An adventure's story belongs on a map

The story of its creation

I rode to Pittsburgh and had nowhere to put it

Back in the fall of 2024, I saw a YouTube video of someone bikepacking the C&O Canal Towpath from Washington, D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland. This was practically in my backyard, and somehow I'd never heard of it. I pulled up Google Maps to investigate and discovered that, by continuing along the Great Allegheny Passage, I could ride all the way from D.C. to Pittsburgh. So I threw caution to the wind, bought some panniers for my trusty steed, and rode off the next month (after securing some time off work).

While traveling, I wanted to share where I was with family and friends, but I wanted them to experience some of the same thrill of discovery I'd felt when I first found the trail. I wanted them to explore the trip through a map: where I took each picture, the route I cycled each day, the extra day I spent wandering around Pittsburgh, and where I was setting up camp that night (or, in my case, the motel I had retreated to... thanks, rain). I wanted someone to be able to look at the map, see where I was, and say, "You're right near this place. You have to check it out." Even if they weren't there, they could still be part of the adventure.

The travel-sharing apps I found were either too social media-y or too rigid to tell the story the way I wanted. I didn't want to make another post about my day, and I didn't want my trip reduced to a linear list of stops.

The trip happened on a map.

Every day had a place. Every place had something worth saying about it. A feed flattened all of that into a scroll that was gone by the next morning. I wanted something that I could look back on in 10 years and be able to remember all the tiny details of my trip.

I wanted to show the adventure as I actually lived it.

That's when I started thinking about building something for myself. And, as luck would have it, adventuremapper.com was available. So I had my name.

Jared

Adventurer