About Top Ten Travel Magazine
Top Ten Travel List, a division of McCoy Media Holdings, Inc., was established in 2012. The company was started by a couple with a passion for adventure, fitness, and travel. Maureen writes the content and researches travel destinations. Mike maintains the website, dealing with any tech issues that may arise. Maureen and Mike started this online publication to highlight wonderful places throughout the U.S.
The Original Source: “The OG” U.S. Travelers
We created this blog in 2012 to cover a void in the travel space. We wanted to focus solely on U.S. travel adventures in a time when everyone else was focusing on pricey international trips which are not easily accessible to the majority of the population.
Around this time, we noticed that the majority of travel bloggers and publications focused solely on international travel. We wanted to go against the grain by spotlighting U.S. wonders. While many blogs today cover adventure and hidden gems in the U.S., we were one of the first publications dedicated solely to U.S. travel. Our mission is to show people that you do not need to spend a lot of money traveling internationally in order to see something worthwhile. There are plenty of fantastic places right at home.
A Multifaceted Approach to Covering Travel Destinations
In the beginning, we decided to approach our writing in a different style. We were the first U.S. based travel site to extensively use listicles as our main source of organizing info. We also started the following series: Hiking Hotspot, Attraction of the Week, and 3 Days In to highlight certain attractions in depth. We also review restaurants and hotels across the country. We choose only to spotlight those we feel are worthy of a recommendation (and as always, we accept no freebies so our recommendation equals a thumbs up).
We also wanted to pay for everything ourselves, accepting no sponsored trips and avoiding any affiliate deals. We proudly pay for 100% of everything ourselves, a rarity in the blogging world. This allows us to give an unbiased recommendation on various activities, attractions, and restaurants.
Also, at the time, we noticed most sites covered only one area i.e. hiking. We wanted to be the first to bridge the gap between outdoor adventures and cultural activities. We wanted to show – yes, you can hike in the morning and go to an art museum later in the day. Our site is not limited to covering just one aspect of traveling. We can enjoy a rugged hike in the morning and a fancy dinner at night.
One of our main goals was to dive deep into previously unconventional topics. You will see many lists on our site highlighting unusual things to do in common tourist areas i.e. our guide to things to do in Orlando besides theme parks, things to do in Phoenix when it’s too hot, things to do in the winter in Chicago, and beautifuil red rock views in Sedona without hiking.
Sadly, you will notice many bloggers today using our site basically as a blueprint for their adventures. This is sad as we never intended for so many of our creative topics to be scraped and rehashed. We simply aimed to share our personal and unique experiences which resulted from over a decade of difficult moves and living in various cities and small town around the country as a local.
What we cover
National Parks: Eventually, we aim to cover all 63 national parks.
Hiking Trails: We cover beautiful trails from coast to coast. We have a lot of content centered on hiking trails in the ponderosa pines of Northern Arizona, the red rock wonderland of Sedona, the Sonoran desert of Tucson, as well as Western North Carolina and Upstate South Carolina. We lived in these areas for a long time, so our coverage is pretty extensive.
Historical cities: We explore some of the nation’s oldest cities via walking tours, museums, & local business.
Waterfalls: We love hiking to waterfalls across the US. We have seen amazing waterfalls in Upstate South Carolina, The Columbia River Gorge in Oregon, and the Pisgah National Forest in Western North Carolina.
Adventure activities: We love whitewater rafting, snowshoeing, kayaking, skiing, ice skating, and biking.
Unusual destinations: We spotlight off-the-beaten path activities, quirky museums, and haunted locales.
Hidden gems: We spotlight places that are often bypassed by mainstream travelers.
Holiday attractions: As big fans of both Halloween and Christmas, you will see many topics devoted to spooky/autumn fun as well as beautiful snowy winter destinations and holiday festivities.
Local business: We support local cafes, restaurants, coffee houses, shops, & activities whenever possible. We have supported hundreds of small businesses in the last 15 years.
Free and low cost activities: A large portion of the site is dedicated to wonderful free places to visit, making travel more accessible to all. Honestly, most of the best places we have visited costed little to nothing.
Top Ten Lists: You will find many lists on our site. I began writing “top ten lists” back in 2012 as a fun way to organize data. I have always loved creating my own lists so I thought it would be fun to write a blog with lists as the basis. This makes the experience fun for readers who want to “check off their own bucket list.”
On a side note, I began writing “listicles” way before they exploded in popularity in the travel niche. Unfortunately, today many spammers produce fake listicles with fake photos and AI generated content, which gives listicles a bad reputation. Not all the listicles are bad, just look for original photos for authenticity.
Popular tourist destinations: We cover many fun touristy places like Orlando and Vegas. In addition to covering the token activities, I also like to go off-the-beaten path and explore local gems in these trendy places.
What we believe in
Supporting local businesses. We aim to visit local cafes, coffeshops, restaurants, and attractions whenever we travel. We have no deals with anyone, so if we spotlight a local business, it’s because we had a great experience.
Original photography: You will never find a stock photo on our site. We believe that a big part of travel is experiencing the place yourself. You’ll find many blogs and businesses today producing listicles using fake photos. Really, what is the point?
Being creative & original. We come up with all topic ideas ourselves. As big fitness buffs and explorers, much our our content will center around outdoor adventures. You will also find articles on: movie filming sites, theme parks, museums, Main Streets, historical destinations, holiday festivals, and hidden gems.
Positive vibes: We only spotlight businesses, activities, and attractions which we believe are worth paying for/dedicating your time towards. Any business we don’t approve of, you won’t find on our site. If you don’t see one of your favorites, it likely means we haven’t been there yet.
What we don’t do
Cover international Destinations. When we started this blog back in 2012, most bloggers were not covering all the wonderful places in the US. We wanted to highlight all the amazing natural wonders right here at home. Basically, we wanted to make travel more accessible to everyone. I didn’t grow up rich on the southside of Chicago, so I know that even a small trip can be exciting.
Use affiliate advertising. Anything we recommend on this site, we use ourselves. If we don’t like something, we don’t recommend it. It’s as simple as that.
Accept sponsored trips/brand deals. We do not work with any brands or companies. We pay for every trip and/or product we use ourselves. Everything comes out of our personal pocket. If we like something, we cover it on our site.
I feel like this makes our site more genuine as we can share our true feelings about various places without something ulterior motive involved. I really don’t see the point in getting paid to stay at a hotel and then writing that the hotel was great (of course, it’s great if it is free!).
Hire any staff. This is a simple 2 person run site based on our own adventures. We do everything ourselves here including all travel, fitness activities, tech and design work, writing, photography, social media, etc.
Set up glamorous beauty pageant style shots. I’ve always found it silly when I see people standing on top of a mountain dressed up, wearing necklaces, with their hair blown out. Hiking is hard work and involves a lot of sweat and effort. It’s unrealistic to portray the journey this way.
I am not bringing a ball gown with me at the top of a summit. You’ll see pictures of me roughing and toughing it, usually with a North Face jacket and my hair in a ponytail. I recommend you wear proper workout attire and footwear too.
Accept guest posts. We personally travel to every place featured on our site and write based on our personal experiences.
Use AI and stock photos. I don’t see the point in writing if you are going to use AI which is basically stealing other’s hard work. I also believe in taking all my own photos even if they are not “as picture-perfect” as stock photos. I believe that these imperfections make my site more real.
Spend hours editing photos in Photoshop/Lightroom. We aim to present places as they truly are instead of mimicking with the photos to create some perfect, but unrealistic image.
Write about SEO topics. I am not a fan of travel bloggers who sell course books and write about unrelated topics like “how you can start your own blog” or “learn how I quit my 9 to 5 job and now work remote on beautiful islands every day and you can too!” This isn’t the type of place to find this type of content. We focus solely on travel.
Compare ourselves to other travel bloggers. Personally, I come up with all my ideas on my own. I think of topics that would be interesting and then I schedule trips and write about my experience. I don’t look at what other bloggers are doing and I don’t really care what keywords are ranking high in Google.
You will see many bloggers today all covering similar topics because they aim to write based on trending keywords rather than what they are truly interested in. We aim to cover hidden gems and spotlight common destinations in a more eccentric way. You’ll find a lot of weird articles on our site because we want to share our unique adventures.
“Collaborate” aka set up link exchanges with other travel bloggers. We prefer to go our own way. We are not in a travel clique and we like it that way. Many travel bloggers today participate in a “link to me, I’ll link to you” type program. For authenticity purposes, we prefer to cover our own unique material and leave it at that.
Why our online magazine is different
Our online magazine is quite different from most others as we believe in spotlighting areas from a local’s point of view. We have lived in 14 states and more than 20 cities in the last 15 years. We believe that you really cannot experience an area fully without actually living in it.
Visiting the desert of Arizona for one weekend is much different than living in the harsh (but enchanting) conditions for over 2 years as a local. We move nearly every year or 2 to fully discover an area and partake in the unique culture, as well as enjoy surrounding daytrips, roadtrips, and attractions.
Living in the region gives us a better overall feeling of the vibe, culture, and character of an area, putting us in a position to better spotlight an area’s best qualities.
We have put in more than a decade of very long moves, even longer road trips, not to mention hundreds upon hundreds of miles spent hiking, biking, and walking on foot exploring each destination. It’s been hard packing up a moving truck nearly every year, but we have enjoyed some pretty unique life experiences in exchange for sacrificing a lot of our money and time.
Timeline of our moves:
- 2008: We moved to a small town in the Nevada desert.
- 2009: We temporarily moved back to our hometown of Chicago.
- 2010: We moved to a small island off the coast of Maine called Islesboro.
- 2011: We moved to Long Beach, a big international city which is part of the L.A. metro area.
- 2012: We moved to a tiny town in southern Idaho called Idaho Falls.
- 2013: We moved to Fall River, a small city that is part of the Greater Providence metro area.
- 2014: We moved to Palm Harbor, a suburb of the Tampa Bay metro area.
- 2015: We moved to Flagstaff, a beautiful mountain town in Northern Arizona.
- 2017: We moved to Oro Valley, a suburb of the Tucson metro area.
- 2019: We moved to Greenville, an up and coming foodie city in South Carolina.
- 2020: We moved to Plymouth Meeting, a suburb of the Philadelphia metro area.
- 2021: We moved back to the Tampa Bay metro (this time in the New Tampa region).
- 2022: We moved to Moon Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh.
- 2023: We moved back to the Tampa Bay metro area (also in the New Tampa region).
- 2024-?: We moved to Parma Heights, a suburb of Cleveland.
As you can see, we have moved a lot over the last 15 years. This has allowed us to truly explore each area fully and also plan convenient daytrips and roadtrips nearby. You will notice content generally aligning with the years we lived in each area, although sometimes I go back and write about places that I did not have time to cover. To date, I have around 900 articles indexed.
We are currently in pre-production stages of publishing our own magazine. More details to come in the future.
Meet our Team
Hi I am Maureen, the sole writer for Top Ten Travel List & Magazine. I attended Central Michigan University and graduated from Northern Illinois University with a Bachelor’s in Marketing. I am an avid fitness enthusiast. In my spare time, I enjoy running, biking, reading, playing the piano, yoga & meditation, old school video gaming, weight lighting, watching 80’s & 90’s movies, and playing tennis.
Michael McCoy
Hi, I am Mike – the technical advisor. I started off as a Physical Education teacher, but eventually became a self taught web developer. I work full time as an independent web developer. I have coded the theme from scratch and fix any tech issues. I have 20 years of experience in this field. I have created many online business systems for high end entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and marketing agencies. I graduated with a Master of Science in Physical Education from Northern Illinois University and also attended the Sports Management Program at California State University, Long Beach.
I enjoy taking time off from the computer on the weekends via hiking, biking and other outdoor activities. Working for many years in the tech industry, I fully recognize the benefits of taking time off to exercise, explore, and “get back to nature.” I also love 80’s movies, with my favorite being the Back to the Future trilogy.
“All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.”
– Paul Fussell
