Actor John McGinley (Scrubs) called author Pancho Doll "a swimming hole master guru dude."  McGinley along with actor John Cusack spent a weekend cliff diving at some Southern California spots. "He's got this wonderful combination of expertise, enthusiasm and daffiness."

The magazine with 3.7 million paid circulation devoted two pages to the books in its Aug. 22 issue

ABC’s Brian Rooney spent two days with the author, contrasting wilderness swimming holes with the cut and cast water parks most people associate with wet, summer fun.  The segment which ran July 2004 on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings marked the first time that the Emmy Award winning reporter took off his shirt for a story.

In the greatest media irony of 2004, the Fine Living Network spent three days filming a man who lives in a compact truck.  The piece aired on Radical Sabbatical, a show that Fine Living uses to feature people who step out of the mainstream to define their lives and livelihoods through independent means and it picked Pancho Doll for a 9-minute feature. 

The author appeared on NBC’s Today Show speaking live, via satellite from the Blue Ridge Mountains. After talking about the outdoor life and showing a collection of photos, Doll demonstrated what has to be the best job commute in America by leaping from an adjoining rock ledge into the river to conclude the Memorial Day broadcast.

National Public Radio host Bob Edwards asked the author how he finds the places featured in his books. The answer is sometimes luck, the bad kind: 

“My brakes failed in the Tennessee mountains. I managed to coast to a little garage where the man fixed the leak and told me about a swimming hole I would not have found otherwise. I'm hoping for clutch trouble this year," he said.

The June ‘03 issue profiled author Pancho Doll along with 15 of his favorite spots nationwide. The eight-page story talks about the difficulty of retaining a normal life and relationships while annually traveling a distance equal to circumnavigating the equator. 

"At a party I told some friends that I thought of myself as the wind.  My girlfriend dug an elbow into my side and asked, ‘If you’re the wind, then whose crap is that on my back porch?’ "

The magazine devoted to "Man At His Best" inked the Day Trips with a Splash series for three summers running. It proclaimed Doll a cult figure, and although he admits there’s no factual basis for the claim, he says that it does look good on a resume.