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In the last post, I shared my travel story and how my first trip to Paris was a turning point in my life. For me, travel is empowering. It has been the catalyst for everything I have done since.
As far back as grade school and high school, I kept a journal to sort out my thoughts. In my house, we never expressed how we felt. All emotions—anger, happiness, and sadness—were discouraged. To let my feelings out, I wrote them down. It was a way to release. Writing became my happy place and my therapy.
After I returned from that first trip to Paris in 2011, the only way I knew to share those amazing feelings was to write about them. So I began a blog. It was mostly an online diary that almost no one read. That was just fine with me. Then another significant life event took place in 2016.
The company I had worked at for 32 years shut its doors with no warning. One day, I went to work as usual, and by noon, I was home and out of a job. I was 52. After taking a week to process this and see our daughter graduate high school, I had to contemplate what to do with my life. I had moved my little blog over to WordPress and decided to ramp it up, finding ways to make money doing what I loved—writing and traveling.
The problem was I knew being a travel blogger was a long game. It was nearly impossible to make any money just starting out. So I finished the summer and started working part-time at the Post Office in my town. After trying to find a full-time job, which was harder than I thought, I knew we could make a part-time income work.
I kept at the blog, writing articles when I could in between my hectic work schedule. I signed up for my first travel conference (actually winning a ticket through the Midwest Travel Network) in the spring of 2017. At the time, my blog was called Lori Loves Paris, reflecting my love for the city that changed my life.
The travel conference was called The Women in Travel Summit (WITS), and it was held in Milwaukee. Women from all over the country and the world who were in the travel space attended. There were destinations, writers, tour operators, and agents. It was a significant moment for me. I had a chance to meet other women doing what I did, many of whom were very successful.
I learned so much from that conference. I needed to focus on my audience and what I wanted to write about. At the heart of everything was my mission. Because I had an amazing experience on my first “solo” trip to Paris, I wanted to inspire women like myself—women who were fearful of taking that first step, women who were introverted, women who never had the opportunity to travel or the means—to discover how travel can change their lives, just as it did mine.
I wrote about the places I visited because if I could do it, anyone could. It was slow going, and I felt stuck. So I did what everyone at a crossroads does: I had an Oracle card reading.
Whether or not you believe in that kind of thing, the reading helped steer me in a new direction. I was meant to write a book. At first, it was a travel memoir about that Paris trip, but that soon changed.
That travel memoir morphed into writing my first children’s book. The year prior, my husband, Rick, renovated a 14-foot 1969 canned ham camper for me to start solo camping with and to use as a backyard writing retreat when I wasn’t camping. I envisioned a children’s book about that renovation experience, giving lifelike qualities to the camper, affectionately named Beatrice. Five months later, that dream came true. I self-published “Beatrice the Little Camper Gets Rescued.” Two thousand copies of that book arrived at my door. Now what?
I sold a few hundred copies and then got stuck. In the meantime, I quit my job, got laid off from another, was still blogging, and then COVID hit. You see, the most successful way for me to sell my book was to hitch Beatrice up and go to farmers markets, vendor shows, and other events. COVID killed all that. I was devastated and in serious debt from producing the book.
I did the only thing I could think of. I wrote a letter to the CEO of Camping World along with a copy of the book, trying to pitch how great a product it would be for Camping World stores. After all, kids camp too.
Three months later, I had a voicemail on my phone. It was Marcus Lemonis, CEO of Camping World, calling me! He loved my book and the concept of the camper as the main character. We made a deal, and Camping World purchased 1,400 of my books, which went in stores around the country that fall.
I learned a lot, and because Beatrice had grown a following, I published a second book shortly after called “Beatrice the Little Camper’s Brave New Friend.” In the end, authoring and publishing these books opened up a whole new opportunity, and an idea to write a Wisconsin Harbor Towns travel guide began to take shape in 2021. But my true calling remained solo travel and inspiring women to discover the benefits of solo travel. To stay with that theme, I rebranded my website and changed my name to Lori Loves Adventure.
I spent much of 2022 marketing and selling my kids’ books while beginning to build relationships with other travel bloggers, writers, and destinations. I even started making some TV appearances, promoting my book as well as solo camping and travel.
I continued through 2023, doing research for my harbor towns guide, visiting destinations, and writing about them and solo travel. I was voted in to occupy a seat on the Visit Sheboygan board of directors, which I am incredibly proud to be a part of.
In June, I published my Wisconsin Harbor Towns guide and just turned in a manuscript to a publisher for another travel guide to be published next spring. I took my first Sisterhood Travel trip in January. I met some of you during the Girlfriends Getaway. It was an absolute joy to see women coming together, full of laughter, creating bonds, and having an incredible time, the common denominator being a thirst for travel. These were my people.
You may wonder why I am telling you all this.
I truly believe that if I hadn’t taken that first step and gone on that solo trip to Paris in 2011, none of this would have been possible. The empowerment I gained from taking that trip and becoming friends with 40 strangers, along with the belief that I had accomplished something I never imagined I would do, helped me believe in myself and that anything was possible.
I have met many women through my blog, my TV appearances, and book events who said I inspired them to take that solo trip. Some went just for a weekend, and some traveled across the world. I have inspired some women to imagine themselves doing what I have done. Nothing makes me happier than to hear these stories. This is my mission.
I continue to spread my message like fairy dust everywhere I go. Through writing for Sisterhood Travels, my blog, my other partnerships, my monthly local TV segments, and one-on-one exchanges with women I meet, I want to see every woman who wants to solo travel do it. I want them all to discover what I did: just how travel can change your life and open up opportunities you never thought were within your reach.
I am a strong believer that if I can do it, you can too.
Let me introduce myself.
Lori Helke is an author and travel writer from Wisconsin. She is the founder of the travel and lifestyle blog Lori Loves Adventure where she writes about her solo travel experiences, and is the author of the Beatrice the Little Camper children’s picture book series, as well as the travel guide ‘Wisconsin Harbor Towns: The Ultimate Wisconsin Road Trip Guide.’ Lori has a monthly travel segment on Local 5 Live, a Green Bay, Wisconsin TV morning show, has contributed to several online and print publications, and serves on the Visit Sheboygan Board Of Directors.
Who are our Sisters? Well, we’re you! We value old friendships but love making new ones. We’re intellectually curious and love a unique adventure to parts unknown. We may be single, divorced, widowed, or simply have a partner who doesn’t want to travel. Most of all, We’re kind, compassionate women who look forward to cultural immersion, exclusive adventures, lots of laughs, and the magic of Sisterhood.
