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North Rim

August on the Road

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August on the Road

Hello Everyone! I apologize for how long it’s been since I last wrote, but it’s been a hectic and crazy month out here on the road. Until this past weekend, I had not had a day off in over a month and I’ve covered a lot of ground during that time. I guided four trips in a row which took a lot out of me, but I had great passengers with me and we saw some amazing and beautiful places. I have another solid month of guiding beginning in just a day or two, but I wanted to drop you all a quick ‘hello’ and share some of my favorite photos from this last month on the road.

I started with an old favorite – a six day hiking tour in Yosemite for Intrepid Travel. While I’ve done this trip several times including twice earlier this summer, it’s still nice to spend so much time on the trail and to show people one of my favorite National Parks. The waterfalls were still going strong for August and it was the first time I’d been able to get up to hike Cathedral Lakes in the high country this year. These hikes left everyone pretty tired, but I know every one of those passengers had a great and memorable trip and will remember Yosemite fondly for the rest of their lives.

After bringing that group back to San Francisco, I left the following day for Seattle where I started a six day trip to Portland via Olympic and Mount Rainier National Parks. It had been 20 years since I was last in Olympic and it was really nice to be back in this beautiful and often overlooked park. We did a whale watching tour, explored the Hoh Rainforest and walked by the Pacific Ocean looking out at the beautiful sea stacks of Second Beach. While I used to spend a lot of time at Mount Rainier, that’s another park I haven’t been to since before the pandemic. On our first day there we got some fantastic clear views of the mountain and I’m glad we took advantage of them because our second day was almost entirely shrouded in fog. We still had a nice hike and then headed on to Portland where we visited the International Rose Test Garden (it is the City of Roses after all) and then had a quiet dinner in the park before calling it a trip.

Half of that group stayed on with me for the next six days and a lovely Swedish couple joined us as well. That week brought us from Portland all the way back to San Francisco. We visited Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge, ate smoked salmon with a lovely couple who run an indigenous salmon business on the Warm Springs Reservation, Kayaked in a volcanic crater near Bend, Gazed out over Crater Lake National Park and cruised the California Coast feasting on some fresh oysters. We finished with a walk through Muir Woods and a lovely view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I got a day to wind down and wind back up again and the very next day I picked up my last group of that run for a fast and furious 15 day tromp through some of America’s best National Parks. We started off with a few days in Yosemite and then had to duck around Death Valley due to the rains from Hurricane Hillary, staying in Tonopah instead. After a quick trip to Cathedral Gorge State Park, we went on to Zion and then had two great days at the North Rim of Grand Canyon. You may remember that the last (and only) time I was at the North Rim, I was recovering from Covid so I didn’t push myself too hard out there. This time I headed deep into the Canyon on the North Kaibab Trail and it was really nice to see the Canyon from a different angle. We headed from there to Monument Valley to spend some time with the Navajo and then had two great nights in Moab visiting Arches National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park. Then we were off to Salt Lake City to learn about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from the Mormon missionaries at Temple Square. Finally we spent three days in the splendor of Yellowstone before winding up our journey in beautiful Bozeman, Montana.

It was a long but quiet ride back to San Francisco from there, but I did get a few days to catch up on some sleep and a few other things before turning north again to Seattle where I am writing to you from today. Tomorrow I will meet another group and we will be headed east from here to Glacier National Park, my favorite place in the whole world. Then we’ll have some nice days in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons before winding up in Salt Lake City. I’ll get a day to myself there and then turn around and do the same trip in reverse bringing me back to Seattle in the first week of October. It’s going to be cold in the Rockies by then, but it should be quiet and beautiful as well and I’m really looking forward to it.

I don’t think I’m going to get much of a chance to do anything here on my blog over the next month, but I’ll check back in with you when these two trips are done in October. The summer sure flew by this year, but time flies when you’re having fun. I hope you’ve all had a great summer out there, wherever you are and that you’re looking forward to cooler days ahead. Thank you, as always, for reading and I hope you enjoy this little sampling of photos of some of the spectacular places I’ve been this summer.

-Mike

(Click the link to see my favorite photos from this month)

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Snapshots: Grand Canyon's North Rim

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Snapshots: Grand Canyon's North Rim

Hey y’all. I just wanted to share a few of my favorite shots from my time on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I’m doing this as a Snapshots post instead of an In Focus post because I’ll make one for all of Grand Canyon later this summer, but with any luck I will get down to Phantom Ranch between now and then, making it somewhat more complete. But I promised you some Grand Canyon photos before I transitioned to more recent California shots next week, so here you go. Enjoy!!

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This Week on the Road - May 25th-June 1st

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This Week on the Road - May 25th-June 1st

Hello Everyone! First and foremost I wanted to thank you for all of the kind messages and comments you sent this week. Each one made me feel a little bit better and they were all appreciated. I do believe that my bout with Covid is over and while it was not a fun time, so many of my friends are currently infected that at least I didn’t feel as isolated as I could have. The illness was bad, but the loneliness was difficult as well. I’m used to being alone and I’m comfortable with being alone, but I always have the option of going to a bar or a restaurant and at least being among people. With this I wanted to minimize contact as best I could so I got take-out and sat in my room or my van. It’s also been hard not being able to exercise as much as I’m used to, but I have read too much about people pushing themselves through Covid and doing permanent damage to their lungs through scarring and didn’t want to risk it. But it seems to have passed at this point and I am ready to get back to some of my routines which I’m really looking forward to. This won’t be a long newsletter this week as I’ve spent most of my time recuperating and driving, but there have definitely been some cool moments – most notably the two days I spent on the North Rim of Grand Canyon.

When I left off last week, I was recuperating in a hotel room in Flagstaff. Flagstaff was a godsend to me last week, with its walkable downtown, Whole Foods and especially the cool, clean high-desert air. It was also one of the most photogenic towns in all of Arizona, but sadly I didn’t take any photos as I just wasn’t really in the mood. I will return in the future though, and I look forward to getting some photos when I do. I did make it out to Walnut Canyon while I was there, a small National Park site about 20 minutes out of town. It’s a beautiful little park where an oxbow bend in a seasonal river has left an island of land surrounded by a deep valley. This landscape provided a nice protected location for a small Sinagua village site about a thousand years ago. The ruins in the park became a hotbed for looters and tourists in the late 19th century, prompting government protection of the site. Most of the ruins there are reconstructions, but it’s still a lovely canyon to stroll around. Back in Flagstaff I also enjoyed a wander through the old Weatherford Hotel which has been lovingly restored after being threatened with demolition. Despite my illness, I did have a nice stay in Flagstaff.

I left Friday morning and after a short stop at the Navajo Bridge, which is one of the major crossings of the Colorado River in Arizona, I headed on up the Kaibab Plateau to the North Rim of Grand Canyon. I have been to Grand Canyon no less than a hundred times in my life, but always to the more popular South Rim. The South Rim has always been the centerpiece of the park since the railroad arrived over a century ago. The North Rim is higher, averaging almost 9,000’ above sea level, and far less crowded. I spent two days there - taking photos, doing short hikes and just sitting on the rim and reading my book -and I loved every minute of it. It was beautiful, cool, relatively quiet considering it was a holiday weekend and a perfect place to wind up my stay in Arizona. I enjoyed two sunrises and two sunsets and found some wonderful viewpoints along the canyon rim. There seemed to be quite a few rim-to-rim hikers and it is a pretty serious 21 mile hike from the South Rim down and then up the Kaibab Trail. After dark, the talk seemed to all focus on those hikers who hadn’t yet made it out of the canyon. Some made it out later in the night and many finally emerged the following morning admitting they had either underestimated the hike or overestimated their own abilities or, most likely, a combination of the two. It was fascinating to see and listen to and I provided what reassurances I could, knowing all too well how easy it is for hikers to struggle up out of the canyon. All-in-all, I really had a great time up on the North Rim and will definitely return there in the future.

After sunrise and breakfast at the lodge on Sunday, I headed on down the road. After a brief stop at Pipe Springs National Historic Site, I drove on to St. George, Utah to catch up with my friend Jenny. Jenny worked at the same tour company that I did for a number of years and has continued guiding with other companies since. Right now she guides hiking and llama-packing tours, primarily in the Desert Southwest, and is also in the process of building out a small school bus to live in. I haven’t seen her in years and we spent the day catching up and talking about old times and new adventures and about our mutual friends and what they’re up to. I always enjoy her company and it was nice to have someone to chat with for a while. We had some tasty tacos and then went to a trailhead parking lot outside of town where we parked our vehicles side-by-side for the night.

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