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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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This Week on the Road - June 11th-23rd

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This Week on the Road - June 11th-23rd

Hello Everyone!

I hope your summer is starting out as great as mine is. The summer solstice is upon us and I’m trying to make the most of the long days. This week I’ve been guiding a trip for two wonderful ladies from San Francisco to Las Vegas via Yosemite, Death Valley, Zion, Bryce, Monument Valley and Grand Canyon. While I definitely prefer guiding a larger group, the three of us have clicked well and have been having a good time out here. We’ve had some windy days, but they’ve also been sunny and bright and of course these parks are truly magical places to spend time.

We left San Francisco early Monday morning and made a beeline for Yosemite. I was happy that route 120 was open again after being closed due to road damage on the final decent into the valley. That closure caused me to detour around to the 140 on my last two trips, which added about an hour to the drive and threw my regular route, landmarks and commentary out the window. It was nice to do things a little differently for a change, but I was happy to fall into my familiar groove on that drive this week. Unfortunately by the time we were dropping into the valley in the afternoon, it had clouded up and there was some rain falling. This should be quite normal for this time of year, but after 20 years of drought it doesn’t feel normal. El Capitan was in the clouds and Half Dome wasn’t even visible. Thankfully the waterfalls were going strong and we stopped at a couple of viewpoints to check them out. The rain slowed to a drizzle and we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the old Ahwaneeche village behind the visitor center and visiting Galen Clark’s grave in the old cemetery. Clark came to the valley in 1851 after being diagnosed with consumption (tuberculosis) and having been given just a few months to live. He fell in love with Yosemite and decided to dedicate the rest of his life to preserving it. That life was supposed to be short, so he dug his own grave and planted Giant Sequoia saplings around it. He ended up living another 54 years but was eventually buried in the grave he dug for himself. After I told that story and we paid our respects, we headed to our hotel out in El Portal for the night.

We returned to the valley on Tuesday morning under blue skies and sunshine. Linda wasn’t convinced her knee would hold up on long ascents or descents, so we stayed on the valley floor for the day. We went out to Mirror Lake in the morning which was as full as I’ve ever seen it (it turns into Mirror Meadow pretty early in the summer most years). Then we wandered back to the Ahwanee, Yosemite’s classic park lodge. We had lunch in the Great Room and a nice chat about the afternoon. From there we made our way out to Lower Yosemite Falls which is still raging pretty hard right now and putting out plenty of spray. It’s awesome to spend some time there and the ladies really enjoyed it. Then we headed back to Yosemite Village for a coffee and then back to our hotel for the night.

Wednesday was kind of a quiet day. We chose a late start and then made our way down to the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. The shuttle is finally running again, cutting out the 4 mile roundtrip hike to the grove from the parking lot. We enjoyed our visit to the big trees and then spent some time in historic Wawona, checking out some of the cool old buildings from Yosemite’s past. In the afternoon we returned to the valley for a quick coffee and then made our way back to the hotel. I’d been eating salads for a few days so I decided to grab a pizza which was nice. My knee was giving me some trouble too so I was grateful to be able to ice it and rest for the night.

Since the Tioga Pass over the Sierras is still under many feet of snow and likely won’t open until August, I had to make the long drive around the mountains to get to Death Valley on Thursday. Not only is this route far less scenic, but it also adds 2-3 hours to the drive. It wasn’t a fun or beautiful drive except at the very beginning or the very end, but we got there. I haven’t been to Death Valley in years, and we were greeted with a cool 107° when we arrived…

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