About

Woman in puffy jacket and orange hat on hiking trail
Hiking on a bitter cold morning near Jacksonville, Florida
Hi, I’m Sandra Friend. For more than 30 years, I’ve shared my love of travel, hiking, and the outdoors with people like yourself through my articles, books, and photography. I started by writing for local newspapers and soon picked up assignments for magazines across the USA.

An early adopter of the Internet, I created my first travel website in 1997. Launching FloridaHikes.com in 2006 to keep my guidebook readers updated on changes to Florida’s trails, I spent the following two decades growing it into state’s top trails resource, attracting 2 million visitors annually. I’ve won many awards writing about the outdoors and travel.

Fiction has percolated in my head since I was a kid. My mother sent my first hand-drawn effort at storytelling to Random House when I was eight. I still have that rejection letter. Over the past 25 years of writing nonfiction, Random House acquired one of my traditional publishers. As karma would have it, I became one of their authors after all.

In late 2025, I turned in my final contracted guidebook. My choice. I’d started dabbling in fiction again during Covid, as so many writers did, and settled on storytelling as the next chapter of my career.

While walking around Lake Okeechobee on the annual Big O Hike in 2011, I met my soulmate, John Keatley. I didn’t know it at the time. But that spring, we headed to the Appalachian Trail together to take on our lifelong dreams of a thru-hike. While we didn’t make it as far as we planned, our time together cemented our relationship. We’ve been together ever since, traveling and writing about our adventures.

In 2013, we started our own publishing company, Watula Press. In 2018, we spun off our travel section of Florida Hikes into its own site, Trails & Travel. Both of us are passionate about the outdoors, and our writing has reflected our desire to inspire you to love hiking, biking, and the natural world as we do.

For more background on me and my work, read my biography, take a look at my clips, and see the awards I’ve received for my writing.

Woman and man under roof of picnic pavilion with lake and pier beyond
Celebrating 14 years since we met along Lake Okeechobee

My Affiliations