Cody’s Road Trips was born out of my love for car travel, tourism and local history. In my many trips throughout Illinois as a journalist in 20+ years (many years in high school sports), I have come across many interesting places that I believe are worth sharing. This website has taken on different incarnations over the years, but it now has taken on an identity of being a place where I can share interesting places and things during my travels.

In order to get an idea of what Cody’s Road Trips is all about, below is a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list of what I have received so far, and what I expect to receive as this website grows.

Q: How do I subscribe to your newest posts?
A: My goal is to have something posted each Sunday afternoon. At the bottom right corner of this very page 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. Options to unsubscribe are available in each email notice.

Q: Why aren’t there a lot of photos on this site?
A: While sharing road trips is more of a visual thing, the website host (WordPress) can only offer so much storage space per website. Including a ton of photos would take up space, and older photos would need to be purged to make room – the problem with that is, the older road trips would have no visual appeal to it without the photos.
My solution (and it may change down the road) is to have the bulk of the pictures on a Flickr account, with a link to a photo album on each feature. Some of the site’s earliest features, including all trips before 2022, have pictures on my personal Facebook account, and you would need to have Facebook to see all of them.
Go here for my Flickr albums!

Q: Why am I seeing weird advertisements all over the website?
A: The page plan I use from WordPress is the basic, free one. At this time, I’m not quite committed to socking a whole lot of money into this, but it may change! I do not control what the ads are or look like. Just be patient, I guess.

Q: What is your presentation style?
A: I like to keep this website more on the casual end, as opposed to a professional or scholarly mindset. A lot of times, being too scholarly will lose casual readers’ attentions, so I attempt to explain things in a simple way as much as I can. At the same time, I may not be entirely complete on some details; if I write every single detail about something, it’s not really going to promote traveling to that place. If you want to dig deeper, I’m hoping this will be a starting block in that quest.

Q: Where are the features on all of the most popular places at?
A: Simply put, popular tourist attractions such as Starved Rock, the big Chicago places and national historic sites have been written about extensively and kind of sell themselves. My mission for Cody’s Road Trips is to highlight places and history that is not really shared or known a whole lot.

Q: I don’t like reading.
A: One of the reasons why I like writing is to help promote literacy. It’s one thing to hear words being spoken, it’s another to see them visually in written sentences and paragraphs. I like writing, as opposed to doing YouTube, TikTok or Facebook shorts.

Q: How often do you go on trips, and how often is content posted on here?
A: I have a full-time job as a journalist, and going on road trips and having this website is simply a hobby. That being said, I have no set schedule for road trips and I go on them whenever I feel like it. Since I don’t have a set schedule, there is no predetermined time for new content. That may change, but for now, new content is simply by chance.

Q: I see you wrote about a business. Can you promote mine?
A: If I feature a business, either extensively or just by a simple name drop, it’s meant to be done to promote the road trip experience and not necessarily to help a business make money. I can take suggestions (“why don’t you …”), but not really requests (“can you …”). I also am not set up to take sponsorship/advertising opportunities at this time (it has to be done a legal way, and I don’t quite know all of that yet.)

Q: How do you go about traveling?
A: I live alone, and I travel alone for the most part. Solo travel is fun: I have complete control over my itinerary, and I can change anything when I want to. You’re my shotgun presence.

Q: Can I suggest a trip?
A: Sure, but ultimately I make the decisions on where I want to go. I’ll also say that if you’re adamant about wanting something to be featured, try your hand at putting it together yourself. You’ll be amazed how much more you’ll learn and be interested the more you dig deeper into a subject.

Q: Many of these trips seem like they take forever to travel on. Why aren’t you so time-conscious?
A: While time is more of the essence these days, there arises some situations where it’s just best to be laid back and take it easy and slow once in a while. Drive 500 miles on an interstate, and you won’t find much to stop at; drive 500 miles on a paralleling state highway, and you’ll find at least five times more interesting things to see.

Q: Much of this website’s content is centered around northern Illinois. Why is that?
A: I live in Sterling, which is in northern Illinois. The hope is to spiral outward with the selection of places over time.

Q: You seem to like puns and “international places.”
A: I’ll admit, sometimes it gets a little boring driving down a road. I try to spot things that make me laugh, or get some creativity going. In my experiences, I have found that with puns and visits to towns in Illinois that share names with international cities and countries: Cairo, Liverpool, Geneva, Cuba, “Rio,” etc. Then there’s connecting them in some creative way: “I bought Cuban cigars in Havana.” (Okay, it was a pack of Garcia y Vegas from a Thornton’s gas station, but you get the point. 🙂 )

Q: Why should I be interested in history?
A: There are a million different answers to this, but here’s mine: It’s only natural to want to know more about the future, but we can’t really go far in doing that unless we understand the past; particularly, how far we’ve come to get to where we’re at today. Then you can apply that progression toward wanting to know more about the future.

Q: Do you really have to have a picture of you in these features?
A: Technically, no. However, it provides proof of me actually being at these places, instead of simply regurgitating information and stealing pictures from the internet. If I forget to post a pic of me, chances are I simply forgot to take one. This is the case for both pictures on this website, and in my Flickr photo albums.

Q: You wrote something in error.
A: Please let me know if I did, and I can look into correcting it.