One Trip Changed Everything
In May 2002, at age 21, I boarded a flight to Hawaii to finish a goal I'd been chasing since childhood: visiting all 50 states. Hawaii was the 50th. It was supposed to be a capstone. Instead, it was a beginning.
I came home to the University of South Carolina obsessed. I read everything about the Islands - the geology, the climate, the culture, the flora and fauna. I taught myself to build for the web so I could share what I was learning, and by 2003, Hawaii-Guide.com was live: free, in-depth, reliable Hawaii travel information for anyone dreaming of the Islands. Around campus in 2003 and 2004, classmates simply knew me as "the Hawaii guy."
Twenty-four years later, that's still the most accurate job title I've ever had.
The Craft Behind the Guide
HawaiiGuide grew the slow way: firsthand travel, original research, original maps, and thousands of hours on the ground across Kauai, Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island - including extended stays on Kauai and the Big Island, immersing in daily island life the way short trips never allow. Collectively, I've spent more time in Hawaii than anywhere else besides my home state of South Carolina.
My degree in Environmental & Physical Geography from the University of South Carolina underpins the science side of the guide. As an undergraduate I worked as a research assistant on climate and meteorological reanalysis, and later as a NOAA weather station analyst - a background that still informs HawaiiGuide's weather and hurricane-season coverage today.
Along the way: certification as a Hawaii Destination Specialist & Expert with the Hawaii Tourism Authority, authorship of Hawaii guidebooks and visitor guides, membership in the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau, and a 2021 interview in The Washington Post on Hawaii travel trends.
A Family Business, Rooted in Aloha
Victoria and I married on Kauai in April 2011 - of course we did. In 2014 I left my VP of Operations role to take HawaiiGuide full-time, and Victoria joined in 2016. Today she serves as President & Publisher, and together we run HawaiiGuide as a fully independent, family-owned publication: no corporate parent, no outside investors.
We take the responsibility that comes with guiding millions of visitors seriously. HawaiiGuide actively promotes pono, sustainable, and regenerative travel, supports Hawaii charities and conservation causes, and belongs to the Sustainable Tourism Association of Hawaii. Our shared kuleana - responsibility - is to help people experience the Islands in a way that keeps them extraordinary for generations.
Into the Cradle of Wai'ale'ale
In 2012, I asked a guide on Kauai for a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. He delivered: an incredibly technical trek deep into Wai'ale'ale Crater - one of the wettest places on Earth - to touch the roughly five-million-year-old exposed rock at the back wall of the "Blue Hole," where the Wailua headwaters begin.
Standing in that ancient, rain-soaked amphitheater remains the most profound experience of my life. I can't recommend anyone attempt it - but it's the kind of firsthand knowledge that separates a guide written from experience from one assembled at a desk. That difference is the whole point of HawaiiGuide.
