Iowa travel writer finds McGregor area has unique appeal

A woman who lives in the rural Iowa City area recently shared her experiences as a travel writer who has lived and traveled internationally, but still finds the McGregor area to have a unique appeal.

Stephnaie Frias, who was born in Iowa and grew up in the Amana Colonies (Cedar Rapids) area, moved to South America when her two kids were little, in 2016. 

“It was during that time that I started social media, because people were asking to follow our journey of what something like that looks like, when a family from rural Iowa decides to pick up and move to Ecuador,” Frias said. 

“My husband is from Ecuador so that’s what inspired us to go over there and spend some time there,” she added. 

Frias said while she was in Ecuador, she started doing some writing and friends told her she should consider putting it somewhere besides on her Facebook page and in emails.

“So I started working as a travel writer when we were in South America, and I did that for many years. During the pandemic, travel writing changed a lot and so did living abroad,” she said.

“And at that time we decided that we were going to come back to Iowa. So we’ve been back again for almost four years now,” she said. 

When they came back to Iowa, Frias was really excited to show her kids the Midwest and for them to become as familiar with the area as they were with Ecuador and South America. 

“It was a really fun adventure for me because I actually didn’t grow up traveling. So I really didn’t know what was in Iowa too much, or the Midwest,” Frias said. 

“So we just kind of took that international travel experience and applied it here. And I had to do a big switch from promoting South America content to exploring the Midwest and Iowa,” she said. 

Frias said she thinks she and her family started exploring Iowa so thoroughly because when they got back to Iowa, they were in a travel mindset.

“We didn’t know how to sit still and just be home–we were nomadic before we came back–so we really needed to just keep moving. We were home for maybe two or three months and my husband booked a weekend in McGregor,” she said.

“Probably, I had mentioned it in passing, like ‘Oh these parks look cool’ or 'Look at the river.’ I don’t even really know how it came to be, but he booked a stay in McGregor, and that was our very first trip,” Frias said. 

Frias said it was eye-opening to her, because she wondered how she grew up in Iowa and brought her husband and kids here and still never knew how beautiful Iowa can be. 

“You know, we go all over the world looking for amazing places to see and it’s so easy to overlook what is literally in our backyard,” she said. 

The Frias family was enamored by McGregor from their first trip there, so they kept going back seasonally, visiting different places and doing different things. 

A few years ago, Frias discovered a travel collaboration brand that connects travel writers or photographers that are just starting out with small tourism boards that may not have budgets for big influencers. Frias first started working on tourism in the northeast Iowa area with Fayette County, then Clayton County, and then with McGregor and Marquette. She said she worked with the tourism boards a few times to do area photography and find hidden gems in the area. 

“I don’t know what it is about McGregor–there’s just something really special about it. I think because it’s so rural and we really like that remote tourism vibe, but we are not ‘roughing it’ kind of people,” Frias said.

“We don’t really want to go necessarily tenting or on big rugged backpacking adventures, so there’s just something really cool about McGregor where you can stay comfortable, do a little shopping, go out in nature, and the vibe, the people there, are just so different from everywhere else–they just have a really welcoming, down-to-earth personality that just sort of lives–it seems like–in everybody,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter which store you go into or which park you go to, everybody wants to know who you are and where you’re from, and what you’re doing there, and they can’t wait to tell you about their favorite sports. And it just makes it really inviting to go back over and over again,” she said. 

Frias said she also likes to support local businesses, small businesses, and woman- or diverse-owned businesses, and that McGregor does a good job at offering those options.

“It’s so cool that you can go into such a small town and walk down that main street and you can’t find a chain (store) and every business that you walk into is somebody unique with a great story,” she said. 

She said they have a great time wandering through McGregor’s stores, meeting local people who want to know what they are doing there, and getting asked in return why they are three.

“That’s a really strong international travel culture that you don’t see a lot in the Midwest, and I never expected to find it in a tiny town on the Mississippi River,” she said. 

Frias said knowing how to engage the community or recognize that you haven’t seen someone before and welcome them is missing a lot in tourism.

“In McGregor, I don’t know if they have been trained or if they just attract the traveler spirit–I don’t know what it is–but there’s just something really special about the way they kind of effortlessly make you want to come back–at least us–over and over again and see what’s new, what’s changed,” she said. 

Some of the Frias family’s favorite activities in the area include fishing, kayaking, biking, and trout fishing. She said in midsummer, sadly, much of Iowa has issues with water quality, so they are left desperately looking for areas where water not only looks clean, but is clean, and they find the northeast Iowa area to be good for that. 

Outside of the McGregor area, Frias also enjoys exploring other northeast Iowa areas, such as Fayette County. She has enjoyed talking to conservationists there and learning of their efforts to keep the Turkey River clean, another river that Frias said they like to frequent. Frias also appreciates how many paved bike trails Fayette County offers. Frias said she thinks bike trails help people get excited together about nature, conservation, and access to the outdoors, which we can take for granted, or don’t realize the importance of, and can be a great opportunity for kids to learn road safety safely, such as at crossings. 

As far as her career in travel writing goes, Frias also works with Des Moines television channel 213, where she appears about once a month on the Hello Iowa broadcast to talk about places to visit in Iowa.

“I talk about northeastern Iowa a lot, just because we love it so much,” she said. 

Love of Iowa is the resounding theme of both of Frias’s social media pages, she says, though they continue to travel internationally and outside of the Midwest. Though they visit cities occasionally, they generally focus on rural areas and state parks.

“But we always talk about Iowa no matter what,” she said.

Frias also does a lot of entry-level sustainable travel education, which she says is just as important in small areas as in international travel destinations, and includes small tips, like supporting local businesses and leaving natural areas better than you found them. 

More of Frias’ work and discussions and photos of Iowa can be found on her Facebook page, Family Travel Nomads, or she can be contacted by email, at stephaniefriastravelwriter@gmail.com.