So Good To Be On The Road
Happy New Year Everyone! I wanted to take a few minutes this week to take a look back at the year gone by and a look ahead at what I’m planning for 2022. It’s definitely been a year of ups and downs, but despite the many challenges, 2021 was a pretty good year for me. I’m hoping to build on that momentum and make sure the year ahead is even better. Before I get into the heart of this post, though, I wanted to take a minute to thank you all for your support over the years and especially through this last stretch. I didn’t know how I was going to keep my little travel blog going through the pandemic as I was at home in Washington for well over a year. Publishing this newsletter every week pushed me to try and get out and do something every week as I tried to make the most of the situation. Your comments, notes and emails really helped me through those trying times, and I wanted to say thank you very much. We did get out to see some pretty interesting and beautiful places this summer and fall, though, didn’t we? And hopefully I’ll be hitting the road again soon to even more beautiful places out west. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
2021 began in the midst of the pandemic. By the time the new year rolled around, I had been home for almost eight months. I even convinced my folks to stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve for the first time in many years to wave goodbye to 2020 and all of the challenges it had brought us. From the previous July until this past May, I spent my days with my friends’ two year-old son, Mason, going on adventures near their home in Glover Park. He was such a little trooper and we would go outside almost every day, no matter what the weather was like. We had dozens of different routes which took us to hundreds of different places, all within about a mile or two of his house. He was usually one step behind me with a fistful of worms and a brain full of questions. It was amazing what we got into during that time, but we both learned a lot about the world during those 10 months. I’ve done a lot of different things in my life, but the year I spent helping raise Mason was definitely the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had. I will always remember the sound of his little feet in the morning running out to greet me and the feel of his little hand in mine. Meanwhile, my mother and I would try and get out of town every week and go on at least one adventure of our own. We saw more of Washington D.C. than either of us imagined existed and traveled to small towns and down back roads in Maryland and Virginia as well. We watched movies every Wednesday and had parties in the basement every Friday. We brewed beer, played games and cooked all kinds of different foods and I got back to playing the violin after 35 years. I got a new compass and ran some orienteering courses for the first time in 30 years. Both felt really good. At home, we celebrated everything I could come up with, from Christmas in July to Up Helly Aa. Looking back, there are a lot of projects I wish I’d gotten to and a lot of other things I wish I had spent more time on during those pandemic months, but at the end of the day I got to spend a lot of time with my best friends, my family and a wonderfully curious little boy who really needed a friend through it all. They were some of the best days of my life.
As the winter wore on, the vaccines started to roll out. We got my folks vaccinated early and I got mine as soon as I could as well. It was an amazing feat that they got these vaccines to us in the amount of time that they did, because while life didn’t and hasn’t gotten back to “normal”, we’ve certainly been able to breathe a little easier. Once we’d all been vaccinated, it was time for Mason to go back to school and definitely time for me to get back on the road. While I packed and planned, we slowly re-entered society – going out to eat and even getting to a few good breweries before I left. It was a wonderful feeling. My van had gotten a lot of attention and work done to it during the pandemic, and it was in tip-top shape when we hit the road north in June.
I left in the middle of a heat wave which followed me all the way north to Detroit. While it was warm, I was so happy to be in a new place. I had never been to Detroit, not even in passing, and there was so much I wanted to see and do. I went to Motown and to a Tiger’s baseball game and a great farmers’ market. I went to breweries, ate Coney dogs and Detroit-style pizza and finally got back to seeing some live music. It was liberating and it felt so good to be there. The heat finally won though and pushed me out of Detroit and to the shores of Lake Huron. I would spend a huge chunk of the next six months on the shores of one or another of the Great Lakes. I swam almost every day, photographed dozens of lighthouses and watched a hundred sunsets.
I spent almost two months in Michigan, visiting small towns, hiking along the National Lakeshores and soaking up the summer. The days seemed impossibly long. I loved the coastal towns and state parks and Mackinac Island was one of the coolest places I’ve been in my travels. Crossing into the Upper Peninsula was like stepping into a different world. I loved the mining history and the dense forests and I gobbled up Cornish pasties at every opportunity. My time in Michigan was capped off with a four day backpacking trip to Isle Royale National Park, one of the last National Parks I had not yet visited in the country. It was also the first time I’d done a multi-day backpacking trip in many years. I loved it.
As July turned to August, I needed to start making my way out of Michigan and into Wisconsin. I had my heart set on getting to the Wisconsin State Fair which I had been to many years in a row as a child. It didn’t disappoint. The roasted corn from the Lion’s Club and the cream puffs were exactly how I remembered them. I enjoyed cold beers and live music and had a great time. I also got to catch up with my dad’s side of the family, many of whom live in West Bend just north of Milwaukee. I hadn’t seen them in 8 years and it was great to reconnect, especially with my cousins who I hardly knew at all. From there I headed up to Door County, and then off across the state to Madison to see the Penn State-Wisconsin game. I made my way through The Driftless Region to the banks of the mighty Mississippi River and then north along the Great River Road. I cut back inland and up into the Northwoods for some fishing and reminiscing about my childhood trips north. It was truly special to be welcomed at the Cultural Days of the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa Indians, a day which I will not soon forget. After a quick dip back into Michigan to visit a friend’s dad and see the magnificent Lake of the Clouds, I was back on the shore of Lake Superior which I followed all the way to Minnesota.
I had spent almost no time in Minnesota in my life and was excited for my time there. Since fall was closing in, I headed north first which was definitely a good idea. The North Shore was busy, but beautiful and I could definitely see why so many Minnesotans spend their vacations there. The small towns, lighthouses, state parks and waterfalls combined to make a really magical region. I headed on west through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and Voyageurs National Park and all the way to Lake of the Woods. The crowds thinned with each passing mile, the temperatures dropped and I found many businesses closed for the season. I headed on though and all the way to the North Dakota border. From there it was off south and then east to Itasca State Park and the headwaters of the Mississippi River which was my number one highlight from Minnesota. What a beautiful park. I spent some time with a friend in Bemidji and then headed off down the Great River Road to the Twin Cities for Halloween and my birthday. After a nice weekend there, I took off up the St. Croix River and then looped back across the state to North Dakota. I followed the border south to Pipestone National Monument where I saw Native American artists hand sculpting beautiful clay pipe bowls. From there I was off into Dakota Indian territory to learn about the tragic events of the “Dakota Uprising” of 1862 which would result in the largest mass execution in American history and the expulsion of the Dakota from Minnesota. I got to visit Schell’s Brewery, one of the country’s oldest, and then made my way back to the Twin Cities as the snow started to fall. Finally I headed on down the Mississippi River and out of the state.
I spent Thanksgiving with my dad and his partner in West Virginia and have been home in Washington D.C. since, with the exception of a short trip to Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia between Christmas and New Year. My coming home seemed to coincide with the flare-up of the omicron variant which has hit all of the states I was in this summer pretty hard. That’s not from the news, but from the friends I made while I was there. I got my booster and my flu shot soon after getting home and I’m grateful for both. It’s been wonderful to be home, to spend time with my family and friends and to get a break after pushing pretty hard all summer. I was planning on being out of here by now, but with record Covid cases and short staffed and overcrowded hospitals across the South, I’ve decided to stay put for a few extra weeks. It’s all very reminiscent of the early days of Covid, and of the time when I finally decided to come home and get off the road to wait it out. On the other hand, I am vaccinated now and all indications tell us this wave will pass sooner rather than later.
Looking ahead, I do plan to get out of here in the next couple of weeks. I’m headed south to New Orleans and then west across Texas to New Mexico. My plan is to spend the rest of the winter in New Mexico and Arizona, enjoying the desert scenery, taking photos and getting as much hiking in as I can. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in my life in Arizona, but not so much in New Mexico. Both are beautiful and will offer me very different history and scenery than I’ve seen anywhere on this journey in the last few years. I want to get out and do some overnight and multi-day backpacking trips, most notably to the bottom of Grand Canyon. I’m looking forward to hot-air ballooning in Albuquerque, adobe architecture and all the New Mexican food I can eat. It’s going to be great and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.
This summer, I plan on going back to guiding for a few months. I have spoken with my old manager from my shuttered tour company who has moved on to a smaller company in the Bay Area. I’m hoping she will send me an offer in the next few weeks. My funds will be running low by this summer and it will be time to restock my coffers a little bit. It will allow me to keep traveling, keep taking photos and put a nice chunk of money away at the same time. I haven’t guided a tour since 2019 and I miss it quite a bit. It should be a really good summer. When my season ends, I will probably head to Southern California or even Baja for a bit of R&R before hitting the road east again.
I haven’t really looked too much at my plans for next winter yet, but roughly I hope to come back east via Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. We’ll see. Looking way ahead into the future, I hope to make enough this summer to not have to work next summer so I can spend those months in the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming, but that’s very far out at this point.
I do plan on being on the road for the foreseeable future. I would love to get out of the country for a few months at some point as there are plenty of places in the world that I have yet to visit. I want to get back to some scuba diving, see some friends in Europe I haven’t seen in many years and get myself to Africa for a while as well. I don’t know what the future will hold for Miles2Go, American Anthology or any of my other projects. I’d love to write a book, but I don’t know if I actually have the attention span to get it done. And really, who knows what’s over the next horizon? If we’ve learned anything from the last few years, it’s that you never know what’s coming down the road. Hopefully we’ve also learned to live as much as we can with the time that we have and not take the future for granted.
Whatever comes, I’m really looking forward to it. I hope you’ll come right along with me and see what we can get into out there. It’s been a heck of a ride so far, and there’s so much more to see.
As always, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.
-Mike