WELCOME TO CONNELLY OUTDOORS!

Life is best when lived outdoors! We are adventurous souls roaming this incredible planet in search of the most exciting and beautiful places, where nature is at its most spectacular, and its most raw. By sharing our adventures, we hope to inspire others to get out there!

ADVENTUROUS READING! Enjoy John’s adventure memoir writings in paperback, Kindle, and Audible on Amazon.

Dying Out Here Is Not An Option, A 1500-mile 75-day solo canoe and kayak expedition available on Amazon.

If We’re Going To Die, It’s Probably Here, Circumnavigating The Everglades, A 174 Mile, 8 Day Tandem Canoe Exploit available on Amazon.

About Us- When we’re not at our lakeside home in the Maine mountains writing adventure memoirs and enjoying the woods and waters, we travel. John is semi-retired, working as a consultant in the adventure travel industry, helping nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies with developing safety and risk management systems, aiding with operations systems and efficiency, and creating quality, branded customer experiences. Abroad, he works with the Adventure Travel Trade Association to bring sustainable adventure tourism throughout the length of Japan’s island chain. Nicole is retired and is a master at itinerary planning and booking their trips across the globe.

RV Walkabout - Two Years A Nomad- On May 10th, 2019, our lives change dramatically. We sold everything, no mini-storage rental, and downsized to a 25-foot motorhome with three slides; from a house to what amounts to two and a half rooms on wheels. We’d been dreaming about this moment for several years and made it happen.  We decided to cut the tethers to our work-a-day lives and set out to experience some of the world’s most remarkable outdoor adventures.  We went B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Basecamp) traveling by motorhome, towing our Jeep Wrangler and were equipped with sea kayaks, whitewater kayaks, whitewater raft and rowing frame, mountain bikes, road bikes, fly-fishing and backpacking/camping gear. Phew! That’s a lot of gear, but we were ready for any adventure.

Pivoting- We started in Maine and traveled throughout Canada, Alaska, the American West, Baja California Sur, Mexico to Florida. We were in Big Bend National Park in Texas when COVID-19 turned everything upside-down. While quarantining in Melbourne Beach, Florida at Nicole’s folks’ home, we bought our dream house on the Gulf Coast of Southwest Florida on Pine Island, about 50 miles north of the Everglades. With a view across San Carlos Bay at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island, paddling with dolphins and manatees out of our dock, thrilling to tarpon fishing, boating to white sand beaches, and all else, it was paradise found. Until it wasn’t. September 28, 2022, Hurricane Ian scored a direct hit on our home as a Category 5 hurricane. After nearly two years of rebuilding, we were hit with two hurricanes just 13 days apart in 2024. The hurricanes won. Now we live on a beautiful lake on the doorstep of the Maine mountains. It’s a very safe place in these times of changing climate. Now we can put our resources into travel, not rebuilding the same thing over and over. We learned that there’s a lot to be said for the nomadic life we had for nearly two years. It’s freedom. And if you don’t like the weather heading your way. Pack it all up and drive away.

You Only Save What You Love- The goal of this site is to share our passion for adventuring in the great outdoors, help us remember our experiences, keep our friends and families updated on what we’re doing and connect with other like-minded travelers and free spirits. We also hope that you’ll discover off-the-beaten-path adventures and see world famous adventure destinations like you’ve not seen them before. Along the way, we’ll share insider information on these unique and spectacular wild places and we hope you too will fall in love with them and will be inspired to get outside and enjoy the life-enriching benefits that are realized in the outdoors. We believe that, "You only save what you love." So by sharing our adventures with you we hope that you get out there and that the adventures foster support for resource conservation and for stewarding our natural resources for future generations.  We’ll be providing helpful resources along the way so you too can help protect these spectacular and one-of-a-kind places.

Please poke around the site, connect with us on Facebook and Instagram, and feel free to reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you!

Environmental Responsibility

It is impossible to escape carbon fuel consumption when traveling, whether by air, automobile, or across the Americas by motorhome, so one thing we are doing is offsetting our carbon footprint by planting trees in Costa Rica to restore a tract of rainforest previously deforested for farming and timber. We report our fuel use and the proportionate quantity of trees are planted for us. When we return to Costa Rica, we will help with the effort, ourselves!  We hope to inspire other travelers to go Carbon Neutral and offset your carbon footprint – it feels great and the polar bears will be among those who will thank you!

Meet John & Nicole

Nicole and John met 20 years ago on a 3-day sea-kayaking expedition on Chesapeake Bay and have been adventuring outdoors together ever sense. John, an outdoors industry veteran of over four decades has adventured across the globe. A sea kayak and whitewater kayaker and raft guide, mountain biker, fly fisher, backpacker and backcountry skier, John works remotely as an outdoors industry and adventure travel consultant focusing on safety, risk management, operations and customer experience. On the road, John does speaking engagements and book signings for his book about his 1500-mile 75-day solo canoe and kayak expedition, entitled Dying Out Here Is Not An Option, which is available on Amazon. Nicole stepped away from a development career in the conservation field to pursue a full-time nomadic life and to enjoy more of what she loves – spending time with John in the great outdoors!  An avid sea kayaker, whitewater rafter, fly fisher, backpacker and cyclist, Nicole is also an itinerary and trip planning wizard.