Why This Page Exists
TimDriskell.com is not just a collection of web pages. It is part travel journal, part photo album, part field notebook, part outdoor memoir, part old-school Internet time capsule, and part ongoing record of a life spent exploring, learning, volunteering, and trying to stay curious.
The website originally began when I was taking a class in graduate school and needed to use both an overhead projector and web-based material for a class presentation. To make sure I didn’t lose the links — and so the pages would load faster than they would from the school server — I created a simple page with my links and slideshow and posted it on the web.
I built that first homepage using the old Netscape browser and a tool called Netscape Composer. What started as a practical way to organize a class presentation quickly turned into something that was just plain fun. I ended up spending lots of late nights working on it, adding links, experimenting with pages, and learning how to build things on the web.
Over time, I also tried many of the old homepage-building sites, including GeoCities, Tripod, and a whole bunch of others. There are probably still old versions of my pages scattered around the Internet somewhere, remnants of the early personal-web days when everyone was experimenting and nobody knew exactly where it would all lead.
Like many personal websites from the early days of the web, it grew naturally. Pages were added as adventures happened, photos were scanned or uploaded, links were collected, stories were expanded, and the site slowly became a maze of memories. That maze is part of its charm.
The goal now is not to erase that history. The goal is to restore it, organize it, and make it easier for visitors to wander through without losing the personality that made it worth preserving in the first place.
A Short Website Timeline
The Original Homepage
The site began in graduate school as a practical class-presentation page built with Netscape Composer: links, a slideshow, and web material that needed to load reliably during a presentation. From there it grew into a classic personal homepage with favorite places, outdoor links, photos, jokes, travel notes, and whatever else seemed worth saving.
It reflected the early web, when personal websites felt more like digital campfire circles than polished commercial products, and when places like GeoCities and Tripod made it easy for people to experiment with building their own little corners of the Internet.
Years of Growth
Over time, the website expanded to include hiking, climbing, paddling, travel, ecology, photography, conservation, USGS work, family stories, and favorite places. The structure became less tidy, but the content became richer.
🏡 Massachusetts Adventures with Bernie
From about 2005 through 2010, I was dating Bernie and living with her and her two boys in Massachusetts. Those years were filled with adventures to the mountains, the ocean, and countless outdoor destinations throughout New England. As digital photography became easier, I began uploading many more photos and stories from those trips, and the website grew much more rapidly.
🚜 Pennsylvania, Farm Life, and Cindy
In 2010 I moved from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania. Beginning in 2011, I dated Cindy and lived with her and her four daughters for about five years. Life was very different there, with farm animals, country living, family activities, and endless outdoor adventures. Many of the photos and stories from that period also found their way onto this website, adding another chapter to its continuing evolution.
In 2016, Cindy and I, along with a couple of her kids, moved down to Florida. I've been here ever since, and that move marked the beginning of another major chapter in both my life and this website.
New Adventures, New Pages
Florida paddling, Gulf Coast sunsets, Hurricane Pass, Weeki Wachee, Cross Bayou, volunteer work, storm stories, veterans paddles, Lighthouse for the Blind programs, and new friendships added another major chapter to the site.
I was also heavily involved with my USGS work during these years. In 2017 I met Carol, and we were together until 2022. We bought a large waterfront home on Allen's Creek with a big deck, a boat, canoes, kayaks, and easy access to the water. It became the perfect base for countless adventures outdoors.
Most of those memories live on Facebook through thousands of photographs. But I realized that social media may not be around forever, which is one reason I've been preserving many of those stories here on TimDriskell.com. I want this website to become the permanent home for the adventures that have meant so much to me over the years.
Restoring Instead of Replacing
The current project is to keep the old pages, preserve the original spirit, and build a clearer path through the website. New pages like Start Here, About Tim, and the Timeline are meant to help visitors understand the larger story.
The Restoration Philosophy
This website should not become slick, generic, or corporate. It should still feel like Tim. The goal is simply to make the site easier to explore while keeping the humor, curiosity, personal stories, scanned-photo feeling, and old-web charm.
Some pages will be modernized with cleaner layouts, better navigation, larger photos, and mobile-friendly design. Other pages may be preserved almost exactly as they are because their old-fashioned look is part of the historical record.
The best version of TimDriskell.com will be a combination: a modern front door, a clear timeline, organized navigation, and plenty of preserved old rooms for people who enjoy wandering.
Keep Exploring
These are the main trailheads for exploring the website: