Wander off the well-beaten path with authentic travel experiences that inspire.
Our Why
Bigger isn’t always better! Small Town Stops is a written and visual storytelling travel blog and community newsletter about authentic travel experiences. Penned with a purpose to inspire travel that’s led by curiosity, we share insider information from discerning travelers with good taste and no hidden agenda—re-routing you toward unexpected departures. We go beyond the well-beaten path to find the esoteric places and people that inspire us to travel. The stories we tell here come from trusted travelers, knowledgeable locals, and curious wanderers—just like you.
Think of STS as a written and visual catalogue of even the smallest details that make up our beautiful world. While we’ll share what’s noteworthy and new, we’re more interested in really good places that are worth the STOP. Offering a carefully curated collection of experiences, we seek to find the hidden gems, little luxuries, local artisans, family-owned restaurants around the corner, independent hotels without a huge marketing budget, and revisit old favorites in an entirely new way.
We reject the idea of “must-visit” or “must-do” itineraries because we believe in letting your own curiosity lead the way. But we all know inspiration fuels travel, and so you can think of our guides and stories as “cliff notes” for a place to start—ultimately letting your own curiosity take over. Which we hope you’ll share with our community and continue the circle of inspiration. While we’ll share what’s noteworthy and new, we’re more interested in really good places that are worth the STOP. Offering a carefully curated collection of travel experiences, we seek to find the hidden gems, little luxuries, local artisans, the family-owned restaurants around the corner, the independent hotels without a huge marketing budget, and revisit old favorites in an entirely new way.
My story
Travel changed my life and built my confidence—albeit much later in life. Until I was 35, I hadn’t traveled much except for family vacations to Florida, summers at Beaver Lake in Arkansas, and my first international trip to Brazil for graduate school. I was always interested in exploring faraway places and traveling to foreign countries, but I never felt I had the means or the money to travel. But that all changed a few years after graduate school when I moved from Florida to Colorado to be closer to my family.
Living in Colorado changed my perspective on travel. It reminded me that travel didn’t have to just be expensive flights to Japan or multi-day treks across the Sahara—it could be as simple as a weekend getaway to my favorite Colorado mountain town. Soon, I started traveling solo on the weekends in small towns like Westcliffe, CO, backpacking in the backcountry, and long drives across the state’s Eastern Plains. It felt like such freedom. I could choose for myself where to go. I could let my curiosity guide me, and because I wasn’t worried about navigating the streets of Paris on my own (although I plan to do that one day), I was less intimidated by the idea of travel, let alone solo travel. Starting small allowed my curiosity to grow, ultimately building up my confidence.
My newfound confidence and love for authentic travel experiences led me toward the world of travel writing. I now work as a freelance travel writer, working with multiple publications, sharing my favorite travel stories. But I soon discovered some stories weren’t being told that I thought should be.
This is how Small Town Stops was born—from a need to tell the untold stories and highlight the places I thought deserved a spotlight, but from travelers and not a press release. I think we can all agree, now more than ever, that we want to connect to something real, something authentic—not a travel itinerary generated by AI or a marketing agency. Small-town travel forces a local, authentic experience that’s not pre-fabricated and rekindles the innate curiosity in all of us.
I hope STS serves as a launchpad for your adventures, no matter how big or small, and reignites your curiosity about the world. That’s exactly what I hope to create here—a community of places, people, and stories that inspire you to be more curious and take that small step toward big adventures.
If you’re interested in telling your travel stories, find out more about working with us and our community of curious travelers.
