Eleven years ago this month, I hit “publish” on my very first post, marking the beginning of One Trip at a Time in March 2014. At the time, Lee and I had just returned from one of our first trips together—a trip I was excited to document and share with friends, family, and anyone else who might be interested.
Back then, One Trip at a Time was simply a journal of our travels. It was a way to capture the places we visited, the little moments that made each trip special, and even the misadventures along the way. I also used it to track our travel goals, plan for future trips, and reflect on each year with an annual recap (something I really miss doing!). As part-time travellers, we made the most of our annual leave and business trips, and this blog became a space to relive and share those experiences.
First photo I posted on my brand new travel blog in 2014
Another thing I enjoyed was the interaction with readers. Whether it was a comment from someone reminiscing about a place they’d visited or a message from someone planning a trip based on our experiences, those connections made blogging even more rewarding.
Now, eleven years later, I find myself looking back and realizing that I really miss that “old-school” style of blogging! So, after much mulling, I’ve decided it’s time for One Trip at a Time to return to its roots.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rekindling the Joy of Travel Blogging
After a few years of posting regular travel journal posts, I began to make some changes in 2018, driven by the possibility of turning One Trip at a Time into a way to fund more travel – or even to travel full-time one day. To learn how to do that, I took blogging courses, studied what “successful” travel bloggers were doing, and started changing the blog’s focus.
Instead of focusing on personal travel journals, I shifted to creating more researched and in-depth travel guides and SEO-friendly posts. Lee also joined me so we could post more articles, more frequently. And for a while, it worked.
The blog gained traction, brought in more visitors, and reached people searching for practical travel advice. While the blog grew in that sense, it really didn’t bring in a significant income – although part of that was because in 2019, we ended up retiring early and didn’t push monetization as hard as we might have otherwise. And then, of course, 2020 happened, putting a pause on everything related to travel, especially trying to grow a travel blog.
Copenhagen in October 2019 on what would be our last trip before the world shut down in 2020
During this time, we did enjoy aspects of the changes we’d made but in the process, we lost something. We fell woefully behind on documenting our trips because we prioritized writing “better” articles over simply writing our travel journal. Looking back now, I really miss having that record of our many adventures.
In the past couple of years, we’ve written only a handful of new posts, mainly focusing on updating older content. It was becoming clear that our passion for the blog had waned. I’ve felt completely stuck—unsure of how to move forward or if I even wanted to keep the blog going at all.
The more I’ve thought about the direction One Trip at a Time could go, the more I realized that what I truly missed is the joy of writing about our travels simply because I want to – not because I feel obligated to create a certain type of post. I want to return to that “old school” way of travel blogging, sharing our adventures as they happen, especially while the details are still fresh in my memory (which is why I need to write about our most recent trip to Quebec City sooner than later!).
At the heart of it, I just want to have fun with our blog again, enjoying comments from readers, connecting over shared travels, and injecting more of our personality (and opinions!) into our posts – though you still won’t see many more photos of us; we much prefer being behind the camera!
Our most recent trip in October 2024 took us to beautiful Quebec City in Canada.
I also want One Trip at a Time to be a blog that we enjoy looking back on. I have loved reliving our adventures—both as I wrote about them and later when I read back through past posts.
Maybe there’s also a bit of nostalgia at work here with this desire to recapture the way travel blogging felt when I first started, before everything became about keywords, pageviews, and keeping up with social media.
Moving forward, One Trip at a Time will return to being blend of personal travel journals and, only when inspired, in-depth travel guides. I’m also excited to bring back some of the types of post I’ve missed the most – tracking our travel goals, sharing trip plans, and our annual travel recaps where we reflect on all the amazing adventures we had during that year.
I’ll also be revisiting past trips that have never made it onto the blog, finally documenting those experiences before the little details fade from memory forever. And, of course, I’ll still share travel tips and advice along the way wherever I can.
Ranville War Cemetery on our last day in France for our WWII trip in 2014.
To kick off this new (or rather, old!) direction, I’ll be republishing some of the posts I had removed in the past. To me, it only seems fitting to start with our road trip in Normandy—that very trip we were on eleven years ago, when I first considered the possibility of starting a travel blog.
That trip was the spark that led to One Trip at a Time, so what better way to rekindle the joy of travel blogging than by returning to where it all began?
This shift back to travel journaling feels right, and I’m looking forward to returning to the roots of what One Trip at a Time was all about: documenting our adventures, reliving our travels, tracking our lifetime travel goals, and connecting with fellow travel enthusiasts. I hope you’ll come along for the journey.
Whether you’ve been reading for years or are just finding us now, we’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment, share your own travel experiences, or just say hello.
Here’s to reliving old adventures, embracing new ones, and exploring the world— One Trip at a Time.
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WHERE ARE WE NOW?
At home in beautiful Nova Scotia, Canada.
OUR NEXT ADVENTURE
We are still planning our 2025 travels and adventures. We hope to have an update soon!