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Exploring National Parks and All 50 States with Matt Tory · Travel Mug Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey everyone and welcome back to the Travel Mug Podcast.
• 0:03
  We are so excited this week to be joined by Matt Tory.
• 0:06
  So Matt is a writer and a filmmaker based in California, and he has recently released a book called Go See America chronicling his adventures, visiting all 50 states and every national park in the United States in the contiguous United States.
• 0:21
  Before writing the book, Matt has written and directed a wide range of films and streaming series, including the Comedy series, the Beech Boys, as well as the Mockumentary.
• 0:31
  We Make which was called one of the Best Films of the Year by Cinescape Magazine.
• 0:36
  Matt, we are so happy to have you on the podcast.
• 0:38
  Welcome.
• 0:40
  It's great to be here.
• 0:41
  Excellent.
• 0:42
  So I wanna, I like to sort of go back a little bit before we get to the, the present time.
• 0:47
  But you grew up in Sacramento, California area.
• 0:51
  We'd love to hear about your time growing up there and do you feel that this influenced at all sort of the path you have taken as a writer or director?
• 1:01
  Sure.
• 1:01
  I mean, uh, I'm assuming you guys have not been there, right?
• 1:04
  Have you been to Sacramento or no?
• 1:05
  No.
• 1:06
  most, yeah.
• 1:06
  There wouldn't be a reason for you to go there?
• 1:08
  Probably, but, uh, no.
• 1:10
  But I love Sacramento.
• 1:11
  , It's kind of a city that gets overlooked in a lot of ways by all the other cities in California and everything, but it is the capital, so.
• 1:18
  We have that, but I love it.
• 1:20
  It's kind of right in the middle of all the different terrains.
• 1:23
  About an hour this way.
• 1:24
  You've got the mountains and Lake Tahoe and all that.
• 1:27
  Uh, hour or so, the other way, you've got the Bay Area, San Francisco, the beach, it's called the city of Trees.
• 1:33
  'cause I think it has like the most trees per capita of any city in the world or something like that.
• 1:39
  Um, it's, it's nice because we still get like four seasons where, you know, most people think of California as summer all day, all year, but we do have that a lot.
• 1:51
  We don't get snow most of the time in Sacramento.
• 1:53
  We may have gotten it once or twice here or there, but it's still like, we get really cold in the winter and really hot in the summer.
• 2:00
  So it's nice to have that variety.
• 2:02
  , But yeah, I, I love it.
• 2:04
  And as for, did it influence me?
• 2:08
  And where I went, I don't know really.
• 2:10
  I mean, I still have all my family and friends there and stuff.
• 2:13
  So I actually lived down in LA for about nine years and I moved back up to Sacramento a couple years ago, just 'cause I wanted to be closer to family and stuff like that.
• 2:23
  So I kind of split time.
• 2:24
  I go back and forth every now and then I go back down to LA for film projects and stuff like that.
• 2:30
  But it's, it's definitely a different pace than somewhere like LA.
• 2:34
  So, yeah, I, I enjoy it.
• 2:36
  I don't know if that answers your question.
• 2:40
  Yeah, I mean, that sounds really cool.
• 2:41
  And I hadn't really, I don't think I've ever talked to anyone who grew up or lived in Sacramento.
• 2:46
  So it is interesting that it does get overlooked It's kind of a, it's a really historic area.
• 2:52
  Like it was really big in, in the mid 18 hundreds.
• 2:54
  It's like right where the gold rush started, all that kind of stuff.
• 2:58
  Yeah.
• 2:58
  Yeah, that's super interesting and definitely sounds like, like I want, now I wanna go to Sacramento, so I guess I'll I mean, there's, there's stuff to do.
• 3:05
  Yeah.
• 3:06
  It's just, it's not usually people's top of priority when you're talking about California and you got San Francisco, la, San Diego, Yosemite, all this other stuff, so, See those, those are the places I've been is San Francisco.
• 3:18
  I've been to LA and I've been to San Diego, so you're exactly right.
• 3:21
  Those, yeah.
• 3:22
  those are definitely the hot spots for sure.
• 3:24
  Yeah.
• 3:25
  Yeah.
• 3:25
  Yeah.
• 3:26
  Do you have a favorite thing about growing up in Northern California?
• 3:30
  Well, my favorite place in the world probably is Yosemite.
• 3:33
  So the fact that we were so close to there was an advantage.
• 3:37
  We would go there all the time.
• 3:38
  I've probably been to Yosemite over a hundred times just because that was kind of the thing where we would always go on family trips or like with family friends, we'd go for a week camping just was like part of our lives.
• 3:50
  So I loved it.
• 3:51
  I kind of was spoiled in a lot of ways'cause that was kind of like the first.
• 3:55
  Like camping experiences I had, and it's like the most amazing place.
• 3:59
  So other places don't really stack up in some ways, but Yeah, I can see that.
• 4:04
  I remember saying after, uh, we've been to Iceland a couple times and we've seen the waterfalls there, and now every yeah.
• 4:10
  I'm like, eh, Yeah.
• 4:11
  it's okay Yeah.
• 4:12
  Yeah.
• 4:13
  So I totally get that.
• 4:14
  That would be an amazing first uh, camping adventure remember going camping other places, and it's just like you're in the woods and it's still pretty or whatever, but it's like, well, where's all the stuff?
• 4:22
  Where's the big waterfalls?
• 4:23
  Where's the, where's the thousand foot Cliffs?
• 4:25
  People are climbing, you know?
• 4:26
  Right.
• 4:27
  Exactly.
• 4:28
  Exactly.
• 4:29
  Well, we do definitely want to talk about your book, but you've also worked on some other Sure.
• 4:34
  projects that we don't wanna overlook.
• 4:36
  Um, we have watched some of the Beech Boys, so I'd love, and that's Beech.
• 4:40
  B-E-E-C-H.
• 4:41
  Uh, so I'd love for you to talk about the inspiration for that show, your main characters, Trey and Ethan.
• 4:47
  They're some, they're interesting fellers.
• 4:49
  Um, so how did all of that come about?
• 4:51
  Talk to us about that project.
• 4:53
  Okay, well you guys did your research, you watched some of it.
• 4:55
  That's funny.
• 4:56
  Uh uh, yeah, basically, um, long story short, , one of my best friends, his name is JJ Carroll.
• 5:02
  I do pretty much everything film related with him these days.
• 5:05
  We do a lot of stuff together, but we had, we've probably been writing partners for about a decade now, right after we graduated from film school together and we were writing a bunch of stuff, like we sold a screenplay to, uh, a company that never got made.
• 5:22
  We were kind of writing some things for different people and nothing was ever going anywhere.
• 5:25
  So we're like, we need, well, let's just make something ourselves.
• 5:29
  , So I had done some directing and some things before that, but this was a bigger scale thing, so we kind of got probably a couple dozen or so people from our film school altogether.
• 5:40
  It a huge collective thing where a lot of people got together and just volunteered time to make this show together, and it's really fun because basically, I mean, there's a lot of shows out there.
• 5:51
  I don't know if, you know, I've had, we've had a lot of people say very nice things about it, how funny it is and stuff.
• 5:57
  But you know, it's definitely a smaller scale, lower budget show.
• 6:01
  But I don't think that, uh, I've ever seen anything that could compare to it for us basically making it for nothing.
• 6:10
  So the fact that we made like a, a three season show over five years and basically completely, except for a few actors that we kind of got that were name actors, uh, pretty much everyone worked on it for free.
• 6:23
  The fact that we were able to accomplish that I, something I'm very proud of and I'm, I think is very cool.
• 6:29
  So, um, but yeah, it's a very funny show.
• 6:32
  It, we, we did three seasons of it.
• 6:34
  It's about 30 episodes and the episodes range from about two minutes, some episodes to 30 minutes, some episodes.
• 6:41
  So, uh, the kind of the goal with it was for every episode to feel different.
• 6:46
  So when you turn on an episode of the Beech Boys, you would not know what it is.
• 6:50
  Sometime it's like a, uh, you know, a film noir parody.
• 6:54
  Sometime it's a. And I don't even know.
• 6:58
  There's basically every, just every episode's, different sci-fi, a romantic comedy, we wanted every episode to kind of feel like a different thing.
• 7:05
  So, uh, it's, yeah, it's still probably the thing I'm the most proudest of.
• 7:11
  Yeah, it was super fun to watch.
• 7:13
  so let's, uh, chat about, we make movies, which is Sure, length film that you co-star in and directed.
• 7:20
  It's got some great recognition as well.
• 7:22
  So talk to us what it was like juggling, , directing and acting in this So I basically, my, my main passion is I write and direct.
• 7:32
  I will act sometimes in things just because it's fun or whatever, but it's not really the thing that I think is like my main strength or what I wanna spend most of my time doing.
• 7:41
  But I will do it here and there.
• 7:43
  Uh, but this was a movie basically that was inspired by my whole childhood of making movies with my friends in the backyard growing up and all that kind of stuff.
• 7:52
  So I had a very specific idea of what I wanted the main character to be kind of a. Kind of basically me without any of the good qualities.
• 8:02
  Uh, kind of the, like a very, you know, controlling director who was trying to do this thing with, with no resources or anything who kind of screws everyone over to get what he wants to do.
• 8:14
  But, um, so yeah, I had kind of a very specific thing that I thought I could pull off.
• 8:20
  And I did it, and I think people said I did okay in it, but , I definitely like being behind the camera more than in front of it.
• 8:27
  I'll do it, like I said, but, it's hard because when, when I'm in a scene acting and I'm still directing, I, it's hard because I feel like my mind is halfway between the two where i'm thinking, oh, is this, are we getting the coverage we need here?
• 8:44
  Is this person's performance matching the scene that came before this?
• 8:47
  That kind of stuff where if you're a good actor, you're able to basically just lose yourself in the scene and be that character.
• 8:54
  And I don't think I've ever really been able to do that, a good job of that.
• 8:57
  But,, it's interesting.
• 8:58
  I, I do try to challenge myself and, and act in some stuff every now and then that I'm directing.
• 9:04
  I prefer to be behind the scenes.
• 9:06
  Yeah.
• 9:07
  Because it's, it makes my job easier as a director, I think.
• 9:10
  Yeah.
• 9:11
  Hard to direct yourself, like Yeah.
• 9:13
  while you're filming.
• 9:14
  Yeah.
• 9:15
  Now you mentioned going to film school, so did you have any like director inspiration growing up that sort of made you wanna go down this path?
• 9:25
  Well, my, my favorite director is like the cliche answer that everyone would think of when you think of a director is Steven Spielberg.
• 9:33
  But it's just because he's just the master of what I would want to be of he's able to attempt anything and pull it off.
• 9:41
  He can do drama, comedy, sci-Fi fantasy.
• 9:45
  He's done basically every kind of movie you can think of.
• 9:48
  The fact that he did Schindler's List in Jurassic Park the same year is crazy.
• 9:53
  That like, whereas, you know, Christopher Nolan, someone like that, that's a great director, but every one of his movies feels the same.
• 10:01
  And I love his movies.
• 10:02
  But you know, I think a strength of someone like Steven Spielberg is the fact that he makes movies that are so wildly different and yet they are still some of the best movies in those respective genres, even though they're so different from each other.
• 10:16
  Yeah, definitely.
• 10:17
  That's a really great point.
• 10:18
  Um, I'm a huge Colombo fan.
• 10:20
  There's, he, he directs an early Yeah.
• 10:22
  of Colombo.
• 10:23
  I believe, I could be wrong.
• 10:25
  I think he directed the first episode.
• 10:27
  Yeah, it might very well might have been.
• 10:29
  Yes.
• 10:30
  And Yeah.
• 10:31
  uh, we, we, we, we watch Colombo a lot in this household.
• 10:34
  Okay.
• 10:35
  Yeah.
• 10:37
  so your book, go See America was released in May of 2025.
• 10:41
  So first and foremost, congratulations.
• 10:43
  That's a huge deal.
• 10:43
  Thank you.
• 10:44
  You've had some great reviews.
• 10:45
  You've currently got a 4.9 on Amazon, so you are off to a great start.
• 10:51
  Love to understand for sure.
• 10:53
  Um, how long did it take for you to visit all 50 states and national parks?
• 10:58
  Has it been a lifelong journey?
• 11:00
  Has it been something you really focused on?
• 11:02
  And walk us through that journey a bit and like, why was this a goal for you?
• 11:06
  Or did it not even start off that way, but turned out that way?
• 11:09
  Sure.
• 11:09
  It's kind of a, a mix of everything.
• 11:11
  So Yeah.
• 11:12
  been a lifelong journey of, the story kind of starts when I was seven years old.
• 11:19
  My dad had a basically what they call a sabbatical from work where he basically, after a long time of work, they said, Hey, you can take a long time off, but you still get paid.
• 11:27
  So he had like two or three months off and he was like, Hey, well let's go on a road trip around the country.
• 11:33
  He pulled me outta school.
• 11:34
  I did schoolwork on the road for two or three months, and all my classmates were jealous of always asking where I was and stuff.
• 11:41
  I was writing letters to the teacher every week or whatever, but basically for two or three months as a 7-year-old.
• 11:48
  I was driving around the country with my parents seeing all this stuff, and my dad hit his 50th state on that trip, and I was like, whoa, you, you've been to all 50 states.
• 11:57
  Wow.
• 11:57
  And, and I was like, can I do that someday?
• 11:59
  And he said, sure.
• 12:00
  Yeah.
• 12:00
  We'll, we'll make sure that you have been to all 50 before you graduate high school.
• 12:05
  So on that trip, I think we hit over 30 states.
• 12:09
  Then over the course of the rest of my childhood teenage years, we, we went to the other ones.
• 12:15
  So when I was 17, we basically made a special trip just to Nebraska because I had never been to Nebraska.
• 12:23
  So it was kind of a, I mean, nothing against Nebraska, but it was an anti-climactic way to end it because we, we went into Colorado.
• 12:32
  And, uh, so basically Colorado and Nebraska were the two left that I hadn't gone to.
• 12:37
  So we went into Colorado and spent some time there, and then we drove out to the border of Nebraska.
• 12:43
  We had kind of made some signs.
• 12:45
  We, we decorated our RV and stuff just to take pictures there to say, Hey, we've been to all 50 states.
• 12:50
  And, , you know, when we got to the border in most places in Nebraska, there's nothing there.
• 12:55
  So we, we got to the border, took some pictures, and I was like, well, I gotta do something in Nebraska.
• 13:01
  It's my 50th state.
• 13:02
  So we looked at the map and like the closest city was like 20 miles away.
• 13:06
  So we drove in and it literally was like two people's houses across from each other and a windmill.
• 13:13
  And so I took a picture and then we drove back.
• 13:16
  But I've been back to Nebraska since, there's some nice things to see in Nebraska, but it was a funny, uh, way to end it.
• 13:23
  So yeah, so I had been to all 50 at that point, and then actually more in recent years.
• 13:28
  I've always loved traveling and stuff, but I would say in the last five to 10 years I really got even more to it into it because I have a couple friends that I've done some like yearly road trips with.
• 13:41
  And we've gone to all these places and I had made a goal to go to all the national parks, and I still haven't been to some of them in Alaska.
• 13:48
  They're pretty hard to get to and I figure, you know, I'll get to 'em someday.
• 13:52
  But they're pretty, uh, they're pretty remote.
• 13:55
  You can't even drive into 'em All right.
• 13:58
  most casual people are not gonna go there.
• 14:02
  Uh, so I do wanna go there someday, but.
• 14:05
  It's a pretty pricey to get there as well, from what I understand.
• 14:08
  So you kind of have to build up to that.
• 14:10
  But at least in the contiguous 48 United States of the, uh, main continental United States, uh, I've been to all of them now.
• 14:19
  I hit the last one in 2023, which was, uh, Isle Royale, if you've ever heard of that.
• 14:24
  It's an island in Michigan and it's its own national park.
• 14:28
  It's very interesting.
• 14:29
  But it's one that's pretty, I think it's outside of Alaska.
• 14:33
  It's the least visited one 'cause it's pretty hard to get to.
• 14:36
  You take like a five hour ferry to get to it.
• 14:38
  I had made that goal and I was on a road trip with a friend to do that, and we went to the last couple that I hadn't been to.
• 14:45
  So , I had always had this idea to write a book because I feel very fortunate and lucky that I've been able to see all these places and, and go all these places and see these things.
• 14:55
  Uh, so a lot of people will always ask me like.
• 14:58
  , We're going X, Y, Z or we're going here, what should we do?
• 15:01
  I kind of get those questions all the time because people know that I've been all these places and so I've always thought, you know, I just need to write all this down.
• 15:09
  All kind of my suggestions of off the, off the road things you should do in between these places or that kind of stuff.
• 15:16
  So I spent a couple years writing down notes, basically of all the things that I've done going through all my pictures that I've taken over the last decade or so.
• 15:26
  Um, the book is full of all my photographs as well.
• 15:30
  , So basically, , the, the main impetus for it was the fact that I kind of just wanted to share all the stuff that I have seen and all of my wisdom, if you wanna call it that, of these places I've, I've experienced, and you know, the filmmaking thing, that's my main thing.
• 15:47
  That's my.
• 15:48
  Main daily job, if you wanna call that.
• 15:50
  But this is, I see it more as kind of a one-off thing.
• 15:53
  I don't know, maybe some other books will come, but, uh, it's mainly just as a labor of love, kind of wanting to share it with the world you see a lot of bucket list books where they, they'll say like, here's a hundred places in the US you need to see, or whatever.
• 16:12
  If you actually look in them, they're all written by different people or they kind of just feel like an encyclopedia of each location.
• 16:20
  And I had never really seen a book where it was like, Hey, here's one person's perspective of all these different places.
• 16:27
  Uh, so I kind wanted to do that since I had never seen that.
• 16:30
  So, basically it's just kind of a short introduction.
• 16:34
  To all of these places that I think are worth seeing from the perspective of someone who basically says, Hey, I've been very fortunate to see basically every corner of the United States that most people would wanna see, and I think that these are the places worth seeing now that I've seen all this stuff.
• 16:52
  So, Yeah, I think that's really interesting because of course a lot of those lists are written by people who haven't seen it all, and so yeah.
• 17:01
  this is the most amazing place.
• 17:03
  This is the number one place you should visit.
• 17:05
  And this goes for any list.
• 17:07
  But you know, of course, and no person can see absolutely Yeah, obviously.
• 17:11
  there's still places I would like to see, but I feel like 99% of the time when someone asks me about like a landmark or a tourist place, I've probably seen it in the United States.
• 17:22
  So that's kind of where I felt like I, I had the ability to write it Now.
• 17:26
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:27
  Yeah, and I think that perspective too is what makes this different from other travel guides, which is also what a lot of your reviews have said is it's not your typical, you know, travel guide that says, like Jenn was saying, you should see all these top places, but it's just what's written.
• 17:43
  You could find that on the internet, you could find that whatever, but I think a first person perspective makes it more personal and makes the reader, and helps the reader understand, okay, well he's been there so I, I know what he's saying is something that I can trust and, and visit myself.
• 17:58
  Yeah, and I wanted it to be a good mix of like there's a lot of places you don't need to open my book to know that you should go see the Grand Canyon, you know what I mean?
• 18:08
  But, uh, I want it to be a good mix of iconic places and hopefully when you leap through it, there's some places you've never heard of before.
• 18:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:17
  Yeah.
• 18:17
  I think that really leads into my next question 'cause I wanna know, were there any locations that surprised you in any way when you visited?
• 18:25
  Um, I will say.
• 18:28
  I, I'll say, I'll, I'll throw out a couple states that I think most people do not think about when you think of tourism or whatever, but I was very surprised by when I visited them.
• 18:37
  Uh, the first is North Dakota and that's because there's a national park there called Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and that one is kind of, again, it's up there kind of, uh, at the top of the state and it's pretty hard to get to.
• 18:52
  You're not really gonna go through there unless you're specifically going to see that national Park.
• 18:57
  So I only went because I was on this goal to see all the national parks.
• 19:02
  It wasn't like, oh, I've always dreamed of going to Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
• 19:06
  But, uh, so I was on a road trip with one of my buddies and we, you know, it's kind of a five, five hour detour or so to get up there.
• 19:13
  And we went there and I was, I was blown away just by how beautiful it was.
• 19:19
  Basically it's like a mix of the Badlands, if you know that in South Dakota, kind of the very, uh, those very interesting Hoodoo rock features and stuff, but also with like a bunch of rolling hills.
• 19:32
  So just as far as you can see, they're just rolling Green Hills and they are also famous for all the wild horses.
• 19:39
  So you'll just see these, uh, we were there on a beautiful day and it was just like, as far as you can see, a beautiful sky with clouds and rolling hills and horses just roaming free.
• 19:49
  And there's, uh, you can go to these little, um, prairie dog towns where you can see 'em, and there's a bunch of bison and stuff.
• 19:55
  So it's kind of like, it felt a lot like one of the bigger national parks, like a Yellowstone or something.
• 20:01
  But with no one there, it was like we had the whole place to ourselves.
• 20:05
  So, uh, it was very unique and that's one I always will, will tell people.
• 20:09
  The other state I will mention is Wisconsin.
• 20:13
  Uh, there's a couple spots in Wisconsin that I think are very beautiful that people don't really hear about as well.
• 20:20
  And there's uh, an area there called Devil's Lake State Park, which is just a very beautiful lake surrounded by, uh, kind of mountains that you can hike around, as well as the Apostle Islands, which is at the top of the, of the state and it's right on.
• 20:34
  Um, I believe it's Lake Superior.
• 20:37
  Uh, I might get an angry comment if I forget which lake it is.
• 20:41
  But, uh, it's on Lake Superior, I believe, and it's like a, a mix of like 12 islands and you can kayak around them and there's a bunch of like cute little charming coastal towns up there.
• 20:51
  You don't really think of that kind of thing when you think of Wisconsin, so, Yeah, that's really interesting.
• 20:57
  Um, you're just saying that, and I'm reminded, so I haven't traveled a ton in the us.
• 21:03
  I have, you know, been to a lot of the major cities, but, , my favorite state is Minnesota, oh, it's beautiful.
• 21:09
  Yeah.
• 21:09
  which so beautiful.
• 21:11
  So my, my best friend used to live in, um, in Ontario and Canada, in Thunder Bay.
• 21:16
  Just quite close to the Minnesota border.
• 21:18
  And so we used to drive down and there's this little town called Grand Marais.
• 21:22
  I don't know if Yeah, yeah, been there.
• 21:24
  It's like one of my favorite places in the world.
• 21:26
  It's such a lovely town and I always love going there.
• 21:31
  yeah.
• 21:32
  of those spots that you don't hear a lot of people talk about.
• 21:34
  Real close to like the, did you see like the Pictured Rocks?
• 21:39
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah, pretty.
• 21:41
  yeah, for sure.
• 21:42
  Yeah.
• 21:43
  So you mentioned some, like, I think what you've just talked about might personally is like sort of some under visited spots or locations that people probably should go see that maybe they've never heard of.
• 21:52
  So I guess I'd like to flip the script.
• 21:55
  Um, and is there anything anywhere you visited National Park State, whatever the case might be, that you felt was overrated?
• 22:03
  So you got there and you're like, what was the hype ball about?
• 22:06
  I'm throwing this one as a curve ball.
• 22:08
  Sure.
• 22:09
  I mean, uh.
• 22:10
  I'd have to think about it.
• 22:12
  I will say though, that my, a lot of, you'll hear a lot of travel, like experts or whatever, I don't consider myself a travel expert, but you'll hear a lot of people talk about like, oh, get away from the tourist areas.
• 22:24
  You need to, get off the beaten path and stuff.
• 22:27
  And I, I agree with that a lot of times, but I think that the tourist places are tourist places for a reason generally.
• 22:34
  Yeah.
• 22:34
  And so you should at least see them once and experience in the experience them, you know, go to Times Square in New York City.
• 22:42
  It's chaos, it's whatever, but it's, it's that, it's famous for a reason.
• 22:46
  , So there's a lot of places like that that I might think are overrated, that are super famous, but I think they're still worth going to and seeing, um, the, the one that I might get hate for that I say sometimes when it comes to like a national park is the Grand Canyon that I think is, it's excellent, but it's always considered like the top one.
• 23:07
  And I don't think it's the best national Park in the United States.
• 23:10
  I would put it maybe in the top 10.
• 23:13
  But, uh, it's, it's basically, you see the canyon, you can walk down into it, but there's not much more to do there.
• 23:22
  Uh, whereas as more of the national parks, you can actually go on, see a lot more and explore more.
• 23:29
  So the Grand Canyon is amazing to look at, and when you see it, it's like, wow, a picture never could contain all this.
• 23:37
  But in terms of like actually going there for like a week and spending time there, I think it might be one of the more overrated ones, if I could say that.
• 23:46
  No, that's fair because I have been there and you're right, like it is, uh, what I call quote unquote holy shit moment.
• 23:51
  When you actually see it for yourself, you're like, I couldn't believe it was real, but Yeah.
• 23:56
  right.
• 23:56
  Like, unless you're gonna go through like the, the waterway through the canyon Yeah.
• 24:01
  or you're gonna do all the things.
• 24:04
  not, it's not untrue at all.
• 24:06
  So I guess then, and it might be impossible to pick a favorite spot, but are there any states or parks that you want to go back and experience again because maybe you didn't see enough, or do you have a favorite that you just know for sure you'd like to go back and see?
• 24:23
  Well, the place that I need to go back and explore more is Alaska.
• 24:26
  Like I said, there's just so much there that I haven't seen and done.
• 24:30
  , So I've been to Alaska a couple times on, you know, basically a cruise where you go up the inside passage and go to the towns along the coast of the southern alaska, but there's, there's, you know, Alaska is, I believe the size of half of the continental United States, so, or more, , so it's just so big and so vast that there's, you know, there's a lot of places you can't even take roads, so you gotta fly seaplanes across the state to, to experience different things.
• 25:00
  So I definitely want to go there that's at the top of my list to just invest some time to go there and see a lot more than I have.
• 25:09
  But in terms of places that I've been,, like I said, Yosemite is my favorite place in the whole world probably.
• 25:15
  So I could, I could be biased just'cause I had spent so much time there, but I always will go back there.
• 25:20
  I love the Southwest.
• 25:21
  The Southwest is probably my favorite region of the United States 'cause it's so chockfull of things to do.
• 25:28
  , The whole Moab area, arches, the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, uh, all of that stuff.
• 25:36
  And it's pretty self-contained in a short area where you can experience it all without having to drive a lot ways.
• 25:43
  , But yeah, I, I would go there 10 times and not be able to do everything.
• 25:48
  It's beautiful.
• 25:49
  Yeah, Zion and Bryce Canyon are definitely on my bucket list, so that is going to be, those are spots I definitely want to hit for sure.
• 25:56
  So And when you go there, you should look up the Grand Circle Road trip, what they call the Grand Circle Road Trip.
• 26:02
  Okay.
• 26:03
  And it's basically a road trip that covers Zion and Bryce Canyon, but also , six other national parks that are all on this loop.
• 26:11
  As well as like Monument Valley, which if you don't know what Monument Valley is, basically anytime you've seen a Western movie, they probably filmed it at Monument Valley.
• 26:21
  And like a bunch of state parks as well.
• 26:23
  It's just a, a really cool road trip.
• 26:26
  I will do that for sure.
• 26:27
  Awesome.
• 26:29
  Yeah.
• 26:29
  So what tips might you have for someone who wants to Yeah.
• 26:34
  all 50 states besides go back in time to when you're seven years old and have Yeah.
• 26:39
  on sabbatical?
• 26:40
  Yeah, Um, I mean the, the way, well, I, I was younger when I hit all 50 states.
• 26:47
  Most of them I've hit again since then just on different trips.
• 26:50
  But, yeah.
• 26:50
  Yep.
• 26:51
  I will say.
• 26:53
  A lot of times when I've gone on the, you know, road trips with my friends in the past decade or so, we kind of had a few spots that we wanted to hit.
• 27:01
  And so, uh, for me, one of the main goals was I wanted to hit different national parks.
• 27:06
  So if we were gonna be in a certain region, I would say, Hey, we gotta hit these three or four spots 'cause I need to see these national parks.
• 27:13
  But the way to do it probably is to, is to clump them together.
• 27:17
  , You know, try to figure out a region you wanna see or whatever, and kind of make a circle or something, or, or do something where you see a lot in that area and you can kind of, , check off big chunks at a time.
• 27:27
  Uh, don't, don't, you know, it's fun to say you've been to all 50, but if you're just driving through 20 or 30 of 'em, it's not really fun.
• 27:37
  So don't do it that way.
• 27:38
  It's not really worth the.
• 27:40
  At least try to have an experience or something in each state if you can.
• 27:45
  And I, I believe I've done that now with like Nebraska and all of them.
• 27:49
  But, um, there, it really is.
• 27:52
  It's cliche, but there is something worth seeing and doing in every state, I believe.
• 27:57
  Yeah, no, I'm sure.
• 27:58
  Yeah, I believe that about basically anywhere Yeah.
• 28:02
  there's something worth seeing and doing any, any town, anywhere.
• 28:05
  I believe that for sure.
• 28:07
  Yeah, I love that.
• 28:08
  So what do you want most people to learn about the United States, if anyone, uh, is listening from outside of the us Um, so what do, what do you kind of hope is the takeaway from sharing your, your insights and your photos, uh, in pouring your heart into the book about your home country?
• 28:25
  I think what my goal is with the book basically is just I want to show people that there's all this stuff that you can do and see that you may not even think about.
• 28:34
  You know, I, I would love for people outside of the United States to read it and, and get ideas for things they wanna see.
• 28:41
  But I also wrote it for people in the United States because you'd be surprised how many people I talk to who, like, for example, I live in, like I said, Sacramento, which is close to Yosemite.
• 28:51
  You'd be surprised how many people I talk to and they say, oh, I've never been there or something.
• 28:56
  And, and I talk to people all the time who have never seen this amazing thing that's like right close to where they live or whatever.
• 29:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:03
  what that was one of, basically my main goal in writing the book was I want to show people, Hey, all this stuff is right out in your backyard and wherever you are in the United States, hopefully when you open this book, there's something near you that you could drive to an hour or two away right now if you wanted to.
• 29:21
  Um, but in terms of people from outside the United States, I think there's a lot of beautiful countries in the, in the world, and I won't say like America's the best, but I do think that America, the United States is the most diverse.
• 29:36
  So you have the most, uh, variety of different locales and geography in the United States.
• 29:42
  That just doesn't compare to anywhere else I believe.
• 29:45
  Yeah, I, I wouldn't disagree with that at all.
• 29:47
  And lucky for you, the majority of our listeners are Americans, so you are gonna hit, you gonna hit target.
• 29:54
  Yeah.
• 29:55
  Yeah.
• 29:56
  I think something that Meggan and I talk about a lot, um, on our podcast is the fact that like, travel doesn't have to be a big international destination.
• 30:05
  It can literally be things that are a half an hour, an hour, two hours, three Yep.
• 30:10
  From where you live, and it doesn't have to be a week trip, it can be a day trip, it can be a weekend, it can be camping.
• 30:16
  There's travel doesn't have to be fitting in one box going away for a week to an international destination.
• 30:23
  And so I think you're exactly right that people need to look more of what's around them and experience the things that are close by.
• 30:30
  Yeah.
• 30:32
  I.
• 30:32
  Yeah.
• 30:32
  So to finish things off, where can folks grab your book?
• 30:37
  See your, uh, your, your series.
• 30:40
  So, uh, the Beech Boys for instance.
• 30:42
  Where can they learn more about your creative projects in general?
• 30:45
  Sure.
• 30:45
  So my book is on Amazon.
• 30:48
  You can get it as a paperback or as an ebook.
• 30:50
  The full title is Go See America: 118 of the USA's greatest hits according to a guy who visited them all.
• 30:58
  The full title is Go See America: It's kind of a, a hefty title, but, uh, I wanted to make sure people knew what the book was when they saw it.
• 31:04
  The full title is Go See America: It's on Amazon and like I said, it's kind of an introduction to, uh, as we're talking about 118 spots in America that I think are the most worth your time to see.
• 31:15
  The full title is Go See America: And, uh, it's kind of just a, a short introduction to each, with some funny stories or, or interesting facts that I believe that are the most interesting about the places.
• 31:25
  The full title is Go See America: And there's a lot of books out there about these places where you can learn a lot more information if you want to.
• 31:31
  The full title is Go See America: But , mine was just kind of a, Hey, I want to inspire you to go see these places.
• 31:36
  The full title is Go See America: So, uh, yeah, you can get on Amazon and then for the other stuff.
• 31:40
  The full title is Go See America: If you wanna follow me on Instagram, I guess my name is, uh, Matthew Tory, M-A-T-T-H-E-W-T-O-R-Y.
• 31:48
  The full title is Go See America: And I'll post a lot of stuff on there whenever I have different projects coming out, different uh, films or series or whatever.
• 31:55
  The full title is Go See America: So it's all on there.
• 31:57
  The full title is Go See America: And, uh, the show and the movie that you were talking about, we make movies and the Beech Boys are on Tubi, the, uh, the App Tubi, which is a free streaming app that has ads.
• 32:08
  The full title is Go See America: So it, that's pretty cool.
• 32:10
  The full title is Go See America: People can, can go watch it.
• 32:12
  The full title is Go See America: Yeah, we, I was surprised I was able to like see it from Canada.
• 32:15
  The full title is Go See America: Oftentimes we don't Yeah.
• 32:16
  The full title is Go See America: to watch all that stuff, so I was pretty excited.
• 32:18
  The full title is Go See America: So that's excellent.
• 32:20
  The full title is Go See America: Yeah.
• 32:21
  The full title is Go See America: Thank you so much, uh, for joining us to chat today, Matt.
• 32:24
  The full title is Go See America: It was, really fun.
• 32:25
  The full title is Go See America: So I'll put a link to all of Matt's projects in the podcast show notes, uh, which is also where you'll find our resources and links to our social media channels.
• 32:35
  The full title is Go See America: So we'd love it if you left us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
• 32:40
  The full title is Go See America: If you supported the show through, buy me a Coffee or Share the show with a Travel loving pal.
• 32:45
  The full title is Go See America: And until next time, bye everyone.
• 32:48
  The full title is Go See America: Bye!