We’re Caroline (Caz) and Craig Makepeace. Australian by birth, Raleigh-based since 2017, and traveling together since the day after our wedding in 2002.
Y Travel Blog has been online since 2010. Sixteen years on, it’s one of the longest-running independent travel publications, with thousands of destination guides, itineraries, and family travel pieces written from places we’ve actually been. The U.S. government granted us a Green Card in 2020 for “extraordinary ability in travel media.” I’m now a U.S. citizen. Craig’s in process.
This page is the short version of how we got here, what we publish, and who it’s for.
Who this site is for
If you’re planning a trip and looking for a guide written by someone who’s actually been there, you’re in the right place. We publish in-depth destination guides, multi-day itineraries, family travel content, and trip-planning advice. The audience that finds us most useful tends to be:
- Families planning a vacation that involves more than a pool.
- Couples and solo travelers building longer or more meaningful trips.
- Slow planners who want to know what a place actually feels like before they book.
If you want a fast “10 best beaches” listicle, there are quicker sites. If you’re trying to plan 4 days in Charleston, build a road trip through Utah’s national parks, or figure out how to do Italy with two kids and one stroller, we’ve probably written the post you need.
How we got here
We started Y Travel Blog in 2010 after 13 years of travel. We’d been teaching English in Bangkok, working jobs across Australia, Southeast Asia, Ireland, and the UK, and learning that the world is much smaller and more generous than we’d been told.
The site began as a way out of a slump. We’d come home from five years on the road, lost most of what we owned chasing bad investments, and didn’t know how to get back to traveling. So, we wrote down what we knew. Slowly, that turned into something other people wanted to read. By 2014 the White House had invited us to a digital travel summit. By 2020 we had a Green Card. Sixteen years in, the site is still ours and still publishing.
We tell that story in more detail elsewhere. What matters here is that we know what travel costs and what it gives back. Both shape what we write.
How our travel has evolved
We’ve been at this through a lot of life stages. Solo backpacking. Couple’s expat life. Family travel with two small kids. Seven years of full-time travel and homeschooling on the road. An 18-month trip around Australia in 2013 and 2014. Eleven months across the U.S. in 2018.
Now, with Kalyra 19 and Savannah 15, the shape has shifted again.
These days the travel looks like:
- Short trips, a few times a year, as a family or as a couple.
- Solo travel for me and for Craig. One of the upsides of having older kids.
- Mother-and-adult-daughter trips, which is its own genre and a fast-growing one.
- Longer, deeper destination work for partner campaigns, like my upcoming trip to Yosemite with Savannah.
We’re not 25-year-old backpackers, and we’re not nomads anymore. We’re a family with 30 years of travel between us and a publication that’s grown up alongside our kids. The site reflects all of it.
Our two publications
Sixteen years of running a travel blog taught us something we didn’t expect: the same instincts that build trust with a global travel audience also build trust with a local one. In 2020, we launched a second publication, This Is Raleigh, as a way to do for the city we’d moved to what we’d been doing for the world.
Today we run two complementary brands:
- Y Travel Blog is global. Destination guides, itineraries, and family travel content for trip planners worldwide.
- This Is Raleigh is local. Things to do, where to eat, weekend getaways from Raleigh, and a community of locals and relocators figuring out where to live in the Triangle.
Same warm voice, two different jobs. If you’re planning a trip to Charleston or the Outer Banks from elsewhere in the country, you’ll find us on both. If you’re moving to Raleigh, This Is Raleigh is where to start.
What else we do
Outside the publications, a few things going on:
- I’m developing a keynote on resilience and reinvention drawn from the two collapses we’ve come back from. I’ve spoken at conferences around the world as a keynote, on panels, and in breakout sessions! More on the speaker work coming soon
- In 2026 I’ll be leading small group trips through a partnership with Your Limitless Adventures. First trip is to Morocco, with Vietnam and Bali in planning for 2027. If group travel with a small, intentional cohort is your kind of thing, get in touch.
- Craig is chief photographer (drone licensed and insured) across both publications. We take on paid photo and short-form video work.
- We’ve been on-camera talent for tourism boards and brands across the U.S. and Australia.
If you’re a brand or destination interested in working with us, the Work With Us page has the rate card and the right contact.
Press, partners, and recognition
A short list of where our work has appeared or been featured:
Press: Lonely Planet, Forbes, Travel & Leisure, The Today Show, Fox Business News, CNN, Business Insider, Tourism Australia, National Geographic, Cheddar TV, AFAR, Skyscanner, My Carolina CBS17, WRAL Fox50, ABC Radio.
Recognition:
- 2014 White House digital travel summit invitee, one of the top digital travel creators in the world at the time.
- 2017 Modern Ontrapreneur Award for Excellence in Publishing.
- 2020 U.S. Green Card granted for extraordinary ability in travel media.
- TBEX Content Creator Awards, Best Local Lens finalist.
- Inaugural NC Governor Josh Stein content creator roundtable.
- Weekly segment on G105 iHeart Raleigh, “Whaddup Raleigh!”
- Guests on the This Is Raleigh podcast have included former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Australian Ambassador to the U.S.
Past brand partners and ambassadorships include Ford and Nissan (long-term ambassadors), Allianz Travel Insurance (six-year ambassador), prAna, Canon, Airbnb, Qantas, Hilton, Tourism Australia, Visit Florida, Singapore Tourism, Thailand Tourism, TripAdvisor, Expedia, Avalon Waterways, Globus Travel, Kane Realty, Nextdoor, plus state and international tourism boards across the U.S., Australia, and beyond.
We’re also currently local ambassadors for several developers and small businesses across the Triangle, through This Is Raleigh.
The family, briefly
For the record:
I’m the Libran in a household of three Virgos, the one who can be relied on to fluff around with crystals before sunrise yoga, and the person who writes most of what you’ll read here.
Craig is the rock. Photographer, sports fanatic, master beer taster, and the one who gets us to the airport on time.
Kalyra is 18, a feminist with sharper political analysis than most adults, and the family member most likely to do a one-handed cartwheel mid-conversation.
Savannah is 14, sporty like her father, an old soul with strong opinions and a habit of asking the kind of questions that make adults pause.
We named both girls for places and meanings tied to wild, free, joyful living. Sixteen years in, that’s still the bet we’re making.
Stay in touch
The best way to get more from us is to subscribe to our free email newsletter. You’ll get trip-planning ideas, our recommendations on places we love, and the personal stories that don’t always make it to the blog. Subscribers tend to read every issue, which still surprises us.
That’s the short version. Sixteen years in, we’re still finding corners of the world we haven’t seen yet, we still write everything we publish, and we still believe travel is one of the few things that pays back more than it costs.
If something we’ve written helps you take a trip you wouldn’t have taken otherwise, we’ve done our job.
Welcome aboard.