My name is Amanda, and if you haven’t already figured it out, I love to travel. Now that my kids are all grown and I don’t have to schedule my life around all their school and sports activities, traveling and running have become my newest hobbies. My favorite travel destination is Disney World, and I go there several times a year, but I also love to see and experience new places. Keep reading to learn a little about me and the reason for starting Amanda’s Adventures.

First, I’ll start with the backstory of Amanda’s Adventures. Starting in 2017, whenever I traveled, I posted a daily trip report on Facebook so our friends and family could follow along on our adventures. (We had many adventures before that time but didn’t really share them on Facebook). Another reason I started writing consistent daily entries when we traveled was because I love to see my trips come up every year on my Facebook memories. It is always fun to re-read where we were a year (or more) ago on that date. However, I realized that only having my travel journals posted on Facebook meant that if I lost access to my account (due to hackers or the system going down), then I would lose all those precious memories along with it. So, to solve that problem and make it easier to go back and re-live all those trips, I decided to create this travel journal to chronicle my adventures. After teaching myself how to build my own website, which involved many long hours of research and YouTube tutorials, and many days that I wanted to scrap the whole plan, I officially started posting my daily trip adventures here in Sept 2023. I am in the process of getting as many of those older trip journals transferred over to this site as well. Those will take some time, as I have to go back and recreate them from my Facebook posts, so they will probably have less detail and content than my newer ones, but at least I will have a backup of those adventures in an easy-to-find location. You will be able to read about those adventures on my Adventure Archives Page as they become available. In the future, I plan to make this blog not only a daily journal of my adventures but also a travel guide to help people get ideas of what to see or do in one of the amazing locations I have visited.

Now for a little bit about myself. I am a middle-aged woman (yes, I actually said that but I am almost 50, so I guess that means I have officially hit that age group). I live in central Kansas and have a husband, Marc, and three grown boys, Brendan, Riley, and Caden. (25, 22, and 19 at the time of this post). We were fortunate enough to have been able to take them on multiple trips while they were growing up. While we did visit other locations, most of those trips were to Disney World after we became Disney Vacation Club Members (DVC is Disney’s timeshare program) in 2005. However, my love of The Disney Parks didn’t start there. In the summer of 1982, my parents took me on a one-day trip to see the Magic Kingdom, which was the only park open at the time. (Epcot opened that fall). Then, they took me back during my Senior year of high school for our spring break trip. At that point, I was hooked. Marc and I took our Honeymoon there in 1996, but because we were young and broke, we couldn’t afford to go back until December of 2003 when we took Brendan and Riley on their first trip at ages 4 and 2. Then, in 2005, after we became DVC members, our yearly (or sometimes twice yearly) trips to Disney began. I have been there 40 times since my first trip back in 1982, and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. My family is not as crazy about Disney as I am, and my husband doesn’t want to use up all his vacation time there anymore, so several of my more recent trips have been solo, which I love. I am also fortunate enough to work remotely most of the time, which gives me the freedom to get to my happy place every couple of months. Then, when my husband or adult kids can join me, our longer trips can be spent exploring other places in the world, such as Puerto Rico, one of our other favorite places to visit.

I also took up running (well, I say running, but it’s more of a slow jog/walk) as a hobby fairly recently. In the past, I did a lot of walking and occasionally did some jogging, but I never had a reason to stick with it. However, in January 2023, my cousin asked me if I wanted to compete in a half marathon in Key West in January 2024. I decided that I had a year to train, and after doing some research, I found I would only have to maintain an 18/min per-mile pace, and I could walk that pace if I had to. I said why not and started my training. I decided I liked running at that point, especially since I had something to work for. I have run several races, and am signed up for almost a dozen more over the next year, most of them being through runDisney….Bet you didn’t see that coming…so several of my blog posts will also include the trips built around these races.

So, now that you know a little bit about me and the reason I started Amanda’s Adventures, please take the time to browse my page and read about some of my adventures. If you like what you see, please consider subscribing below. In addition, you can follow me on my Facebook or Instagram pages if you would rather get updates that way. (you can find the links to these at both the top and bottom of the page) I also greatly appreciate all feedback from my readers on what you would like to see or what I can do to make my page a better experience for all. Hopefully, you will find Amanda’s Adventures not only entertaining but also informative as this page evolves. Thanks, everyone, and happy reading!!