After months of inactivity, I am announcing today the official relaunch of the Cody’s Road Trips website.

New car = more road trips.

Cody’s Road Trips is my personal website devoted to the many regional road trips that I like to take away from my hometown of Sterling, Illinois. I like sharing my journeys with you. Perhaps there is something that you haven’t heard of that becomes of interest with you, or someone you know. At this time, my typical travel area is about 3-5 hours from Sterling, which includes most of Illinois, eastern Iowa, southern Wisconsin and a little of northwest Indiana. This radius may expand soon.

Expect to read:
• Local history that can inspire you
• Scenic routes that pass the time, if you’re not so urgent to get places
• Places you can travel to and enjoy a break from home
• Something you can share with someone you know
• Preliminary plans or ideas for a road trip of your own
• Something different

Road trips have been a staple of my family for many years, from my late Cutter grandparents’ many trips across the country and world during their retirement to the family vacations that I used to go on as a child throughout the Midwest. When I was a kid, trips to places such as the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the Mall of America near Minneapolis, the Motown Studio in Detroit, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and many of the usual Chicago staples inspired me to find out what more there is out there beyond my usual stomping grounds.

My work as a high school journalist for more than 20 years has taken me to many places in Illinois, and those trips also inspired me to explore more. I am not the kind of traveler who goes to the places that EVERYBODY goes to: I like the little places that you can take away a piece of the human condition and understand the world better. You won’t find me in places like Florida, Mexico, California or Vegas. Yet.

I work as a features writer for magazines published by Shaw Media, which is based in Crystal Lake, Illinois, with origins in Dixon, Illinois (where I work from). My writings for this website are separate from what I do with my professional job, although I will share several articles that I have done for the magazines on this website from time to time. No, I have not left Shaw, or plan to.

Back to the Cody’s Road Trips website itself: At the moment there are a few road trips already posted. They are a combination of ones I have recently taken and trips from more than a year ago. I have gone on several trips during the downtime of this website, and I may have posts on those in the near future. This website isn’t meant to gain any income, yet, so it’s not as high as a priority as my job; that being said, there isn’t going to be a whole lot of money pumped into its operation at the very moment, but maybe that will change.

My goal is to have something posted each Sunday afternoon. At the bottom right corner of this very page (on most browsers) is a “subscribe” bar: Click on it, enter your email address when prompted, and click “Sign me up.” Your collected email will remain private and not used for any other purpose other than updates for this website.

If you have Facebook or X, I post timely updates on the trips I take. Click on the menu box at the top left of this page to check out my social media links.

Also, please check out the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) link to learn more about what this website is all about.

I hope you enjoy!

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Sports announcement:

I have been a high school sports reporter since 2002 for both print and multimedia formats. My assignments have taken me to the entirety of northern Illinois and state final tournaments throughout the state. I operated my own website, Northern Illinois Sports Beat, from 2004 to 2014 before I began work at Sauk Valley Media (publishers of the Sterling Gazette and Dixon Telegraph).

Since moving into a general assignment news reporter role in 2019, my commitments to covering high school sports have slowly declined due to availability. In 2020, I began my current role as features writer for magazines, and my sports commitments declined even further. During the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, I had only been available to cover a few football games for Shaw Media’s Friday Night Drive depending on my magazine schedule, not knowing if I could commit more time if the magazine work got done quicker. I never really made my sports plans set in stone, until now.

I have felt comfortable with the most recent arrangement of covering just a few football games a year. This is what I plan to do for the foreseeable future, and nothing more. I will continue to write a little about sports on occasion for my magazines.

I get people who approach me wondering if I would ever go back to being a full time sports writer, however, I am comfortable where I am at professionally. If there’s a day when I’m not doing what I’m doing now, perhaps things will change.

I may still attend high school sports events at times, but you’ll know if I am actually writing about them when I am wearing my press pass. If you see me somewhere and I do not have my press pass on, then I am not covering it for local media – I can’t stress that enough. Sometimes I may highlight high school sports items through road trips, and those will be announced in advance if they happen.

Over the years, I have seen coverage of high school sports evolve so much. When I began, the legacy media trifecta of newspapers, radio and television were much dominant over fledgling multimedia. Today, there are websites, podcasts, social media pages, internet broadcasting and other ideas that are helping to grow awareness of high school sports, its athletes and the impacts they have on their schools and communities. All in less than 25 years.

I have enjoyed getting to know fans, players, coaches, administrators, journalism colleagues and officials over the many years I’ve been a sports writer. My future commitments to the high school sports scene may now pale in comparison from what I did 10 years ago, but I will continue to cherish these connections and friendships for as long as I live.

I’ll be back covering football in 2025, assignments to be determined.

– Cody