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.
Although there were challenges, my season was one of the best I’ve ever had. It was so good to be back on the road, working in my chosen field and sharing this beautiful country with guests from all over the world. As far as the tours I ran, I had some old favorites on my schedule but many were either completely new or at least new to me. I got to explore the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Yosemite in particular, more than I ever had in the past. For a while there I was back in San Francisco every weekend which was mostly a good thing. After a while I really felt like I lived there and I found a few good regular spots to hang out. Things went so well and I was enjoying being back on the road so much that I ended up pushing back my wind-up date until the end of November. In all, I ran 18 trips this summer and enjoyed every one of them.
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.
For the last few weeks I’ve been back on the east coast, catching up with family and friends and enjoying the holiday season to the fullest. I’ve also been making plans for my 7 week trip to Europe, the first time I will have been out of North America in quite a few years. I’ll actually be in London when you read this, but my computer isn’t coming with me so I can’t tell you what my first few days there have been like. I promise to fill you all in on it when I return in February, but feel free to follow along on my Instagram account @miles2gobeforeisleep.
I’m really hoping that 2023 will be an even better year for me. I will be returning to California in late February and plan to spend the rest of the winter and early spring exploring California and Nevada and more of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. I’ll have at least three months on my own and I’m really looking forward to it.
I will be returning to guiding next summer, working for the same company and trying to build on everything that went so well this summer. I don’t know what they’ll have in store for me, but I know I’ll meet a lot of new people and we’ll have wonderful adventures together. I’m not sure how long I’ll work next summer, but I imagine it’ll be fairly similar to what I did this year. I am hoping to do some more international travel next winter, but we’ll see how that all works out. A lot can happen in a year, but I’m hoping that it’s a good year with both new and familiar sights and new and familiar people. And I do hope you’ll come along for the ride. I know I wasn’t as regular with my posts this summer as I had wanted to be, but guiding really is a 24/7 commitment and I needed what down-time I did have to rest and recover and prepare for what came next. I am hoping next summer will give me a little more time to write and edit photos and I would love to get back to my podcast as well.
Thank you all so much for your support over the years. When I set out on this journey in 2017, I was hoping it would lead to financial independence and that this would be my job. What I found was that to get to that point required an incredible amount of work – more than most people imagine – and I’m actually pretty happy just publishing my photos and going back to guiding to earn my living. I still get to travel most of the year, but having a regular income stream takes all of the pressure off of my time on the road and I can just enjoy it and explore to my heart’s content. It’s a good life and I’m blessed every day to live it. Happy New Year, y’all. May 2023 be a wonderful year for us all - full of love, laughter and new adventures.
-Mike
Here are some of my favorite memories from 2022:
January
An uptick in Covid cases caused me to push back my departure date for my trip west. I spent January with my folks in Washington, exploring with my mom, having a few beers and hanging out with my friends. It gave me time to catch up on some things and more time to plan my trip out west.
February
In February I finally got moving again. I headed south through Nashville and Muscle Shoals all the way to New Orleans where I got some great food and saw the first Mardi Gras parades of the season. From there I made a beeline across Texas, stopping for a few days in Austin and for some music in Luckenbach before finally making it to New Mexico at the end of the month.
Luckenbach, Texas
Lincoln, New Mexico
March
March got me out and really exploring New Mexico in depth. I had plenty of green and red chiles, saw some amazing landscapes like White Sands and the Gila Wilderness and explored beautiful towns both new and old. I had really been looking forward to my time in The Land of Enchantment, and it definitely did not disappoint.
April
I continued my exploration of New Mexico in the beginning of April. I made my way around the north of the state, exploring old Indian ruins and cool little towns before heading onto the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. I headed south along the eastern side of the state through Chiricahua National Monument, Bisbee, Tombstone, Tucson and Saguaro National Park. By that time it was starting to get hot out. I made it out to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and then headed north to higher elevations and cooler temperatures.
Pecos National Monument
Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly
May
In the beginning of May I got so spend a few wonderful days in the Sedona area. It was cooler there and while I’d been to Sedona before I had never had the opportunity to do much hiking there. I explored the cool towns of Prescott, Jerome and Wickenburg before returning back to Phoenix. I left my van there with my old friend, John, and then flew to San Francisco to begin my new job. After a couple of days of training and planning, I jumped a flight to Honolulu where I would begin my first tour in nearly three years. It was great to be back on the road and back in Hawaii, right up until it wasn’t. I caught Covid somewhere along the way and, as has been the case for so much of the last few years, there was no playbook on how to proceed. I ended up finishing the tour, masked and sickly, and then flew back to Phoenix where I scooped up my van in the middle of the night and headed north again. I spent some time recovering in Flagstaff and then made my way out to the North Rim of Grand Canyon. I got my health and my wind back and then it was time to head towards California and my summer season
June
I was back in San Francisco in early June and ready to get out and moving, run some tours and make some money. My first trip of the summer would take me from Salt Lake City to Seattle through the Rocky Mountains and I was really looking forward to getting back to these parks after so long away from them. We had a great visit to the Grand Tetons, but a tremendous storm moved in that night which would flood Yellowstone and close the park for months. That left me with four days to fill and the main highlight of the trip closed. Thankfully I had a great group and good support from the office and we made the most of the time we had together. I had a great time out there with them, but was happy to return to San Francisco and start fresh. Covid hit my next trip hard and I had to send two people home early. This was my first time back in Yosemite in many years and the first of 11 trips I would take to the park this summer. It was nice to be back in the shadow of Half-Dome.
July
July began with more adventures in Yosemite. I also got out over the Tioga Pass for some nice hikes in other parts of the Sierras including Convict, Mono and Echo Lakes. The first of many fires I’d have to work around this summer started to spread. I was happy to head south to L.A. where I started a three-part, 18 day camping tour of the desert southwest. This tour was the one which most resembled the kind of trip I cut my teeth in this industry doing. I had an amazing core group with me and I loved every day of this tour.
August
My 18 day trip through the desert ended in the first week of August and would be the longest of my season. It was finally time for a break as I headed out to the redwoods for the company reunion I mentioned above. Before and after the reunion I had a few days on my own to get some coast/beach time in and spend a few days driving Shadow Catcher. It was very nice to be back behind the wheel of my own van and to get a couple of days to myself. I would finish the month with a couple more trips to Yosemite.
South Tufa at Mono Lake
September
September brought me back north for one more trip to the Rockies and while Yellowstone was not yet completely open, we were able to visit. I even got to do a new-to-me hike in Glacier which hasn’t happened in a while. The scenery was beautiful, but the nights were dropping below freezing and when the rains caught up with us it was pretty tough out there. I was very grateful to be back in the California sun when this trip ended.
October
I got out again on my own in early October, traveling down the coast from San Francisco and spending some time in Monterey and Santa Cruz. I got to stop in Salinas and see Rocinante, the truck John Steibeck used when he went on his Travels With Charley. From there I headed out to my E Clampus Vitus weekend to catch up with old friends. I spent most of the rest of the month in and around Yosemite, but I also got to run one trip out to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The 2020 and 2021 fires in Sequoia had left the park badly burned, but it was still nice to be there and I had a really great group with me.
November
In November I got to run a cool trip up to Napa and Sonoma. It was fun to be out there, exploring some smaller and less well known destinations and we also ate in some phenomenal restaurants. After that, I flew back to West Virginia to spend some time with my dad. Then I took one final swoop through the desert to wind up my season. It was getting really cold at the higher elevations, but it’s always great to be in the desert. After Thanksgiving, I went and spent a few days with my buddy, Dave, and left him in charge of Shadow Catcher for a few weeks as I headed home for the holidays.
December
It’s always great to be home and I’ve enjoyed spending most of the month with my friends and family. I spent most of December in Washington D.C. but we also took a short trip to Richmond which was quite enjoyable. We headed north to my brother’s place in New Hampshire for Christmas and it was great to be able to spend the day with him. When I got back home to D.C. I only had a day to finish packing and get my act together and then flew off to England.