It’s been nearly eight years since the founder of travel blog Everything-everywhere.com sold his house to hit the road as a full-time traveler.
Since then, the Wisconsin native has been to 291 UNESCO World Heritage Sites — a feat achieved by visiting all seven continents, more than 170 countries and territories, every state and territory in the United States, every Canadian province and every Australian state.
Now a well-known fixture in the travel blogging world, Arndt made a name for himself by capturing award-winning photos of his journeys — he says he learned to shoot on his own through trial and error — with World Heritage Sites being a particular area of expertise.
Originally, however, visiting so many UNESCO-listed sites wasn’t on his mind when he set out to see the world in March 2007.
“I’m not even sure I was aware of the list until after I had been to Volcanoes National Park [Hawaii], which is what I list as my first World Heritage Site visit,” he says.
“After a few months traveling, I was heading to New Zealand and I was aware that they had two sites on the list, so I made it a point to visit them.
“I then went way out of my way to visit East Rennell in the Solomon Islands, which is one of the least visited World Heritage Sites in the world.”
It was at this point that he decided he’d try to make a meaningful visit to as many of the sites he could and document them for his readers.
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For the first few years he says he paid for everything himself — “I thought I’d be traveling for a year or maybe two” — using money he made from selling his house and business.
These days, he says he earns money from his blog, which gets about 100,000 visits a month, and is offered opportunities for trips sponsored by tourism boards from different countries.
Arndt recently visited Finland, where he hit his 291st World Heritage Site: The Fortress of Suomenlinna, the only World Heritage Site in Helsinki.
He’s now in Alberta to do some winter photography in Canada’s Banff and Jasper National Parks.
“Then I’ll be driving around Florida to visit some U.S. national parks before heading to Haiti.
“Given the new regulations in the U.S., I might also fly to Cuba to document some of the World Heritage Sites there.
“I will be back in Europe in the spring, then in the Galapagos Islands in September and finally in Bangkok in October.”
