About

All who wander are not lost. -JRR Tolkien

Exhausted after ascending out of War Eagle Cave - Photo Credit: Tom Beasley

My name is Erika Wiggins. One of the many gifts my parents gave me is a love for adventure travel. I set sail for the South Pacific with them when I was 4 years old. After a brief return to the United States, we set sail again, this time in the Caribbean and South America. I earned my first pilot’s license in the US Virgin Islands at 17 years old.

For me, travel is life. For over 25 years I have been flying, backpacking, caving, diving, camping, and rappelling. To fund my passion I have worked as a flight instructor, corporate pilot and firefighter/ EMT.

However, my life hasn’t always been full of adventure. In 2005, I threw myself headfirst into the corporate-rut as a commercial real estate broker. Working 80 hours a week, without days off, I reached the brink of sanity. If I did take a vacation, I still worked on the road. I began blogging in 2008 as a way to escape – at least mentally. The more I wrote, the more I knew something had to change. By 2009, I was back out on the trails, kayaking and crawling around in caves. Yup, I even turned off my phone… I’ve learned to live on less money and scaled back my business to allow more freedom.

Today I split my time between my business and The Active Explorer. I mostly travel solo except for the company of a Nikon D7000 and a couple of lenses. In addition to writing about adventure travel, I draw on my medical background to educate readers on health and safety in the outdoors.