Kids flew like butterflies, stomped like elephants and scampered like mice around the High Springs Branch on Monday afternoon during a special visit by YouTuber Brecky Breck.
The reading and craft event had around 20 kids making music shakers and hearing about Ringo the Pup. The High Springs stop forms part of Brecky Breck’s Books and Bikes tour across the United States, with 60 different cities and 100 different events scheduled.
The bike portion will happen on Wednesday at High Springs BMX. It will be a balance bike and BMX clinic with equipment provided. Breck Johnson, the face of Brecky Breck, said the bike portion has drawn more interest with online signups.
Breck and her husband, Kylan, started the tour in October, and the current schedule has them and their four kids crisscrossing the country until the end of November. Tampa and West Palm will form the rest of the Florida portion.
“I’ve had a lot of fans in a lot of different areas that have been wanting to meet us,” Breck said. “So, I was like, there’s no better way than to just put on events and have fun and get to experience different cities and cultures all over.”
But event requests keep arriving from fans, the Johnsons said, so the tour could continue. The family only has a storage unit back home in Washington, and part of the trip is also shopping for a new place to call home.
Breck said the family had wanted to travel for a while, and so they combined the travel with the YouTube requests for visits. Kylan said they tried to match requests from fans with BMX tracks and libraries.
The YouTube channel started five years ago and has grown to 145,000 subscribers. Breck said the channel has also been a side project while raising kids, but she’s glad to see the growth that’s happened.
“As a mom of four, homeschooling them, I ran into walls of not being able to be as consistent as I wanted to,” Breck said. “So, I took breaks, and this channel has just been moving at our own pace.”
Even now, the channel doesn’t cover the cost of the tour as the couple homeschools across the states. But the Johnsons want to continue the work, looking to add another channel for a higher age group.
The channel highlights people working different jobs or interested in various hobbies, from monster trucks and boat races to aquariums and fire stations.
While in the Gainesville area, Breck will film an episode about the NHRA Gatornationals event, talking to three-time NHRA Top Fuel champion Antron Brown.
