Tag Archives: www

DanaMite

May 18, 2023 DanaMite

DanaMite founder of Total Escape

totalescape.com – online since 1996

(before the dot com crash, before digital cameras, before GPS, before social media & way ahead of smartphones)

Sole creative force of Total Escape, Dana Williams left her 3D animation career to start living and working her dream job, online and off. Utilizing artistic talents, computer skills, a vast knowledge of the California landscape and a simple love of nature, to make it all come together for a killer web site called Total Escape.

27 years online means fresh content & updates every month; reworking web code every few years to keep up with various browsers, apps, maps, and wildfires.

“travel agent to the back woods”

Living close to the earth with organic gardening and rural living, DanaMite strives to offer California residents, new-comers and visitors unique, local destinations, concentrating on the outdoors – well away from overcrowded, busy, urban cities and tourist traps. Total Escape can show you how to discover the secret, hidden spots on your public lands that the gov web sites will not even dare to mention.

help keep
total escape
online

the independent source for California travel

NO CORPORATE sponsorship
No venture capital
No government subsidies
No annoying pop-up ads
No scripts chugging bandwidth
No membership needed

Decades without a television set lends plenty of time for studying terrain, topographic maps, GPS coordinates and thousands of photographs to compile more than 8000 pages on just California travel. Far from the daily grind of everyday life, DanaMite continues in educating the public about local travel, camping, family farms, organic cafes, outdoor recreation, respecting the land, responsible use of our resources & how to get more enjoyment out of weekend travels.

Things that started Total Escape:

launch of www (web 1.0)
my capable vehicle
30+ years of computers
artistic eye & love of nature
the journey & adventure
sick of my corporate job
exploring unknown destinations
discovering small towns
wild lands & outdoor recreation
local travel, close to home

YOUR SUPPORT keeps Total Escape going:

click-thrus on banner ads
donations (see above, PayPal link)
map sales & gear orders
word of mouth, pass it on
displaying a bumper sticker
lodging reservations
booking a mountain cabin

Expert Camping Pro California — 40+ years of documenting back roads of California, plus some Baja & Utah too!

utahlover — DanaMite loves Utah, almost as much as she loves California.

tejonpass — Tejon Pass “Cristo’s Umbrellas” art installation 1991. Photo copyright – Kevin Robinson

Sightseeing

Dana’s Dirt

March 21, 2023 DanaMite

Dana is all about Total Escape!

Never married, No kids
No wifi, No smartphone
No tattooed eyebrows

If you could care less about celebrity gossip or television, you are not alone. Many people seek more relaxing travel in their lives, but can barely afford a vacation, or a day off of work.

DanaMite is all about dirt – being outside and inspiring you to be outside as much as possible.

Tweets by danamite

I began car camping in the Borrego desert while in college as an easy, inexpensive “weekend away from the city”. Cheap, literally dirt cheap outdoor vacations. Free camping, if you really know the good areas.

Whether you dig hiking or biking on dirt, sleeping in the dirt (tent camping) or wheelin in the dirt, we have the TOTAL DIRT on California. Back Roads, Hot Springs and tons of outdoor destinations inside the golden state. Nearly 3 decades online, we’ve been here from the start.

Dirt roads, dirt campsites, dirt trails. Desert dirt, mountain dirt, coastal cliffs to country canyons w/ huge reservoirs. All California dirt, terrain, forests and water too.

Start discovering your own back yard California.

HeresTrouble — Anza Borrego SLOT CANYON hike, circa 1999

microtrash — Microtrash is all that small stuff that seems to miss the trash bag.

California Gear, Sightseeing, Viewpoints

Parks and Recreation Magazine

October 3, 2022 DanaMite

California Parks and Wreck

tv the big distraction

step 1. kill your television
step 2. get outside, everyday
step 3. sleep overnight, under the stars

For those who may be still trapped in TV-Land, welcome to Total Escape, a dedicated web site all about the “real world” of wilderness and non-fiction, California style.

parksrectv

Before I started my web business people would suggest to me that I need to write a book. So I naturally chose the world wide web. Now decades later, they are still asking the same question. “Why don’t you write a book on this stuff?”

I say “I did, it’s online. On the internet already. Go look.”
Puzzled, they would turn away to gaze at their device.

Total Escape was created in the web 1.0 days (1996), so I could easily keep track of my many travels, the awesome destinations, my recommendations, my travel logs, zillons of photographs, camping trips, the back roads, signs, maps, GPS, all of it. I worked my day job doing 3D & then moonlighted starting this small web biz. My biggest draw to the internet format at first was being able to update outdoor info instantly. Secondly, it was the ability to work from anywhere with a phone line. (56k anyone?)

No toxic inks, no newspaper. No glossy mag. No waste. Just free digital energy about outdoor destinations, transferred across the cyber waves, just for you the avid Escaper.

park magazine

Then came the buy-out offers and seasonal magazine ideas from sources in San Diego. By late 2003, none had solidified. Several print magazines did however mention totalescape.com in a few articles, which resulted in some nice traffic spikes. Eternally grateful for the early on-lookers and participants!

Quite personally, I had already had my share of smelly inks, papers & paints in art college. Working in a computer career field, I was fully aware of the web in the early 1990’s. I was ready for the computer age & the internet. Eager in fact! Ready to make that leap from graphics & print concepts over to web windows was all I thought about for years.

I did not want to print anything; waste anything. I wanted my biz to be state of the art, futuristic – so here I am, 26 years later. WOW!

Thousands of photos, hundreds of destinations, all local to California. All by itself, Total Escape is a Parks and Recreation Magazine online – and always updating.

DanaMite
Total Escape – California, Off the Beaten Path
totalescape.com