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My Winter Trip to Europe

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My Winter Trip to Europe

Hello Everyone! Long time, no see. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful start to 2023. It’s nice to be back with you and to be back on the road, but I’ve had the most amazing time since last I wrote. As many of you know, I left right before the New Year for a 47 day trip to England, Wales, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, France and Belgium. At its core, it was a trip to see some old friends and catch up and to get my international traveling feet back underneath me, but it was also a very nice break from everything here in the U.S. I left my computer and my camera behind and brought only a small day-pack and my iPhone. Over the 47 days I was there, I caught up with 51 friends from the last 25 years of my life including a college friend from Penn State, three people I did my Divemaster course with in Honduras, four work colleagues and a whole lot of friends who were once clients of mine on tour here in the U.S. I saw people I took on tour during my very first season 23 years ago and people I took on tour just last summer. Some people could only meet up in the evening after work or for a quick drink and some took a whole day off from work to show me around their hometowns. Many opened their homes and their lives to me for a few hours or days and I met spouses, partners, kids, parents and pets along the way. All told, it was exhausting but also invigorating and inspiring and absolutely one of the best time periods in my entire life. It was truly a remarkable 7 weeks. I’ve come back feeling motivated and excited about all of my projects, my coming tour season and life in general. While there was a lot more to this trip, I thought I’d share a brief(ish) recap of where I went.

My journey began in London on the 29th of December. I touched down at Heathrow Airport and headed right into central London on the tube. It was so wonderful to be there after at least 15 years and I just enjoyed wandering around, looking at the buildings and taking in the sights.  Over the next couple of days I visited with my friends Vicky, Sal and Neil and enjoyed a quiet New Year’s Eve to myself. I watched the Rose Bowl with my friend Jamie, who I haven’t seen since I graduated from Penn State 25 years ago. I got some planning done for the rest of my trip and touched base with a lot of people over dates and times, travel routes and details. I also had some great fish and chips, steak pie, gelato and a couple of excellent pints of ale in some truly awesome old pubs, some dating back hundreds of years.

From London, I headed north to Bedford where I caught up with my friend Lucy who came with me on a weeklong trip to Hawaii back in 2019. She took me out to Bletchley Park, a fascinating historic site which housed a major codebreaking operation during World War II. Next I went to Kettering to see my old friend Ryan who came on a cross-country tour with me 20 years ago. I had stayed with Ryan on a more recent visit to England, but that was probably 17 years ago now. I met his wonderful family and we caught up over dinner and some excellent Scotch. From there I headed on to Warwick to see my buddy Chris who was one of my first-season passengers. He showed me around the medieval town of Warwick and Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon. He also kept me out way past my bedtime on a Friday night drinking beers with his friends. It was awesome to look through Chris’ photo album of the tour we took together so many years ago.

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Happy New Year - A Look Back and a Look Ahead

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Happy New Year - A Look Back and a Look Ahead

Hello everyone and a very Happy New Year to you all. This is obviously a great time of year for reflection on the year gone past and planning for the year ahead. 2022 had a lot of ups and downs in my world, but at the end of the day, I would consider it to have been a very good year in my life. I spent the first half of 2022 traveling across the country, exploring, taking photos and trying to get myself back in the mindset of having a regular job for a while. I learned a lot about the desert southwest, the indigenous people who call and called it home and the colonial powers which have moved through the region over the last five centuries. Shadow Catcher and I made it all the way to the Pacific Ocean and it was great to finally get there on this particular journey. I’ve spent a lot of my adult life on the west coast, but it may have been my van’s first time and it was good to be there together.

In May I started working for a new company in a new place. Getting back into a career which has spanned 15 seasons over the last 22 years wasn’t quite like riding a bike. There were pitfalls and stumbles which weren’t helped any by the pandemic, floods, fires and earthquakes. But my management team was incredibly supportive and my passengers were almost all wonderful people who had learned to roll with the punches pretty well over the last couple of years. My first trip brought me back to Hawaii - which was like a dream for a few days until Covid finally caught up with me there. I had to try and deal with it on the road, something I had tried so hard to avoid. I got through it, but Covid would poke its ugly head out several more times over the next few months.

It wasn’t all work though. In August I got out to a five day reunion for my old company, Trek America, which was to celebrate the 50th anniversary which never came to be. It was an amazing five days out in the redwoods of Northern California, catching up with some really old friends and making new ones it seemed I had known forever. I also got out to spend a long weekend with some other friends and our historical society The Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus. I’ve known some of those guys for 22 years (one of whom I trained with as a tour guide back in April of 2000) and it was wonderful to catch up with them as well. I even dated someone for a few months this summer, which was fun right up until she met someone who lived in her town and would be a more stable fit. It was a familiar story for me, but I wish them all the best. I’m grateful for the time we had and it was nice to have some companionship for a change. I also got to catch up with several of my west coast friends this summer who I haven’t seen since before the pandemic and it was amazing to see them all…

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An Update from the Road - September 29th

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An Update from the Road - September 29th

Hey y’all! Gosh, it’s been awhile. My summer has been really busy and hectic, but it’s finally starting to slow down a little bit. I just got back from a two week trip to Montana and Wyoming and the leaves are already changing up there. Football is back on the television and pumpkin-spiced everything is showing up in stores and on menus. That must mean fall has arrived. While I’m going to continue working through November, my trips will be more spread out and I’ll have a little bit more time to catch up with you guys and on some of my other projects. It’s been a busy summer, but a good one and it’s taken me to beautiful places with wonderful people.

When last I wrote, I was on my way to Northern California for a reunion with a bunch of my old tour guiding friends. It was a truly magical 5 days in the redwoods in a beautiful, secluded, private camp with a hundred really wonderful people. Some were old friends I haven’t seen in 20 years while others I knew only by reputation. We laughed a lot and shared stories of our similar but vastly different experiences on the roads of North America (and beyond, for some). It’s been rare that I’ve felt so much a part of something, and my 20 years of involvement with the company meant I could bridge a lot of gaps and fill in a lot of missing chapters to the story. The founders of the company were there, and they shared their story about the humble beginnings of TrekAmerica way back in 1972. It was fascinating to hear how it all began, and we had tour guides there from every season from the very start to the very end, when the company closed its doors during the pandemic. I’m glad we had a full five days out there as a weekend just wouldn’t have been enough.

I took an extra day after the reunion to make my way back down the coast and be sure that Shadow Catcher put some miles on. She handled like a dream and it was nice to be driving her down the Pacific coast. As far as I know, it was the first time she’d seen the Pacific and it meant that after 5 years we had finally made it all the way across the country together from sea to shining sea.

After the reunion, I returned to San Francisco and ran a quick little tour out to Yosemite. While on the trail, I ran into two friends I had taken on tour way back in 2015. It was great to see them and to catch up for a few minutes and reminisce about our trip together.

My next trip was an enjoyable San Francisco/Yosemite/Lake Tahoe combination with a fun group of British passengers in their 30s and 40s. The trip included a full day of sightseeing in the city, a great sunset cruise on Lake Tahoe and a stand-up paddleboard lesson

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This Week on the Road - July 3rd-10th

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This Week on the Road - July 3rd-10th

Hello Everyone! I hope all of my American readers had a fabulous 4th of July. I spent mine in Yosemite National Park, which is a beautiful tribute to so much of what’s right with this country. Ken Burns was definitely onto something when he called our national parks “America’s greatest idea”. This country has had its ups and downs and the pendulum continues to swing, but I’m sure you know by now how passionate I am about our national parks and public lands in general. While there were definitely no fireworks allowed anywhere in the vicinity of Yosemite do to extreme drought and fire hazards, I was happy to spend some of the day in the shadow of the mountain known as Liberty Cap – it seemed quite fitting.

Since I am back to work and will be incredibly busy these next few months, these updates are going to come sporadically throughout the summer and early fall. During the last few years, I’ve tried to get them out pretty religiously on Wednesdays with an excellent success rate, but when I’m working it’s a different story. I’m slowly starting to shake the rust off from three years without guiding a tour and I’ve definitely been enjoying being back on the road and being back on payroll. It’s always good to see my accounts rolling up instead of down. I’ve also loved being back in front of a group, sharing my passion for nature and history and sharing travel stories and laughs over dinner and drinks. I have strangely been asked on two of my first four trips to give a brief overview of the American Civil War. Neither was brief, but I like to think they have a significantly better idea of what the war was about.

I’ve been really hoping to have one trip go off without a hitch as most of my trips did for many years before the pandemic. I’ve always been good at covering my bases so that even when things go wrong, most of my passengers will never know the difference. That’s been hard so far this season, and this current trip was no different. I only had four passengers scheduled on this current trip to Yosemite, but only two showed up on our first night together. Thankfully the other two at least left word as to where they were and by the evening of the second day I had all my ducklings gathered ‘round me. This was another 5 day hiking tour to Yosemite and the weather really couldn’t have been better. It was in the mid-60s to low-70s all week and not a cloud in the sky – perfect Yosemite hiking weather. The snow-melt-fed waterfalls are still going strong and the wildflowers are in full bloom. Once I had all of my passengers with me, I could tell we were in for a wonderful week.

And a wonderful week it was. On Sunday we went for lunch at the Iron Door Saloon, the oldest saloon in California dating back to 1852. Then we went out and hiked to see the giant sequoias, the largest living things on earth. Spending time among the sequoias is always humbling and awe-inspiring. When Jesus walked the earth, some of these trees were already a thousand years old.

Monday found us on the Mist Trail, hiking up 1600’ past the beautiful Vernal and Nevada Falls. This is a heavily traveled route and because of that is one I haven’t hiked in many years. I prefer to spend my time in Yosemite in quieter corners of the park. It has been nice to revisit this hike this season as it was the very first hike I ever did in Yosemite, 22 years ago when I was on my training trip to become a guide.

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This Week on the Road - June 2nd-8th

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This Week on the Road - June 2nd-8th

Hello Everyone! Well, we made it. Shadow Catcher and I have officially made it all the way across the country. This was my 27th drive across the continent and, as far as I know, her first. It was also my longest cross-country drive by far, taking just about 4 months, as opposed to the one to five weeks I normally take. While we didn’t actually see the Pacific Ocean yet, we did make it to the San Francisco Bay which will have to be close enough for the time being. Shadow Catcher has been parked in storage where she will remain for the next few months as I go back to work, but she’s only an hour outside of the city so I hope I can get out and check on her and take her for a spin when I’m in town. She certainly deserves a rest after the last few months, and with California gas prices hovering between $6 and $7 a gallon, it’s very good timing for a break. I’ve spent my week hanging out with old friends and catching up on some much-needed rest and feel very ready and prepared to begin my summer tour season this coming weekend.

When I left you last week, I was headed up to South Lake Tahoe to visit my very good friend Rob and his family. I met Rob in high school, but didn’t really get to know him until after college when we lived together for about a year in a beautiful house in Chevy Chase, Maryland. We have been good friends ever since, and it is always truly a pleasure to spend time with him. I remember visiting him soon after he moved to California and being one of the first in our friend-group to meet his new girlfriend, Tara. I was here for their wedding and have been blessed to watch their children grow from toddlers to ‘tweens. I visited them a few years ago in their vacation home in Tahoe which has since become their full-time home, and I was thrilled to be able to spend a few days there with them this week.

On Thursday I spent a few hours giving Shadow Catcher’s interior a deep-cleaning and reorganizing which it desperately needed. I spent my Friday on a beautiful sandy beach on the shore of Lake Tahoe with Rob and his family. We went kayaking, threw the Frisbee and I even went for a very short dip in the cold, clear water of the lake. That evening we went to cheer on young Nolan as he took to the field in the first playoff game of his little league baseball career. They made a valiant effort, but came up short of a win. Nolan walked and stole a base which was definitely the highlight of the game for us. It was great to just sit and watch the game under the trees as the day came to a close. Saturday was a pretty relaxed day for us all. We went for a few little walks around the lake in the morning and then I got both of the children to show me their musical skills. Mazie plays the violin and Nolan plays the guitar, both of which I just happen to have in the back of my van. I was really impressed by their skills and had a blast jamming with them for a little while in the afternoon. In the evening, Tara cooked up an incredible feast of lasagna, salad and a delightful apple crisp with some homemade ice cream. We stayed up late chatting and drinking beer and listening to some wonderfully nostalgic 1980s movie theme music. It was an awesome few days up in the woods and I’m so very lucky to have such wonderful friends who would take me in for a while.

On a rainy Sunday morning I headed down out of the mountains to Lincoln, California – just north of Sacramento – to catch up with another old friend, Dave Flood. I met Dave when I was a rookie tour leader way back in the summer of 2000. We ran into each other a lot on the road during the next few years, and he was always good for a laugh. I haven’t seen Dave in probably at least 15 years, but we’ve kept in contact on Facebook and talk on the phone every couple of weeks. He’s been trying to get me to come visit him in Lincoln for a many years now, and I was glad to finally be able to take him up on the offer. He made me promise that I would arrive at 11:30am so that I could participate in his weekly ukulele lesson at noon

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This Week on the Road - May 4th - 11th

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This Week on the Road - May 4th - 11th

Hello Everyone! What a difference a week makes, especially when there are planes involved. I’m writing to you this week from sunny San Francisco, where I’ve been since Sunday as I begin my new guiding job with Incredible Adventures. It’s definitely been a transition, but a good one and one I’m excited about, especially as temperatures climb and the days get longer. Summer’s creeping in and I’m thrilled to be back in the saddle and showing international tourists around our beautiful country. It’s a job that suits me and one that, while stressful and intense, is something I truly enjoy doing. While I’m starting with a new company, my manager from my old company is my manager here and many other guides have come over as well which means there are a lot of familiar faces around. It’s been wonderful to be back in a big city as well and to not have to worry about parking and sleeping and the stresses of van life for a few days. My company has put me up in a nice hotel here for the last few days and that alone has been a sort of vacation for me. On another note, I found it amusing that while filling out my paperwork I have been writing the year as 2021 and felt surprised yesterday to look down and remember it is actually 2022. I guess my mind has been focused on other things since the New Year. All in all, it’s been a great week and while this will be a short recap this week, I want to keep my newsletter coming out as regularly as possible through the coming work season. It will be difficult at times because this job is pretty full on and runs seven days a week, but I will do my best.

When I wrote this post last week, I was in tiny Camp Verde and had a very quiet night when I wrapped it up. Thursday morning I was up early and off to Prescott which was less than an hour away. I had a lot of things I needed to get done when I got there – unexciting things like laundry and a tire rotation, but things which were quite necessary. I did manage to spend a few hours in the Sharlot Hall Museum, a central museum complex named for the lady who founded it. It was a fascinating place which included several original town buildings and a few purpose-built exhibit halls. It was a good day to be there as there were several school groups at the museum on field trips so there were interpretive volunteers stationed in several of the historic buildings around the museum. In the evening, I went for a nice prime rib dinner to celebrate a successful winter and spring on the road and to look ahead to a great summer back at work. Then I headed downtown to Whiskey Row, once a notorious Old West entertainment district and now just a fun stretch of bars and restaurants. Prescott seemed to have a nice mix of students, hippies and cowboys and there were plenty of people out enjoying themselves on a Thursday evening. I especially enjoyed the open-mic night at the Birdcage and the history of The Palace, Arizona’s oldest standing saloon which once served the likes of Doc Hollywood and the Earp brothers.

I spent Friday morning packing for my flight and cleaning my van – both of which were easier in the cool Prescott morning at 5000’ than they would be in lower and warmer elevations. Around noon I headed over to visit a very old friend of mine who was finishing up his work week at a popular bronze sculpture workshop there in town. I met Jefferson back in 1992 between my junior and senior years in high school when I worked at a summer camp in Virginia. He was in his twenties at that point and had been working at the camp for several summers and was one of the camp rangers. It was my first summer there (of two) and I helped run a high ropes course that summer. It was quite a formative experience in my life and I still remember how much I enjoyed working there and looking up to Jefferson (who we knew as “Slim” back then). He admitted when I saw him that he didn’t really remember me, but when I showed him a picture of me at 16 he remembered that guy and we could certainly reminisce about mutual acquaintances from camp. He showed me around the shop and explained the process of creating the bronze sculptures they were working on. The artists create the molds, but when they are cast they are far from a finished product. Jefferson’s shop assembles the different pieces, touches them up, grinds and polishes them and then adds color and texture using chemicals, fire and specialized tools. It was quite a fascinating process and one I had no idea was so complicated. The finished products they were turning out were magnificent and their shop is apparently in very high demand which is always a good thing.

Jefferson knocked off for the week and we headed over to Bill’s Pizza on the main courthouse square for a delicious pie and a long conversation. When we finished our lunch, he invited me out for a hike and we headed up to the beautiful granite mountains outside of town where we embarked on a pleasant 3 mile loop through the woods. Jefferson knew a lot about the plants and trees and insects and I appreciated learning from him as we went as we continued to catch up on the thirty years since we last met. After the sun went down, he invited me to spend the night at his place and have dinner with him and his partner, Colette. They had a lovely home and we sat up chatting about all kinds of things into the night.

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This Week on the Road - April 28th-May 4th

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This Week on the Road - April 28th-May 4th

Hello Everyone! It’s hard to believe it’s May, but it definitely is. Even in the middle of the desert, flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing and the days are getting longer and longer. That means it’s almost time for me to go back to work so I can fund these adventures and I’m really looking forward to being back out there guiding tours for a while. That being said, I am hoping to really enjoy these last few days of freedom because guiding is pretty full-on and I know it’s going to be a busy summer. Yesterday was my 5 Year “Vanniversary”, marking five years since I bought Shadow Catcher up in Lansing, Michigan and began this wonderful adventure. We’ve seen good times and bad, but it was definitely the best purchase I’ve ever made and the adventures we’ve had together have been pretty epic. This week has brought us north into central Arizona where I’ve found cooler weather, beautiful landscapes, cute towns and endless miles of hiking trails. It’s really been exactly what I needed and it’s been a pretty great week out here and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.

My hotel night last week was very relaxing and refreshing and I felt significantly better when I headed off to the Diamondbacks’ baseball game Wednesday afternoon at Chase Field. I was a little surprised that the cheapest seats in the stadium were $29, higher than most ballparks, but on the other hand I found free parking nearby and they had inexpensive hot dogs and corn dogs, so it all worked out in the end. The stadium was beautiful and stayed pretty cool as long as you found a seat in the shade. It does have a retractable roof which I guess they save for even hotter days (it got up to about 97° while I was there for the afternoon game). I got a kick out of knowing my uncle and cousin were at a Milwaukee Brewers game this week and they had to close their roof because it was snowing. It was not an action packed game, but the Diamondbacks did pull out a win for their hometown fans. They were playing the L.A. Dodgers and there were a LOT of Dodgers fans there as well. After the game I went and enjoyed a cocktail at Bikini’s, a Phoenix Tiki institution which has been slinging Mai Tais since 1947. It was a nice enough place to stop in for an afternoon drink and then I stopped into Tombstone Brewery for an excellent session IPA and found a nice corner to sip my beer and read my book for a while before calling it a night.

Thursday morning I headed over to tour the Arizona State Capitol, or more accurately the State Capitol Museum. Much like Louisiana and Florida, Arizona has a horrendous 1970s era capitol building, but thankfully, also like those other states, they hung onto their original capitol building and opened it as a museum. The museum had a fascinating display of information and artifacts from the USS Arizona which was sunk in Pearl Harbor in 1941. They had a nice tribute to Sandra Day O’Connor who, while born in Texas, served much of her career in Arizona. They had the phone on display on which O’Connor got the call from Ronald Reagan conveying news of her nomination to be our first female Supreme Court Justice. I was impressed by their lengthy exhibit on Arizona’s World War II Japanese internment camps. I also loved the Arizona Model Railroaders’ room which is a work in progress but had trains pulling through several Arizona towns as they wound their way around multiple levels of tracks. There was also some beautiful Arizona art on display and several smaller exhibits and I found the whole place a very worthwhile visit. Outside of the Capitol are several war memorials which were all beautifully done. When I had finished my visit, I took my book and sat under a nice shade tree and read for a while. Then I headed south of downtown to the home of my old college buddy, John Bushko, who I haven’t seen in 25 years. It was wonderful to meet his wife and children and catch up on all that he’s been up to in the interim. We have a lot of overlap in our Penn State friend circles, so it was fun to hear and to share stories about our mutual friends. They made an absolutely delicious dinner to share with me and we sat out by his pool swapping stories into the night. They definitely left me with a different appreciation of Phoenix and another night in a cool bed was welcome and greatly appreciated.

We were all up early on Friday and enjoyed some coffee and breakfast in between John’s early morning meetings (he works with a lot of people on the east coast, so his day workday starts at 6am). I said my goodbyes around 9 as I wanted to get out of town before the day heated up too much. I headed east through Apache Junction and Superior to Globe, an old mining community with a cute historic downtown and a few great ghost signs on the sides of their buildings. Globe’s old courthouse has been converted into a lovely art gallery and they also had a cool old train engine in one of their local parks. I was there for about an hour and then headed up the hill to Tonto National Monument, an old Sinagua Indian ruin in the middle of Tonto National Forest.

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This Week on the Road - April 21st-27th

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This Week on the Road - April 21st-27th

Hello Everyone! It is hot, hot, hot here in Southern Arizona – too hot in fact. Yesterday’s temperature hit 100° Fahrenheit in Phoenix and it has been above 90 for most of the week. It’s wonderfully pleasant in the mornings and the late evenings, but the days have just been too hot and my productivity, enjoyment and morale have all suffered as a result. I spent most of the last week in Tucson for various reasons, but don’t feel as though I accomplished much. I was thrilled to finally get out to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument this week, but when I got there I ended up scouting out some shade to sit in until the sun started going down. I decided yesterday that I will throw in the towel and head north to higher elevations. I’m in my last couple of weeks of freedom before I head back to work for the summer and I want to enjoy them instead of suffering through them. I will stay in Arizona for now, but I will not get to see all of the places I wanted to at these low elevations. I’m sure this part of the country will be quite pleasant in December when I return. That all being said, I did have some nice experiences this week which I am happy to share with you all, but this will be a shorter newsletter than usual.

When I left off last week, I had only just arrived in Tucson and had been out exploring the wonders of Saguaro National Park. When I finished my hikes out there, I stopped off to get a wonderfully refreshing Eegee, an interesting brand of smoothie found only in Tucson. I also got my first of two “Sonoran Dogs” - bacon wrapped hot dogs with a southwestern array of toppings. The one I got on Wednesday was from El Guero Canelo and it was delicious, but I preferred the one I got at BK’s later in the week.

I spent much of Thursday in the library but headed out to the opening day of the Pima County Fair in the late afternoon. It was a cute midsized fair with plenty of rides and games and places to eat. I enjoyed the sea lion show and the pig races and, of course, taking photos of the wildly colorful carnival. The food was terribly overpriced even by fair standards in my opinion, so I settled for a funnel cake which was sadly quite small and not very fresh for my $11. It was definitely fun to be there, though, and I have really missed these types of events. I had a couple of beers and saw some live music, but called it a night pretty early.

On Friday I headed down into Old Town Tucson to see what it had to offer. I started my visit at the old Presidio, which is a re-creation of the fort that once stood high above the river to protect the area. I was thrilled to get a guided tour of the Presidio by Raul, a lifelong Tucson resident, now retired, who was both pleasant and knowledgeable. I found it fascinating that the man in charge of building many of the old Spanish forts, which stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Tucson along New Spain’s northern frontier, was an Irishman named Hugo O’Connor who had fled religious persecution and joined his fellow Catholics in Spain. I also enjoyed reading about Jose de Urrea, one of Tucson’s most famous native sons. He joined the Spanish army in 1807, but later joined the Mexican call for independence. He went on to fight for Mexico against the Texans in their war for independence, and I first heard his name at Goliad in Texas, which I visited right before the pandemic sent me home. He later served as governor of the Mexican state of Sonora, but later returned to the military to fight against future U.S. president Zachary Taylor in the Mexican-American War. His was definitely an interesting story, one of many I found in the small but informative Presidio.

From there, I went just up the street to the old courthouse, a beautiful building which now houses the main visitor center for the city. Upstairs there is a small museum which looks at some of the crime and justice aspects of Tucson history. I was intrigued by the Arizona Supreme Court case of Ann Jordan and Henry Oyama which challenged the state’s interracial marriage policy. After so much time in the Deep South, it’s easy to forget that these laws were not simply Black and White. Oyama was an American-born World War II veteran with a master’s degree from the University of Arizona, but his Japanese ancestry prohibited him from marrying Ms. Jordan, who was White. The courthouse was also the site of the trial of Public Enemy Number One, John Dillinger, one of America’s most infamous bank robbers…

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This Week on the Road - April 13th-20th

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This Week on the Road - April 13th-20th

Hello Everyone! First and foremost I wanted to wish those of you who celebrate a belated Happy Passover and/or a belated Happy Easter. As those of you who have been following me for several years already know, I was brought up in the Eastern Orthodox tradition so we do not celebrate Easter before or during Passover. Our Easter will be this coming Sunday this year so it totally slipped my mind last week. I hope if you were celebrating that it was a wonderful day however you chose to spend it. This week has had considerably fewer headaches than last week which I’m very grateful for. I have traveled down the east coast and across Southeastern Arizona this week, visiting with and learning about the Apache, exploring Arizona’s copper mining past and present and checking out some beautiful National Park Sites along the way. Since I’ve come down about 5000’ in elevation from the high desert to the low desert, the temperature has risen considerably with daily highs reaching into the 90s. Thankfully it is a dry heat, which really does make a huge difference, and it cools off at night which is the most important thing. I am trying to avoid being outside and/or driving in the heat of the day at this point, but overall it hasn’t caused me any problems. I’ve certainly seen some fascinating places this week, so let’s get right to it.

When I left you last week, I was in the interestingly named town of Show Low which was a quaint and quiet vacation town which seemed nice enough but didn’t have much of interest to me. I spent Wednesday night just a little bit south of there in Pinetop and was up and off early the next day. I headed straight for the White Mountain Apache Reservation which is centered around the old Fort Apache. Fort Apache was built there at the confluence of the East and North Forks of the White River beginning in 1870. The fort was built in that location with the permission of the White Mountain Apache, and many members of that band served as scouts in the U.S. Army during the Apache War which was waged mostly with the Chiricahua Apache. I was fascinated to learn about this conflict between the different bands at the wonderful museum and cultural center located there at the old fort, and it seemed to me as though they were proud of the role their ancestors played in that campaign. The fort remained an active one until 1924 and after it closed the buildings were converted into the Theodore Roosevelt Indian Boarding School which educated both Navajo and Apache children. I’m not a huge fan of the Indian Boarding Schools, which sought to strip young Native Americans of their culture, but I do believe there were good intentions involved. The campus is still a school today, but run locally by the White Mountain Apache. I spent the morning at the museum which, while it discussed some of this history, was clearly designed to present the White Mountain Apache as a modern community proud of its heritage and working towards the future. I spent the afternoon touring the old fort and trying to soak it in. Everyone I met there was incredibly friendly and welcoming and I spent considerably longer there than I had planned. I did get out to visit the Kinishiba Ruins in the afternoon which is a small Ancestral Puebloan site just down the road. It is protected and managed jointly by the White Mountain Apache, the Hopi and the Zuni, all of whom claim ancestry at Kinishiba. From there I was off to the twin cities of Eager and Springerville for a quiet and an early night.

Friday morning I was up early and headed down the Coronado Trail Scenic Byway which at some point likely crosses the trail Coronado took in 1540 on what was the first European penetration into the region. What their exact route was is unknown as there were no maps of the region for them to follow, but there is evidence that they spent time in that general vicinity. The scenic byway was a beautiful, winding 120 mile route which took every bit of four hours to travel. There were some stunning viewpoints along the way as I descended out of the White Mountains and into the desert below. It was a great road to crank up some good tunes, roll my windows down and cruise. At the other end of it, I found myself in the heart of the Morenci Mine, the largest copper mine in North America. It’s not pretty by any measure, but it is massive and definitely something to see. The small town of Clifton, on the other end of the mine, was an interesting little place to visit. The main street through town was a dirt road and a narrow one at that. The buildings were definitely a century old and not necessarily in very good repair for what should be a prosperous mining town. Everything seemed coated in red dust. It was unlike anywhere I’ve seen in the US and reminded me of some of the small mining communities I visited in Western Australia. They did have a beautiful old train station though. From there I was off and running towards Safford, another 45 minutes or so down the road. When I got there I was excited to see a Jack in the Box, one of the only fast food restaurants that I actually like. I don’t eat fast food as a general rule, but I haven’t seen a Jack in the Box in years, so I treated myself. Then I headed out to a great little private hot springs park called the Essence of Tranquility. The owner was super friendly and I had a wonderful night there soaking in the tubs and kicking my feet up in the communal areas. While I stayed in my van, they do offer little casitas and dorm beds as well. It’s definitely a worthwhile little stop and it was a nice respite from the road for a night.

I had a quick soak in the morning as well and then set off to Fort Bowie National Historic Site high up on Apache Pass…

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This Week on the Road - April 6th - 13th

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This Week on the Road - April 6th - 13th

Hello Everyone! Greetings from Arizona, where I have been since the weekend. So far, Arizona has had its challenges and after a fairly smooth 6 weeks in New Mexico it’s caught me a little off-guard. Arizona is also one of the states in which I have spent a lot of time in the past, probably a year of my life collectively if not more, so I wasn’t expecting to have any problems here whatsoever. Gas is up at around $4.59/gallon on average, meaning it costs over $100 to fill my tank which is hard when you’re on a budget and need to fill up every 2-3 days. I can’t let it stop me, but it’s painful. I don’t see states dropping their fuel taxes to help mitigate it either, once again turning towards and pointing at the federal government. It’s been very windy since I’ve been here which the locals tell me is common for this time of year. I guess I haven’t spent much time here in the spring before and have visited mainly in summer, fall and winter. When I say “wind”, I’m talking about sustained 30-40 mile per hour winds with gusts up to 60. When it’s at your back, it certainly pushes you right along, but when it’s coming from any other direction it makes driving a real chore. Hiking in it is also less than pleasant, as really is any outdoor activity. Beyond the wind, I haven’t had a phone signal since I got to the state except for a few hours in Holbrook. There is a signal, but not one I can get on either my Sprint or AT&T phones. It’s their state and if they are happy with their coverage then so be it, but it’s frustrating as I haven’t encountered this elsewhere to this degree. This also means that I need to use WiFi and depending on where I am, it’s very particular about what I can access – and I’m talking about mainstream things like Twitter, Netflix and AT&T Prepaid, not anything remotely scandalous. I’ve found campgrounds to be prohibitively expensive and even the state parks are at a price point where I will have to be very selective as to which ones I pay to see (their annual pass of $75 is also pretty high in my comparative mind). I can tell just from the week that I’ve been here that vanlife is far more prevalent here than anywhere I’ve been thus far and communities are pushing back, making where I stay more of an issue than it has been. All of that being said, I’ve seen some beautiful places in the 5 days that I’ve been here and I hope to find more of a rhythm in the next week or so. Despite the amount of time I have spent in Arizona, there is still a lot I want to see, and I hope the logistics of my time here aren’t as overwhelming as they have been so far.

When I left you last week, I was headed north from Gallup to check out the Bisti Wilderness. Unfortunately, I had tried and failed to get a map of the area and the digital ones available online were less than adequate. When I got there, I took to the high ground to be able to navigate better, but really I should have just headed straight into the canyons. I think the warnings I read about getting lost were quite exaggerated and I spent half of my time unnecessarily high above what I went to see. When I finally dropped into the canyon, it was a beautiful place, full of hoodoos and petrified wood. Hoodoos occur when sandstone or other softer rock is covered with a layer of harder rock. The hard cap layer works like a hat and the sandstone layer erodes from the outside in instead of from the top down. Petrified wood comes about when old trees are subjected to extreme heat and pressure in very specific conditions and harden to a stone-like texture. Both the hoodoos and the petrified wood out there were really cool, but it was fiercely windy out and tough to concentrate on much besides staying upright. It was a cool area, though, and one I would definitely return to on a quieter day with a better understanding of the landscape. I left in the late afternoon and got into Farmington with enough time to shower, dress and head out to see the incredible Ballet Folklorica de Mexico at the Civic Center. I even ended up with a free ticket as the lady in the ticket office said someone had left a few to be given away. It seemed as though the performance told the story of Mexican history, from the Aztecs through to modern times. The music and dancing were wonderful, but the costumes really stole the show in my opinion. After the first hour or so, the many children who were in the audience around me started to get pretty fidgety and I wish there had been an intermission in this two hour show for them to get up and move around a little. The girl sitting two seats down from me was literally bouncing in her seat as high as she could get and her parents just let her bounce. Despite all of that, it was a very enjoyable evening and a sharp contrast from my day in the windy wilderness.

Thursday I headed off to Aztec Ruins National Monument in the morning, which was located in the cute little town of Aztec about 30 minutes up the road. Aztec was a Great House of the Ancestral Puebloans built in the 1300s in the Chaco style. It had enclosed passageways inside the ruins which were open to explore and fascinating to see. The centerpiece of Aztec Ruins was a reconstructed Grand Kiva which was a project of the lead archaeologist who excavated the site. Most reconstructed kivas are interesting and give you some idea of their purpose (as the center of Puebloan community and religious life – think of a church in early America), but they are rough and unfinished. This was a beautiful, massive kiva with plastered and painted walls (as the originals would have been in their time) and felt very peaceful and well-done. I asked the ranger if the Puebloan people who visited ever shared their thoughts on this kiva as their communities are still centered around kivas today. She told that she hadn’t heard anything so I guess it wasn’t too egregious of an example. I thought it was wonderful. I also thought it was interesting that the Animas River, a pretty big river by southwestern U.S. standards, flowed right next to the old Pueblo. Of course building your town near water has always been essential, but my questions came with why this site was abandoned. A massive regional drought is always cited as the main cause of this out-migration, but I would find it hard to believe that this river ran dry even in the driest of years. I enjoyed discussing this and several other questions with the ranger there as they are always happy to engage in discussions beyond where the bathroom is.

I returned to Farmington in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day at the library which was big, clean and beautiful but sadly had no internet. I still got plenty of work done, though, and set myself up well for the next day. That evening I went for a nice steak dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. I usually avoid chain restaurants, but my dad and his girlfriend had given me a gift certificate for Texas Roadhouse and I was happy to use it. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised by my meal and left very satisfied.

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This Week on the Road - March 30th - April 6th

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This Week on the Road - March 30th - April 6th

Hello Everyone! It’s been another amazing week out here in New Mexico and I can’t wait to tell you about it, but I’m going to start out this week with my most exciting news. As most of you know, I will be going back to my regular gig as an overland tour guide this summer. I’ll be working for a company called Incredible Adventures which is currently being run by my last two managers from my old company. I got a call from one of them yesterday with some thoughts on my start-up tour and I will be heading to Hawaii next month. Of all the places I thought I might go this summer, Hawaii was not on my list and I am so excited for this opportunity. It will be in the midst of my time in Arizona, but I will fly out and then back and be able to finish up my time there before heading on to San Francisco to begin my season in earnest. I am definitely looking forward to walking barefoot on a white sand beach and swimming in beautiful turquoise water. So with mai tais and sea turtles dancing in my head, let me tell you about my exciting week here in New Mexico.

When I left you last week, I was planning on heading to a place called Meow Wolf the following morning. Meow Wolf was an incredible experience which is really hard to explain. It’s essentially a big funhouse, full of fascinating and beautiful art installations. You enter it through the front door of a Victorian house and then you choose your own adventure from there. You can go through the fireplace into an ice cave with a mammoth skeleton which you can play like a xylophone. You can go through the refrigerator which takes you to a strange vacationland. You can go through the bookcase and come out in a circus-like room. You end up in treehouses and lighthouses and flying buses. It really is quite a place to experience and I was there for probably three hours and continued finding new rooms and passages right up until the end, and I’m sure I missed some along the way. It was weird and wonderful and I would definitely recommend it if you are ever in Santa Fe (or Denver or Las Vegas).

My Thursday afternoon was definitely one of ups and downs. I got a call from my dad telling me he had fallen and broken his ankle. He’ll be okay and is in a recovery facility, but I worry about some of these places and what floats around in them with Covid only being one such worry. On the flip-side, I got a nice email telling me one of my photos has been accepted to be published in a book of hiking trails from National Geographic called 100 Trails, 5000 Ideas. As a photographer, National Geographic is obviously one of the biggest names in the industry and while it will be a small photo in a big book, I’m still very happy to be included. In the afternoon I headed over to visit the Montezuma Masonic Lodge, where the gentleman I met in Taos told me I could find Kit Carson’s rifle. I met several of the Masons who were a part of the Lodge when I walked in, and they were incredibly warm and welcoming. The Secretary, Don, told me the whole story of the rifle and how Kit himself had instructed that it be hand delivered to the Lodge upon his death. It was, and they’ve been caring for it ever since. I had to put on a pair of gloves to hold it, but it was amazing to have this piece of history in my hands. I’m very grateful to the gentlemen of the Montezuma Lodge for their hospitality and all of the fascinating stories they shared with me while I was there. I decided to celebrate the day with a few beers at La Fonda, a wonderful must-see hotel right off the central Plaza in downtown Santa Fe. Mark has been bartending at La Fonda for years and it’s always a pleasure to stop in and say hello and have a drink in historic surroundings. From there, I said goodbye to Santa Fe and headed up the highway to the Buffalo Thunder casino for the night.

I started my day on Friday at Bandelier National Monument, not far up the road. Due to its proximity to Santa Fe it’s a busy park and it was fairly crowded when I was there, but there were some great old ruins to poke around at the base of some beautiful cliffs. When I had had my fill of the ruins, I had some lunch and then set off up the other side of the canyon on the Frijoles Rim Trail. It was a wonderful and beautiful trail and, in contrast to the valley, I didn’t see a single person along the whole hike. The trail took me up to the top of the canyon and along its rim for a mile or so and there were wonderful views down the canyon and off to the mountains in the distance. When I made it back to my van, we were off and running to Los Alamos to have a short look around Manhattan Project National Historical Park before it closed. I had been to another section of this park several years ago in Oak Ridge, Tennessee where they had enriched the uranium which was then transported to Los Alamos and built into the atomic bombs. They tested their first bomb at the Trinity Site down near what is now White Sands National Park…

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Snapshots: Madrid - An Old Coal Town Reborn

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Snapshots: Madrid - An Old Coal Town Reborn

Madrid was the first town I came to along the beautiful Turquoise Trail, the scenic byway which connects Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Pronounced MAD-rid for some maddening reason, I couldn’t find a clear story as to how the town got its name. The earliest Europeans in the area most likely came from Spain, but it doesn’t appear that Madrid got its name until New Mexico was an American territory. First lead and then coal were mined in the surrounding hills and in 1892 a 6 mile spur was built to connect the town to the Santa Fe Railway. By 1906, coal mining in the area was consolidated under the Albuquerque and Cerrillos Coal Company and a company town grew to a population of over 3,000, more than that of Albuquerque at the time. In 1922, Madrid boasted the only baseball field with lights west of the Mississippi River, and the Brooklyn Dodgers’ minor league affiliate the Madrid Miners played there for many years. The mines did well until the early 1950s and in 1954 the Coal Company left Madrid and many of the residents went with them. By the early 1970s, Madrid was almost a ghost town but then artists discovered the town and started moving in. Today, Madrid is a vibrant and colorful town with many reminders of the old mining town that it once was, but truly reborn as an artists’ colony and a tourism destination. I hope you enjoy these photos from beautiful Madrid, New Mexico.

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