think centralized social media platforms like twitter actually collapsed opportunities to connect with people with similar interests online, not enhanced them. (I think they had a lot of other negative effects we’re just now realizing too, but won’t comment on that here)     

We first connected via parkchat, right? Well, that was like 25 people tweeting at each other 10 years ago…in an absolute sea of tweets. Very little signal compared to the firehose of noise. You essentially accidentally stumbled into a conversation there. A big network is also a big haystack in which to sift through looking for your needle. After all, what infinitesimal percentage of tweets are about national parks? We were damn lucky for our rowboats to bump into each other in such a vast ocean.

Let’s say you moved to metro LA and needed to make some new friends. Would you just stand on the street corner (the “big network” of 13 million residents) and wait to find someone in a Giants hat walk past that you could talk to? Nah, you’d go to the NY Giants fan club (the small network of 1300 members) instead, because of course it would be more likely to make new friends there.

Similarly, outside of twitter, there were plenty of other online communities of national park folks out there that we could have met on. And there probably would have been even more of them if no big networks emerged. Smaller ones, certainly, but like the fan club example, it’s easier for boats to bump into each other in a lake than in the ocean. I stumbled upon the National Park Travelers Club—essentially a 10x larger and more dedicated version of parkchat—before twitter even existed. I met several park friends there (some that I later brought to parkchat!), and they were doing several times a year “tweetups” before twitter existed. Anyway, it wasn’t super hard to find groups like this, you either just googled it, ran across a blog mention (twitter mostly replaced personal blogging), or ran across it organically somewhere else…just as we did with parkchat. And if people hadn’t defaulted to big platforms like twitter, each of those communities would have had a much more vibrant community that they ran themselves…just like every social club has for hundreds of years now!

But, hey, I liked twitter and enjoyed parkchat for a long time and made some quality friends from it—no doubt about it! But just because we got 50 parkchat friends from twitter doesn’t mean it was actually the best platform on which to make park friends. I also invested a lot of time into twitter–which is itself an opportunity cost. Had I not spent many years interacting constantly with a smallish group of (I dunno maybe 250 max?) parkchat folks and instead invested that same effort into interacting with the 2500 park questers in the NPTC, what might that have looked like? Might I have 10x more park friends right now? What might it look like now if I had invested 1/6 of the time on twitter and spent the rest in five other communities of parkchat-like folks? It’s almost certainly higher ROI for creating friendships in those other topic-specific communities because you’re not wasting time sifting through unrelated stuff, like ads or posts on every other possible topic.

Our instagram feeds these days are a good example of that. Users are currently served 1 ad after every 4th post in the timeline. So you’re spending 20% (1/5) of the time you scroll looking at ads and not the posts of your friends or might-become-friends. That’s a helluva lot of overhead. You wouldn’t watch TV if there was a minute long commercial break for every 4 minutes of your show. But we accept it on social media. Not because it’s a rational decision necessarily (I’m sure you don’t think scrolling IG is the best way to find new luggage), but because we first became invested in the ad-free versions and then (because of inertia, network effects, switching costs, collective action problem, etc) just accepted the ensuing platform rot as a necessary cost. (Side note: 75% of my IG ads right now are for a “buy once, use forever” style razor…that I already bought a year ago. These ad platforms have gotten much worse for businesses too; and as consumers, we’ve helped trap them into an increasingly bad business model.)

We’ve all been down this road before, of course. The early internet’s twitter and instagram were AOL and Prodigy. It seemed downright amazing that we could make friends online and so we readily accepted the ads and walled garden as a worthwhile cost for that. But luckily some nerds thought “wait a minute, couldn’t we make this soooo much better??” and developed protocols like html, http, url, and web browsers. And suddenly we had the Cambrian explosion of the World Wide Web. And then we all quickly abandoned the old narrative that AOL was important and worthwhile and realized how incredibly dumb and limiting it was to think that the service was peak internet that we should just accept as-is—that we should only be able to email people who were also paying for AOL and not everyone on the whole planet. I think we’re at that same point in time with social media and hope we can get over the hump like we did back then.

Anyway, thanks for letting me push back a little; feel free to tell me where I got something wrong. I know I’m pretty ornery on this topic these days. You know that I really do love connecting with people online—it truly is amazing—and I’m probably the only person you know that has an actual form on my website for “people I know online” to add themselves to my road trip itineraries. But we all deserve some better solutions and have all the tools we need to make something better. So that’s what I’m trying to do.

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One of the best ways to remember these cherished moments is to relive them regularly—so I’ve begun posting photos from those trips in one long thread on twitter.

I invite you to do the same using the hashtag #lovepubliclands, and to add a link to your thread in the comments below.

The post A public lands gratitude practice appeared first on rscottjones.

I didn’t delete the content, but instead reposted it here on my long-standing personal website.

Nearly everyone on social media these days has their own brand, and here I am actively killing mine. I figured I should explain why.

I am not a brand.

The main reason is a five word sentence: I am not a brand.

I’m sure I’ll post more about this in the future, but for now, that’s the main takeaway.

This website doesn’t exist in order to achieve “influencer status,” so that I can charge brands to use me as a marketing vehicle to make you feel bad for not owning what they want to sell you. I don’t “create content” just to generate more clicks. Or post about something simply for the seo juice. I don’t play the follow-unfollow game, use social media bots, or care about my following-to-followers ratio.

That’s not why I’m here. It’s not why I invest the time to write or interact. It’s not the outcome I’m seeking. It’s not who I am.

Do I want to influence you? Sure, you’re goddamn right I do.

I want you to be a good steward of our public lands—and a vocal advocate for them, too. I want you to travel as much as you can. I want you to fall in love with our national parks. I want to empower you to push your limits. I want you to see as much as you possibly can of this world, and I also want you to slow down and enjoy the journey, too. And I want you to share it with others, and go solo sometimes too. I want you to think intentionally about the choices you make in life each day.

I’m not a logo, or a following, or a curated personality. Nope, I’m just some random dude who wants to help you have more adventures.

When I first launched JustGetOutMore two years ago, I posted this “mini mission statement” in the sidebar.

And that remains the mission of this website, though it’ll have a bit more of a personal touch moving forward. Because, after all, I’m a person—not a brand. I think I’ve always remained genuine and authentic in what I do, so I might as well speak with just one voice, too. And I hope that a more personal voice will make what I post a bit more approachable and relatable, too.

Please note: I am not criticizing everyone who has a separate brand for their website. Virtually everyone I know and care about online has one. But after reassessing my priorities, I’ve just decided that it’s not what I want to do anymore.

Also, you’ve been missing stuff

But that’s not the only reason.

It’s also significantly more work to manage multiple sites (and their associated social media accounts), which was one of several reasons why I didn’t publish as regularly on JustGetOutMore last year. This isn’t a business for me, so the less work it is to post, the better.

As you know, I prioritize travel in my life, so it seems silly that I haven’t done a better job of documenting all these trips—even if it’s just for myself or my close friends. So one of my personal goals for 2019 is to do a better job of posting photos and blog posts about where we went, what we did, and how it went.

As I began to do that, I noticed that it can be difficult to decide where to post things when you have multiple sites. For instance, if you’ve primarily been following JustGetOutMore.com, then you’ve missed out on the five photo-rich posts I recently published on our trip to the South Pacific. Hopefully, having just one personal site will make it easier for both me and you the reader.

Things will get even more complicated later this year when Jen and I launch Inspiring Travelers, a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and empowering others to travel more. More on this effort in the coming months.

What to expect moving forward

For starters, you’ll see more posts about my own various trips. And likely some stuff about my quests and the progress I make on those quests. And you may be subjected to some other random topics, too. Feel free to skip right on over any posts you’re not interested in.

I know these changes might turn off some readers and that I might lose some followers. I’m perfectly ok with that; I don’t really keep track of that sort of thing much anyway. And the truth is, what I publish here isn’t for everyone. It’s just for those who want it.

If you want it, here’s how to get it

If you’re still along for the ride, here are a few ways you can stay engaged.

Social media

Edited in 2025: Look, I’m generally done with corporate social media, which has run amok and has outlived its usefulness. I may still POSSE a bit, but here’s how to follow along or subscribe.

I renamed my JustGetOutMore twitter account and facebook page, but they’ll otherwise remain like before—primarily just broadcasting whenever new posts go live. Because social media platforms want ad money to show these types of posts (and I won’t be spending any), I highly recommend that you turn on notifications for these accounts so you’ll get pinged whenever something gets posted.

Here’s how to do that. On facebook, go to “Posts from rscottjones.com – formerly Just Get Out More” and the hover over the “Following” button, then select “See First.” And on twitter, go to @rscottjones_com, click the alarm bell icon, then select “All Tweets.” You’ll now get a little ping whenever there’s a new post.

A less effective way is to follow my personal accounts on twitter or instagram. I usually tweet when I’ve posted something, but it’s easy to miss in the firehose that’s twitter. On instagram, you’ll have to catch my Stories to see when I’ve posted something new, as I keep my IG feed limited to nice photos.

Either way, you’ll need to sift through a bunch of other stuff to catch any post announcements. That’s why I have the two broadcast-only accounts mentioned above, and why I recommend you follow those with notifications turned on.

Side note: here’s my personal social media policy, in case you have any other questions and/or complaints.

Email list

Another pretty good way to get notified of new posts is by subscribing to my email list. Keep in mind that I don’t email every time I publish, just occasional messages with links to recent posts along with anything else of note (including stuff I don’t post elsewhere). Think of this as an email digest more than a traditional announcement list.

If you don’t like having your inbox flooded with too many messages, this is a great option. But if you’d rather have a more timely notification of everything new, then I’d stick with the social media broadcast accounts.

RSS feeds

If you’re among the seventeen people (like me) who still use an RSS reader, you can grab the site feed. There are more options available at my Subscribe/Follow page.

Audio and video

I am toying with the idea of launching an occasional podcast, and I also sometimes post videos on my Youtube channel. You can also subscribe to those, though obviously they won’t include all of the things I publish here.

A few final thoughts on JustGetOutMore.com

• Man, it can be hard to find good domain names that also correspond to available social media accounts. I must have considered more than 200 possible names before settling on JustGetOutMore.com.
• Out of context, some people thought the name sounded either a bit exasperated, or a bit privileged. Neither was my goal. Sorry if that’s how it came across.
• It’s remarkable how important the Rule of Three is in marketing. Just Get Out More is four short words, but virtually everyone struggled to remember it correctly—including some of my best friends. They’d call it Just Get Outside, or Get Out More, or Get Outside More or some other similar variation. Basically, anything close but not quite its actual name. Take note: three words=easy to remember; four words=good luck!
• As a result, I spent a good portion of 2017 looking for a new name. But I just couldn’t find anything that I was really happy with. I was close to pulling the trigger on MoreExploring or MoreAdventuring, but I couldn’t even choose between them (I did buy both domains just in case).
• Speaking of domains, I’ve registered and/or used a stupid number of them for predecessor sites to JustGetOutMore. Starting with GreatHikes.com back in 1998, I’ve also owned ScottsPics.com, NationalParkRoadtrips.com, and VisitEveryPark.com—just to name a few. Here’s an update from 2009 on how I was struggling to get the NationalParkRoadtrips site started.

explore eagerly ︎ travel cheaply ︎ adventure often

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