Forged By Miles

🍂🔥 **ONE BY ONE, THE LIGHTS ARE GOING OUT ON ANOTHER CAMPING SEASON.** 🔥🍂

It's funny how quickly a place can change.

A few months ago, we were getting everything ready for another busy summer. Setting things up, preparing for events, getting the campground ready for hundreds of families to come make memories.

Now?

**We're taking it all back down.**

Today's adventures included taking down and putting away the movie screens, including the outdoor screen that Mother Nature apparently decided to help dismantle with a little wind. 🤣💨

Then it was on to the back pavilion.

Securing the flaps, closing everything up, and getting another piece of the campground ready for the long Wisconsin winter.

It's not exactly glamorous work.

No big crowds. No music. No movies playing. No kids running around enjoying the activities.

Just tools, ladders, equipment, and the sound of another season slowly coming to a close.

But here's something I've learned over the years...

**Everybody sees the finished product. Not everybody sees what it takes to make it happen.**

They see the events, the entertainment, the activities, and the memories.

They don't always see the hundreds of hours spent setting everything up, maintaining it, repairing it, cleaning it, and eventually putting it all away again.

**That's the work behind the experience.**

And I'm proud to have been part of it.

This season has been one hell of a ride. Maintenance, construction, security, bartending, emergencies, long days, late nights, and just about everything imaginable in between. 😂

And now, with each building secured and each piece of equipment put away, I'm getting closer to closing out my own chapter here in Wisconsin.

**Because while this campground is getting ready to shut down for winter...**

**I'm getting ready to start something entirely new.** 😎🔥

New roads. New challenges. New opportunities.

And another chance to put everything I've learned over the years to work.

But until that day comes, there's still a job to finish here.

**I helped get this place ready for the season.**

**And I'll help put it to bed when it's over.**

That's just how I operate. 👊

🔥 **FORGED BY MILES** 🔥

**REAL WORK. REAL LIFE. REAL MILES.**

🍂🔥 THE SEASON IS OFFICIALLY STARTING TO SHUT DOWN. 🔥🍂

Today we started turning off water throughout the campground.

Faucets opened. Lines draining. Sites getting shut down one by one.

I also spent part of the day putting away the decorations from the weekend and continuing the long process of packing this place up for winter.

It's kind of strange.

A few months ago we were putting everything out.

Getting the campground ready. Getting the aqua park going. Setting everything up for another busy summer.

Now I'm walking around doing everything in reverse.

One piece at a time, another season is disappearing.

But apparently maintenance had one more job for me today that wasn't on the work order. 😂

🐢 TURTLE RESCUE.

Found this little momma wandering where she probably shouldn't have been, so I gave her a first-class maintenance department es**rt back toward the lake. 😂

Water shutoffs. Decorations packed away. Turtle transportation.

Just another completely normal day around here. 🤣

There aren't many of these Wisconsin workdays left for me.

Pretty soon the campground will be tucked away for winter, the camper will be packed, and I'll be pointing everything south toward the next adventure.

Until then...

There's still work to do.

And apparently turtles to relocate. 🐢😂

REAL WORK. REAL LIFE. REAL MILES.

🔥 FORGED BY MILES 🔥

🔥 I'VE NEVER REALLY KNOWN HOW TO ANSWER THE QUESTION: “WHAT DO YOU DO?” 🔥

Because the answer has always been...

Whatever the hell needs to be done.

I've spent most of my life learning how things work.

Building things. Fixing things. Taking things apart. Troubleshooting problems. Creating something where there wasn't something before.

And occasionally taking something apart and thinking...

“Well, that may have been a terrible fu***ng idea.” 😂

Then figuring out how to put it back together anyway.

I've worked construction.

Electrical. Plumbing. Maintenance. Equipment. Roadside assistance. Security. Hospitality. Bartending.

I've taught myself laser engraving, CNC and 3D printing. I've learned computers and coding. I fly and work on RC aircraft. I'll tear into campers, vehicles, machines and damn near anything else that decides it doesn't want to cooperate.

And tonight was a perfect example.

Today was supposed to be my day off.

Instead, I went looking for extra hours.

A bartender needed to leave to pick up her kids.

So apparently...

I'm a bartender tonight. 🤣🍺

We even ended up staying open pretty late for a Sunday this close to the end of the season.

And somewhere in all of that, I started thinking about why I'm like this.

Here's something a lot of people probably don't know about me:

I technically never even finished high school.

I grew up dirt poor. My childhood wasn't exactly built around stability, and my education definitely didn't follow anything resembling a normal path.

But I never stopped learning.

Even as a kid, I wanted to understand how things worked.

By fourth grade, my reading comprehension was already testing around a high-school-senior level.

At seven years old, I remember standing with a group of grown men trying to figure out how to lower a new mobile home on my grandfather's farm.

I crawled underneath, looked at it and told them:

“The axles come off.”

They did. 😂

That little kid apparently never left.

Give me something I don't understand and my first instinct isn't to walk away from it.

It's to figure the damn thing out.

And books became a huge part of that.

Not just entertainment.

Dictionaries. Thesauruses. Law-school books. Medical textbooks. Engineering textbooks. Technical manuals. Computer languages. Whatever caught my attention and could teach me something.

Nobody assigned them.

I just wanted to know.

Hell, when I was 19, a friend's mother once legitimately offered to put me through college. God's honest truth. She was mad at me for months, and would be the only person who could vouch for that story.

I couldn't bring myself to let someone else do something that enormous for me.

Sometimes I wonder what direction life would've taken if I'd accepted.

But I also look at the education life actually gave me.

Jobs.

Machines.

Construction sites.

Broken equipment.

Books.

Mistakes.

People.

Businesses.

Thousands upon thousands of problems that needed solutions.

And nearly 40 years of asking:

“How the f**k does this work?”

Somewhere along the way I realized something.

My greatest skill was never construction.

It wasn't maintenance.

It wasn't security.

It wasn't bartending.

It isn't laser engraving, CNC, 3D printing or any of the other things I've learned.

My greatest skill is LEARNING.

Show me how something works.

Give me a problem.

Give me some tools.

Give me a little time.

I'll figure it the f**k out.

And maybe that's what Forged by Miles has actually been about from the beginning.

Not just traveling.

Not just working.

Not just living in a camper and wondering where the road goes next.

It's about everything we collect along the way.

Skills. Scars. Stories. Failures. Knowledge. People. Miles.

Every job teaches you something.

Every mistake teaches you something.

Every place changes you.

Every person leaves something behind.

And every time life drops something unfamiliar in front of you, you've got a choice:

“I don't know how.”

Or...

“I don't know how YET.”

I've built a pretty damn interesting life around choosing the second one.

And now I'm getting ready to point this whole circus south and walk straight into another massive project where I'm undoubtedly going to learn an entirely new pile of s**t. 😂🔥

Good.

Because at almost 40 years old, I'm still hungry to learn.

I'm still curious.

I'm still building.

I'm still figuring s**t out.

And I'm nowhere remotely close to finished.

I wasn't forged by school.

I wasn't forged by a degree hanging on a wall.

I was forged by experience.

Forged by necessity.

Forged by failure.

Forged by getting back up and figuring it the f**k out.

Forged by every damn mile that brought me here.

Maybe that's where the name came from before I even realized it.

🔥 FORGED BY MILES 🔥

REAL WORK. REAL LIFE. REAL MILES.

And there are a hell of a lot more miles ahead. 👊🔥

Well... I got an email last night.

Remember that winter adventure I've been teasing?

Things just got a whole lot more real. 😎🔥

The pieces are starting to fall into place, timelines are getting shorter, and it sounds like somebody on the other end is just as anxious to get started as I am.

I'm still not telling you WHERE I'm headed...

But let's just say the next chapter of Forged by Miles isn't sitting very far over the horizon anymore.

The countdown is starting. 🔥

More soon. 😎

REAL WORK. REAL LIFE. REAL MILES.

🔥 FORGED BY MILES 🔥

🍂🔥 SEPTEMBER... YOU WERE ONE HELL OF A MONTH. 🔥🍂

Somehow we blinked, and September is already in the rearview mirror.

And looking back at everything that happened this month... damn.

The campground season started winding down, which somehow meant more work instead of less. 😂

Furniture got packed away. Projects got finished. There were long maintenance days, Packers games behind the bar, security nights that went completely off the rails, and a whole lot of preparing this place for the end of another Wisconsin camping season.

I even managed to sneak in a little time flying my planes between everything else. 😎✈️

But September wasn't just another month of work.

Forged by Miles hit some pretty damn cool milestones.

I earned the first dollar this page has ever made.

Merch orders started coming in.

The hats, shirts and koozies started becoming something I could actually hold in my hands instead of just an idea on a screen.

More people subscribed, followed along, shared the journey and helped this little thing I've been building continue becoming something bigger.

And through all of it, another adventure has been getting closer in the background.

Winter is coming.

The camper will be hitting the road again.

New state.

New job.

New project.

New people.

And a completely different chapter of Forged by Miles. 😎🔥

I'm still keeping the destination under wraps for a little longer...

But trust me, you're going to want to follow this one from the beginning.

September reminded me that progress doesn't always arrive with some giant announcement.

Sometimes it's another long day.

Another project finished.

Another mile.

Another person deciding to follow along.

And then one day you look back and realize...

Holy s**t. We've actually come a long way.

So here's to September. 🍻

And to everyone who's followed, subscribed, bought merch, shared a post, dropped a comment or simply kept showing up...

Thank you.

Now let's see what kind of trouble October brings. 😎🔥

REAL WORK. REAL LIFE. REAL MILES.

🔥 FORGED BY MILES 🔥

👀 WINTER IS ABOUT TO LOOK A WHOLE LOT DIFFERENT... 😎

The Wisconsin season is winding down, but Forged by Miles definitely isn’t.

This winter, I’m trading snow, frozen ground, and heavy coats for something completely different. 🌴☀️

A new destination.
A MASSIVE new project.
New challenges.
And one hell of an opportunity.

I’m not giving away the location just yet... but I’ll give you a hint:

🌴 Warmer weather
🏗️ A whole lot of construction
🚐 Something BIG is being built from the ground up
😎 And Forged by Miles is going along for the ride.

This next chapter is going to give me a LOT to show you.

Where do you think I’m headed this winter? 👀👇

Stay tuned. The reveal is coming.

🔥 FORGED BY MILES 🔥
Built through work. Fueled by adventure.

🔥 FORGED BY MILES MERCH IS HERE 🔥

The brand keeps growing, and now there are even more ways to REP FORGED BY MILES.

The koozies are looking damn good, the hats are here, the shirts are coming together, and this is just the beginning. 🔥

Forged by Miles started with the road, the work, the stories, and taking you guys along for all of it.

Now you can carry a little piece of it with you.

And here's something worth remembering...

⭐ FORGED BY MILES SUBSCRIBERS GET 20% OFF ALL FORGED BY MILES MERCHANDISE. ⭐

Yep. ALL OF IT.

So if you've been thinking about subscribing anyway, that $4.99/month isn't just supporting the page and helping me keep this thing growing. You're also getting subscriber-only content, access to the subscriber community, AND 20% off your Forged by Miles gear.

The bigger this gets, the more I'm going to do with it.

This isn't just a logo anymore. We're building a brand. 🔥

REAL WORK. REAL LIFE. REAL MILES.

🔥 FORGED BY MILES 🔥

And if you're already a subscriber, thank you. Seriously. You're helping build this thing right alongside me. 👊🔥