Changing Roads Podcast
Changing Roads Podcast unveils the profound essence of travel, exploring not just the destinations, but the personal transformations within. We unravel the various themes, aspects and narratives of travel that define us, shape us, and lead us to the heart of our own stories.
Changing Roads Podcast
New Year 2025/One-Year Anniversary Special
Website:
www.changingroads.com
Email:
changingroadspodcast@gmail.com
Insta:
@changingroadspodcast
@rangerlovestravel
Facebook:
#changingroads
Thank you. Hi everybody, happy new year from Changing Roads. I am Brad, your host, and I am joined here by my co-host, ranger, my loyal service dog and travel companion. And wow, what a year it's been. Oh, what a wild, wild series of roads.
Speaker 1:And today doesn't just mark the new year, 2025. It also marks the one year anniversary of Changing Roads because on January 1st last year I dropped the very first episode, mile Markers, with my daughters, Ashlyn and Kira, as the guests. So I wanted to do this episode not just to you guys a happy New Year's, but also to kind of go back to the very beginning and tell you guys some things you might not have known about how this podcast began and how it got to that first January 1st 2024 release. So I'm going to go back a little bit. Also, in this episode I have some well-deserved acknowledgements that I need to give to not just my listeners but also the guests that I've had on and the people behind the scenes, and we will get to that shortly. But let's go back to the very, very beginning of Changing Roads. I've had a lot of events in my life happen and I used to call them cataclysms because that's what they seemed like at the time, and I have learned to now call them catalysts, because everyone has catalysts in your life, whether good or bad, and they send you down these roads that you have no idea what's going to happen next. And when that happens, those new roads or road can take you to places that you never in your life imagined were possible. And that's what happened to me and Ranger and so many other people involved in this story, and it's just another thing. It's so amazing that maybe this catalyst happened in my life, but because that happened, it changed the course of so many other people's lives, and the reach has now traveled across the world and has made positive impacts on so many people's lives, and I feel so, so blessed that that has happened. And I'll point out again that, even though at the time it felt like the end of the world and that my life was over as I knew it, it was actually the start of something absolutely beautiful, the biggest adventure of my life, the greatest thing I've ever done, and it has defined who I am as a person. Now, today and I can't, you know I digress. Let's go back to the very beginning.
Speaker 1:Two and a half years ago, I found myself in a very dark place. I had been diagnosed with late onset epilepsy and had lost my career because of that and a lot of other things. I'd lost my career because of that and a lot of other things and I just had given up on life and I was stale and I had this hopeless glazed look on my eyes and I had just almost given up. I didn't care anymore. I didn't know what to do. And then I had a pipe explode in the apartment that I was living in and it flooded everything, destroyed all my stuff, and I was sitting there with rangers standing in four inches of water and I was just looking around just like what's next, and I had a decision. You know, I could go and I could find another apartment, I could get more things and remain stuck where I had found myself in, but I felt something in me that that wanted more and I was over it.
Speaker 1:I was done with with living in this darkness and I decided that I was just going to do something big. I was like, screw it, I got to get out of this place that I'm in and I'm going to do something big. So I decided to take Ranger to every single one of the 63 US national parks and I decided that I was going to do it in under a year and at first it seemed impossible. I had people tell me that you know what are you thinking? That's impossible. You can't do that. There are places you're never going to get your dog to because of roadblocks and regulations, and places like Hawaii and logistics getting to the Arctic Circle in Alaska. And I didn't care. I had set a goal for myself and I was just going to do it.
Speaker 1:So I went back up to Colorado I was living in Texas at the time this happened and I went back up to home in Colorado, to this little small town that I had used to live in. You know, all my friends live there. It's the only place I've ever been able to call home and I sat down with a piece of paper and a map and I began trying to map out this trip that I was going to do. Which, side note, when you do something like this, you have to take all your planning and just toss it out the window, because the road is a living moving, always changing thing. Road is a living moving, always changing thing, and life has a way of throwing you off course, and it has a little smile because it has plans for you that you may not see at the beginning. It's really interesting to see.
Speaker 1:So throw those plans out the window, because you are at the mercy of the road and the first thing that happened that is an example of that is as I was sitting down and trying to plan all this out, a woman walked into my life. I was outside walking down the street with Ranger and she walked up and she said I love your dog. And she walked up and she said I love your dog and I just love him and I want to see him again. So here's my phone number and when can I see your dog again? So I called her back, you know, the next day I said my dog wants to see you as well, and why don't you come meet up as well? And why don't you come meet up? So we met up and I explained to her what I was doing and she had kind of just had the same kind of situation happen in her life.
Speaker 1:She sat down with me and, you know, kind of started talking about what is the, what is the true purpose of what you're doing? How you know, are you just running off on some grand adventure, or is there something that you can do to take this and change it into something once again bigger and maybe make impacts on other people's lives? And I said you know what You're right, so let's brand this, let's make it a thing. And she sat down with me and literally sketched out the original logo for Changing Roads, helped me come up with the name Changing Roads and we started not just putting together a plan for this giant adventure, but giant adventure. But you know what Changing Roads was going to be and I realized that, with a person with a disability and having a service animal, I had the opportunity to spread awareness regarding accessibility in national parks for people with disabilities, seen and unseen, and people with service animals and maybe affect some change in the national park system and make it easier for that to happen with people with disabilities and also spread the message to other people with disabilities that they don't have to be trapped in their disability and they have the message to other people with disabilities that they don't have to be trapped in their disability and they have the opportunity to get out into the world and do big things and experience it and hopefully inspire them to actually take that step out their door with that small seed planted in my mind and Changing Roads being formed that it was about to turn into something bigger than I could have imagined. And this woman her name is Haley Noble an equal in the founding of it, in creation of it and at the very core of Changing Roads After only a few days of knowing each other, decided to jump in my passenger seat, give up her current life, throw all the possessions that she had into a dumpster, down to what fit in the back of my Explorer, and go on this journey with me with the exact same vision in mind that I had.
Speaker 1:And off we went, and not just checking off boxes of national parks we went to, but enjoying them, exploring them, talking to people while we're there, explaining what we were doing, talking to the park rangers and letting them know what we were doing and it's seeing, discussing with them how, you know different ways that maybe we could make things more accessible for people with disabilities, whether that be, you know, ramps for people with wheelchairs, or maybe you know situations where people with autism are visiting the national parks and you know how can we, you know, allow them to experience them too? Is there. You know things that they can pick up and feel and touch in the visitor center and all these things with all these types of disabilities, and you know how how can we make it possible for everybody to enjoy these national parks? Because that's why they're there they're for everybody, even people with disabilities. So we, we started hitting these national parks, and not just that, but all these places along the way and talking to people along the way.
Speaker 1:You know about what we were doing, hearing their stories, and you know, hearing all these people's stories on the road, hundreds of people, a lot of them who I am still in contact with and our friends. That stuck with me in the back of my mind and it was starting to become a very, very special thing is that interaction with others. Because, you know, once we started telling our story, they wanted to tell their story, and it was a very beautiful thing to happen because we were inspiring people to say these things about their lives that they may have never spoken about before and share these stories that, had they not shared, you know, would have never gotten out into the world. And I like to say that if your story is not told, then it dies with you and that stuck with me and it was a seed that got planted, that slowly started growing over time and I realized more and more how important it was. So, off on the road, we're talking to all these people, we're trying to affect this change and you know, I I think that we were making change, we were opening people's minds to this issue and these possibilities and you know, hayley did almost half of the national parks and this journey with me and then she had to leave for her own personal reasons and it was a that was a hit that I had to take and I I almost canceled the whole thing because it felt like it wasn't the same without Haley.
Speaker 1:Um, she was, she was core, she was part of it. She was, she was core, she was part of it. And you know it, it took Ranger and I almost dying um on Isle Royale and Lake Superior, um from hypothermia because of unforeseen weather circumstances, to um be humble enough to reflect in that situation about why, uh, we were doing it in the first place, and it gave me the strength to continue on, and so we did. The National Park Service at some point caught wind of what we were doing and got into contact with me, working directly with the national parks and giving them our feedback and stories, to the point where Ranger and I ended up at the Department of Interior in Washington DC, which is pretty cool for a dog to be inside the Department of Interior on an official business. So we continued our journey and, with the support and help of my family, we were able to address the roadblocks, like getting Ranger to Hawaii, for example, where there's a six-month quarantine period, and to allow him to bypass that stacks of paperwork, many vet visits, and to get him down to American Samoa, which is below the equator, and then to get him up to Alaska and to get him up to the Arctic Circle, up to the Arctic Circle. It was just an amazing, amazing adventure and I think that we made really big impacts on the national park system and that mission of ours. It was a very special thing and we ended in Yellowstone. It was Ranger's last park. He shook the hand of a park ranger, gained the world record for the first and only dog to go to every national park, and then we got home and it was kind of over and I was kind of sitting around and I couldn't sit.
Speaker 1:Still, I still had these things I wanted to say. I still wanted to help people. It had lit a fire in me and I wasn't done. It had changed me and I wanted to continue to change people's lives and spread these messages and I really didn't know how to do that. Yet we had done some podcasts with the National Park Service, a podcast called National Park After Dark. We were featured in Outside Magazine, some local news agencies, to get our story out, but, like I said, it just wasn't enough and I think we had affected change regarding the message that we were trying to share with people with disabilities and the national parks and accessibility.
Speaker 1:And it is like what's next? And a lot of people told me maybe you should write a book. And so I tried that. I attempted it and I realized that that whole thing that we had just done was just a chapter in the book of my life and there was no way to to write a book about it without it just becoming something like telling tales of our adventures. There was not the impact in that that I wanted to to make, in that that I wanted to make. So, sitting around, I had grown deeply on this journey and a lot of things that I had been wanting to say my whole life started really coming together and forming into a new idea, something even larger. I wanted to go out and spread another message that I had, that was rooted in my core since I was very young and through my entire experience traveling the country and the world, which is what I've spent my life doing, it's what I love the most. And I'll just stop here real quick, because I'd like to briefly express to you what that message is, and I know if you're an avid listener to this podcast, you've probably heard me say it a dozen times, but I'm just going to say it again because it is the core concept of this podcast and everything that it's about.
Speaker 1:So not only are our roads always changing, but our roads change us. They're not mere pathways, they're the architects of our existence. They lead us to crossroads where choices echo through our lives, shaping who we are and what we aspire to become. Sometimes, the road ahead unveils itself an unwavering certainty guiding our steps. Other times, it's an uncharted trail beckoning us to forge our own path. Yet within this dance of certainty and uncertainty lies our own power the power to choose which roads we traverse, how we journey upon them and why I'm just racking my brain and I start reflecting on all of my experiences and all of my travels and my life and my experiences from what I had from people along the way and how profound they were, and just some of those stories. They might not seem major to the people that have to share them, um, but they're all important and they are all impactful.
Speaker 1:And it dawned on me that I could do a podcast and allow people to tell these stories, and I knew that the message that I was trying to get out would immediately and naturally come across through these people's stories and through these um I don't like calling them interviews these conversations that I had with people on these episodes. So I I was like I'm gonna do a podcast. And it was October, something beginning of October last, or in 2023. And I said I'm going to make a podcast, the Changing Road podcast, and I am going to launch it on January 1st of 2024. And I didn't know a single thing about podcasting. I didn't know the gear, I didn't know the software, I knew absolutely nothing. But I set this goal for myself and for Changing Roads and I was determined to accomplish that January 1st date. So I learned from the ground up, uh, everything about podcasting.
Speaker 1:Um, I had a lot of people tell me once again that it was uh impossible or unlikely that I would be able to to teach me all these, teach myself all of these things and have that launched in two and a half months. Um, I hadn't even found my own voice yet. I was uncomfortable talking to myself. I didn't know how to talk to myself. Um, it took me a month and hundreds of takes to uh record the trailer that I did, and it was just so uncomfortable being with myself. And you know, once, once it hit, it hit and it was a big change in my life to be able to speak with myself and be with myself. And it was at that point that I knew that I would be able to speak with myself and be with myself, and it was at that point that I knew that I would be able to speak with other people. So I did it. I built a podcast in two and a half months and launched on January 1st of 2024. And now here we are, january First 2025, one year exactly.
Speaker 1:And this podcast has been so successful, so amazing, and the people that I have had on have told stories that have just been profoundly impactful in my own life and it has truly changed my life, my perspective on a lot and I've learned so much and I've grown as a person through doing this podcast and speaking with these people and it's amazing to see how much it has impacted my guests as well. See how much it has impacted my guests as well. Giving someone the opportunity to tell their story is a big thing. To give someone a platform. You can hear it in their voice. I've had the feedback from them afterwards and it's such a freeing experience to be able to tell a story that you may never have been able to tell before. It's so special to me to know that just giving someone that experience has made impacts on them and helped them learn about themselves. And it's amazing and special and an honor to be able to have that message that I have to give come into focus and really start sinking in and making more and more sense in ways that I didn't understand at first. And it's an honor and it's a very special thing to me and my guests that we've been able to share that with you, our listeners, through their voices and their stories.
Speaker 1:And you know, I truly hope that this podcast has touched people's lives and made people think and re-examine themselves or just learn things about themselves, maybe inspire them to get out into the world and find their own stories. And I know that. I know that's happened because I have gotten some really really incredible emails from people that have just touched my heart. Some have left me in tears and you know they've just said how much you know my guest's stories and what they have to say. In this podcast has, you know, done things in their life that are really, really neat. So that is how Changing Roads came to be, and I couldn't ask for anything more in the world. Just reaching one person, making one little difference. It makes all of this worth it, all of the work, everything that I've put into it, it makes it 100% worth it. Mission accomplished, and I hope that it continues to do that and touch and reach more and more people.
Speaker 1:So now you have the backstory, and I've never really told the whole story before because, like I said, my intention was to naturally have that message come out through other people, and so I've tried not to to focus on my story or tell my story, but I've uh, after one year, on the anniversary, I felt like you guys should, should know a little bit of the background about me and why changing roads is changing roads. So, now that I've done that, let's uh, let's move a little bit on, because we are celebrating once again this one year anniversary, and it's such a big thing and it's been incredibly successful, and I would like to share just a few statistics with you guys, and this isn't me, this is all of you. You guys have made this possible, my listeners, along with my guests and some of the behind the scenes people, but this is all you. So here's some fun stats Changing Roads in the past year. Changing roads in the past year is now in six continents North America, south America, africa, europe, asia, oceania six continents, and I'm working on Antarctica. I think we'll get there at some point.
Speaker 1:Um, we have reached 33 countries and I'm just going to read them off to you because I think it's pretty cool. Um, this podcast is in the United States, russia, israel, spain, new Zealand, Canada, germany, japan, mexico, south Korea, the UK, the Netherlands, ukraine, australia, the seashells, italy, sweden, uganda, brazil, france, guam, romania, the Philippines, thailand, india, bulgaria, pakistan, saudi Arabia, china, azerbaijan, turkey, united Arab Emirates and Ireland. And that is all you guys, it's so neat that this has reached that far around the world. I would have never imagined that that would have happened and it's just. It blows my mind and it's all of you guys. Thank you so much for making this podcast what it is and listening and sharing it, and it's just an incredibly special thing.
Speaker 1:Six continents, 33 countries this is absolutely amazing to me and I need to give some well-deserved acknowledgements to some people because without them this would not have been possible. So I have to give a shout out to Ashlyn and Kira, my daughters episode one, and they were also guest hosts on an episode. My other guests Peyton Nixon, james Wilder, adam Smith, shelley Johnson, steve Williams, nikki Wright, ben Jarvis, grayson McGee, my father, dad Alan Martell, bruce Edmonds, dustin Tidwell, christine Evans, bo Keely, paige and Torrin of the Walking American Couple, jade the Dog, david Sowers and Laura Gillis. Thank you all my guests that have been on this year. Um, your stories have been amazing and they're all over the world and they're changing people's lives. Um, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Um, I also need to thank some of the people that have made this possible and have done things behind the scene. Uh, I would like to thank my younger brother, andrew, but he has done, uh, the graphic design for Changing Roads. He's built the new logo, he's built the website and he also did the theme music that you hear at the beginning and end of these episodes. He's done such a wonderful job. I'm so lucky to have him on board. I also have to thank my father. He provided and helped with the gear and the software and the hosting platforms for this podcast. Without him and all this these fun microphones and audio interfaces and headphones and software obviously wouldn't be possible. So thank you, dad, for um supporting me there.
Speaker 1:I would like to thank all of the people that served as sounding boards for these episodes, uh, before they were released, and their wonderful feedback that they gave um and helping to to hone these episodes and and really get them to where they needed to be before I released them. Um. And now I have a really, really big shout out um that I need to give here, and it's it's to Haley Haley Noble, the co-creator, co-founder and core of Changing Roads. I this would not be Changing Roads, it wouldn't exist without you, haley, and I forever, forever, forever will appreciate everything you've done, and sharing this journey in this project and changing roads with you has been a treat. The changing roads wouldn't exist without you. So so thank you, haley, and I wouldn't want to adventure with anybody else in the world if I had a choice. Speaking of Haley, haley has a message for you guys that she sent me, so I'm going to play that right now. Message for you guys that she sent me, so I'm gonna play that right now.
Speaker 1:Happy new year's changing roads family. It's hayley, from the pacific northwest, wishing you all a wonderful 2025. Hope to see you on the trails. Thank you, hayley. Happy new co-host next year. Um, yeah, I don't know, you guys might be in for a special treat.
Speaker 1:And finally, I would like to thank my wonderful, wonderful, wonderful co-host, the most important thing in my life besides my daughters. My co-host, my loyal travel companion and service dog, Ranger, the world famous, world record holding first dog to go to every national park and probably first dog podcasting co-host I. There would be none of this, none of this, none of this would exist without ranger. He is the, the center, the very core. He is everything that changing roads embodies, and I hope that we can all be more like ranger and I think the world would be a better place. Just love, be loyal, just be good to people, be a good person, be good dope. So, thank you, ranger. He will continue as the co-host on the show until the show no longer exists, which hopefully will not be anytime soon. So, once again, happy New Year's to all our listeners.
Speaker 1:2025 is going to be a great year. This podcast is going to continue to grow and I'm going to grow with it, and I'm just going to keep coming up with new ideas and I'm just going to put everything into creating a better and better podcast for you guys, and I can't wait to to see what this turns into. And, once again, uh, this wouldn't exist without you, my listeners. So, thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Um, if you want to do us a solid, go leave us a review or, uh, leave a rating for us. That helps us a lot. And, uh, feel free to shoot me an email about anything you want to talk about feedback, ideas for people that you think could be on the show, anything.
Speaker 1:If you just want to say hi or tell me you like my dog Granger, it is changingroadspodcasts at gmailcom. You can find us at wwwchangingroadscom. That website will continue to grow. The links to our Spotify and Apple Podcasts are on there. Just click them. It'll take you right to it and once again, we're on Spotify. Apple Podcasts, apple Music, amazon Music all kinds of fun things. Twitter, instagram, look us up, changing Roads Podcast. Happy New Year's, guys. Thank you so much and I can't wait to share 2025 with you, guys. Bye.