This is where the long-form lives. The personal essays. The founder story. The "why I keep going back after twenty-four years" pieces. Less "what to do in Hana" and more "why Hana keeps doing something to me."
How does a guy from Irmo, South Carolina — a small town outside Columbia — end up building one of the largest independent Hawaii travel guides on the internet? One trip in May 2002, after I'd already crossed the other 49 states off the list. That trip rearranged something I didn't know was rearrangeable.
What keeps pulling me back? Is it the scenery? The food? The pace? The spirit of aloha — the people themselves? The flora and fauna you don't see anywhere else on earth? The way the light looks at certain hours, the way the air smells when you step off the plane (and yes, the air smells different in Hawaii — that's a real thing). Or is it the chicken-skin feeling I still get walking into certain places, twenty-four years in? Probably all of the above. And probably one more thing I can't quite name.
Tori and I first bonded here. We got married here. Hawaii is the one place we keep being called back to. Hawaii's a big deal. It's also a complex place, culturally and geographically, and I've spent the years since helping people show up here the right way — pono, prepared, paying attention. Whether it's your first trip or your tenth, I'd love to be your guide. Hawaii changed my life. I hope, in some small way, HawaiiGuide helps you find what I found back then, and what I still find every time I come back.
That's the personal answer. The bigger one: more than 40 million people have used HawaiiGuide as their guide over the years. A real share of that was the COVID era — revenge travel, the whole world figuring out whether it could come to Hawaii at all. I count that as Phase 1. Phase 2 is the part where AI starts writing travel content for everyone, and the thing the machines can't do is the thing that matters most: hike the trail. Eat at the place. Learn the difference between a great snorkel spot in June and the same spot in November. AI is genuinely useful. I use it every day. It's made the site dramatically more capable in the last few years — live data feeds, real-time conditions, the kind of constant updates that used to take months of editorial work. Machines do what machines are good at. Humans stay on the things that matter — accurate facts, real recommendations, the judgment calls. But experience isn't something you can prompt for. There's a reason a human still sits in the editorial chair.
If you want trip planning, that's the rest of the site. This corner is the heart underneath the planning — the reason any of it got built in the first place.
Start with the founder pillar below. More pieces ladder up to it as they get written.
The Cornerstone
A four-part founder series. About 25 minutes total.
In the Series
Standalone essays from the founder, each one ladders to this hub.
Why Hawaii?
A fair question — and a 24-year answer. What makes Hawaii actually different from other tropical destinations, including the cases where you should NOT go.
Hawaii Is More Than Paradise
The brochure word is the smallest, easiest, and most boring thing Hawaii actually is. Twenty-four years made me put down "paradise" and pick up a better word.
Should You Move to Hawaii?
An honest answer from someone who almost did — twice. Why I didn't, why the visiting model is underrated, and what to do if you're going to move anyway.
Companion Pieces
Other places on the site where the love-of-Hawaii framing lives today.
Hawaiʻi Calls You Back
If these essays are the founder's response, this is the observation behind them — why most travelers come once, then keep coming back. The campaign this corner of the site grew up alongside.
Let Hawaiʻi In
The third side of the same place: what you actually do once you're here. Slow down, stay present, travel like a guest — the half of the trip that's up to you.
Should You Visit Hawaii?
Most people ask the question like they're weighing a destination. They're actually asking whether something will happen to them. The seed essay this whole campaign grew from.
Visiting a Heiau
Heiau are ancient Hawaiian temples — sacred, legally protected, and more common than most visitors realize. How to recognize one and visit respectfully. Extends the "Does Hawaii like you back?" thread.
Our Hawaii Story
The fuller business + personal history of how Hawaii-Guide came to be — from a college side-project in 2000 to one of the largest independent Hawaii travel resources today.
Eclectic Hawaii: A Get-Away Place Like No Other
A short tour of what makes Hawaii so contradictory, diverse, and unlike anywhere else on Earth — barren deserts to lush rainforests, brand-new lava to billion-year-old rock.
Connect in Hawaii
Culture, language, weather, current conditions, the kind of detail that turns a generic trip into one that fits. Where to go next on the site if the campaign frame resonated.
Explore in Hawaii
Where to go and what to do, on every main island. The working catalog underneath the planning. Companion to Connect.
Tell me when the next one ships
I write these when Hawaii hands me something worth writing down. If you want to know when the next essay goes up, drop your email below. No newsletter cadence, no marketing funnel — just a heads-up when something new lands here.
Inspired? Now plan it.
When you're ready to turn the inspiration into a trip, this whole site exists to make that part easy. Twenty-four years of returning, built into one set of free planning tools.
Both habitats. We're the South Carolina end of this whole thing.
