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Hello Friends!

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Hello Friends!

Hello Friends!

Long time, no see. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful winter, stayed warm, gotten out for some cool adventures and are looking forward to the coming spring and summer. I am writing to you today from home in Washington D.C. after an amazing couple of months in Europe and North Africa. I’ll be here for a few more weeks and then I’ll return to California early next month. I have a couple of trips to the Rocky Mountains scheduled for late May/early June and I’m really looking forward to getting back up to Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons and Glacier National Parks. Who knows where the summer will lead from there.

When last I wrote, I was getting ready to fly out to Ireland. I arrived in Dublin with no problems and enjoyed a few days of catching up with old friends, knocking back a few pints of Guinness and hearing some great live music. I’ve been to Dublin before, but many years ago and it feels like such a distant memory at this point. It was nice to get out and do some exploring while my internal clock adjusted and I got used to sleeping in dorm rooms again. I was in Dublin for a few days and then caught a flight on to Porto in Portugal.

I spent about two weeks in Portugal in total. I was in Portugal way back in 2000, but really only spent a few days in Lisbon. My friend Julie has been raving about Portugal all year, so I thought I’d go see some more of it for myself. I spent my first day there out in the Douro Valley, the main wine region in the country, and had a lovely time. The next day it started raining and raining hard and it didn’t really let up for almost a week. I did my best to explore Porto, Aveiro (“The Venice of Portugal”) and the University Town of Coimbra, but the rain really brought me down. After a couple of days in Lisbon which included a trip to the incredible fairy tale town of Sintra and a quick visit to Europe’s Westernmost Point, I flew off to the beautiful island of Madeira. Madeira is still in Portugal, but it’s about 600 miles off the coast of Morocco and a world away from the rainy gloom of the mainland. It was beautiful and sunny out there and I had a blast exploring a little corner of the island and soaking up some rays.

After a few days on island time, I headed back to Lisbon and then swung south through Lagos and Faro before cruising on to Seville in Spain. Seville is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve been to in Europe and I really had a wonderful few days there. It’s vibrant and clean and churning with history and culture. The central cathedral there is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and also houses Christopher Columbus’ tomb. I also enjoyed plenty of tapas and wine and music and just wandering through the narrow alleyways of the city. In Seville I started to explore the history of the region in depth as my next six weeks would delve into the Muslim culture which ruled that part of Spain for more than 800 years.

Happily knowing I would return to Seville in a few weeks, I set off on a bus for Tarifa, where I boarded a ferry and bound for Morocco…

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Fall Wrap-Up

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Fall Wrap-Up

Hello Everyone!! It’s been entirely too long since I last posted on this blog and for that I am genuinely sorry. As my tour season progressed, it got busier and busier and I got more and more worn down. I didn’t have much free time at all in September or October and what little I did have was spent trying to catch up on some sleep and rest up for the next tour. I ran 15 tours this season spanning the country from Seattle to New Orleans and Los Angeles to Glacier National Park. Most were at least a week long and each presented its own joys and challenges. In summary, it was another amazing summer guiding tours of the United States, but I’m thrilled to see it in my rearview mirror as I look ahead to what is to come this winter.

After I last wrote in September, I headed north to Seattle where I ran a two week trip through the U.S. Rocky Mountains to Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. It was late in the season to be camping that deep in the mountains, and we woke up with ice on our tents more than once. That trip ended up in Salt Lake City, where I turned around and started back towards Seattle the following day on the same trip in reverse (but this time thankfully in hotels instead of tents). While both of those trips were late in the season and many things had already closed down for the winter, the crowds were thin and we did some amazing hikes. We also spotted plenty of wildlife including a handful of moose, a couple of bears and two different wolf packs in Yellowstone. I was able to get out on my own and hike up to Grinnell Glacier, one of my favorite hikes in the country, and ended up in about five inches of snow near the top. The days were short and cold, but we had a really good time out there on both trips.

After the long drive down from Seattle, I set off on another two week trip. That one started in San Francisco, took us out through Yosemite National Park and then brought us down into the desert where we visited Bryce, Zion and Grand Canyon National Parks and also Monument Valley on the Navajo Reservation.

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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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July on the Road

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July on the Road

Hello Everyone,

I’m coming into the busiest part of my summer tour season, but wanted to drop a quick hello to let you all know that I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve just finished a hot couple of weeks out in the Desert Southwest, but it was also a really good tour. I’ve had a few days here in San Francisco since that trip ended, but I’ve been busily preparing for the next month which won’t have any days off for me at all. I’m ready for it and I’m looking forward to it, but it hasn’t left much time for anything else. But before I depart on my next trip tomorrow morning, I thought I’d send you all a quick update and a few photos from my last trip.

I wrote to you last from L.A. as I was getting ready to pick up the trip I just finished. I met 6 wonderful people the following day, all of whom were really excited to be out on tour. The trip was exclusively for passengers under 30, so you can imagine that I probably wasn’t who they expected walking through the door. Nevertheless, they gave me a chance and I know that by the end they had all had such a wonderful experience and were very grateful for the work I put into it. They thanked me a lot which may or may not surprise you is a rarity in my line of work. I know that my passengers feel thankful but they aren’t always the best at expressing it.

Our trip left L.A. bright and early the following morning and took us out to Joshua Tree National Park where we had lunch in the shade in the back corner of Hidden Valley. We did the one mile Hidden Valley Loop Trail which was probably enough hiking in the midday sun at 118°. We made a few other photo stops and spent some time at Skull Rock before beating feat out to Lake Havasu City which was just as hot. After a quick stop at the London Bridge, we went down to the lake for a swim and a barbecue dinner as the sun set in the desert heat. It had been a really good day and we were all thankful to be in a hotel instead of a tent that night.

The following day took us out to Grand Canyon with a stop along Route 66 in Seligman. We spent some time at the Canyon during the day and returned later for sunset which was fantastic as always. The sun wasn’t gone for long though and we were up to see it return the following morning at 5am. My group split in two for the day as half of them went towards Plateau Point on the Bright Angel Trail and the other half headed for Skeleton Point on the South Kaibab Trail. Everyone enjoyed their hike and they were all grateful for the early start.

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These Weeks on the Road - June 25th - July 12th

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These Weeks on the Road - June 25th - July 12th

Hello Everyone! It’s been a busy two weeks in Yosemite National Park, but a really good two weeks as well. Since I last wrote, I ran back-to-back 6 day hiking tours in the park with only a day in between, but both groups were really good and I definitely enjoyed my time with them. The weather was actually pretty cool for the first week but heated up considerably for the second. Of course the 4th of July has also come and gone and I can think of few better places to celebrate America than in our beautiful National Park System. There were no fireworks in the park or in the entire county since it’s mostly very dry forest, but we made up for that with stunning views from the newly reopened Glacier Point Road. I’ve been back in San Francisco for a few days of relaxing and planning and now I’m off to L.A. to run a 10 day trip which will take us to Joshua Tree National Park, Lake Havasu, Grand Canyon, Vegas and Yosemite, dropping us back in S.F. at the end of the month.

I’m always quite fascinated that I can run the exact same tour back-to-back and it is an entirely different trip. Different groups with different abilities and interests coupled with openings and closings in the park and a holiday weekend thrown in to boot and these last two trips only loosely resembled one another. Both were great though and I’m really happy I had the opportunity to run them both especially since one was a last second switch in my schedule. I had tweaked my knee a little bit on my last trip to the desert and have been really careful with it on these hiking-focused trips but I’m happy that it is healing well and will hopefully be back to 100% soon.

We set out on the first of the two trips on June 25th. After a nice lunch at the Iron Door Saloon in Groveland (California’s oldest saloon), we had a nice hike in the Tuolomne Grove of Giant Sequoias just inside the park entrance. These beautiful trees are the largest things by volume that have ever lived on the face of the earth. They start out as a tiny seed inside an egg-sized pine cone and can live for over 3,000 years under the right conditions. They are immense and majestic and always a sight to see. From there we dropped down into Yosemite Valley, made a photo stop up at magnificent Tunnel View, hiked to the base of Bridal Veil Falls and then made our way out to our hotel in El Portal, just outside of the park for the night.

We were up early the next morning to hike the Mist Trail past beautiful Vernal and Nevada Falls. A relatively cool June has kept the snow from melting too fast in the mountains so all of the waterfalls in the park are still going strong which is great for both the park and the state of California. As the name implies, the Mist Trail can get quite misty and it definitely was while we were out there. The trail takes you up a number of granite steps and past Vernal Falls for incredible views and a sizable soaking. We spent some time drying out on the top of the falls and then most of the group continued up to the top of beautiful Nevada Falls for lunch. After a nice long break we took our time coming back down from the waterfalls and stopped for a well-earned ice cream break at the bottom.

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Gone Hiking

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Gone Hiking

Hello Everyone!

As I mentioned last week, I’m out guiding a hiking tour in Yosemite all week. The hotel we are staying at is nice, but doesn’t have any Wi-Fi so I couldn’t get a This Week on the Road post up this week. I did get a few photo posts published this week from the Indian Canyons and Joshua Tree National Park so I hope you enjoy those. When this trip ends, I’ll have 36 hours to turn around and go out on the same trip again, so I’m not sure if I’ll have anything for you next week or not. It’s busy out here, but I’m thinking about you all and I hope you have a wonderful week. I’ll get back with you as soon as I can. Take care and thank you for reading.

-Mike

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Two Weeks on the Road with Austin College

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Two Weeks on the Road with Austin College

Hello Everyone!

It’s been a great couple of weeks out here on the road. I spent two weeks guiding a tour for Austin College, a small university based in Sherman, Texas (far from Austin, Texas – the school is named for Texas hero Stephen Austin). The tour was for a class on environmental concerns in our National Parks, a topic quite near and dear to my heart. It consisted of 10 students and their professor and took us from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the desert. I really enjoyed these young people and I got along really well with the professor, Dr. Baker, as well.

I met the group two weeks ago on a Tuesday night here in San Francisco. They invited me to join them for dinner at House of Nanking in Chinatown which is a pretty cool place to eat as a group and we all enjoyed quite a feast. It was interesting to hear what the students were studying and what their specific area of interest was for this particular class. Their topics ranged from birds to flash floods to water conservation and all of them were really important to our western parks.

We spent the next three nights in Yosemite, hiking and meeting with the rangers to discuss the park’s key issues. There was still a lot of water in the valley and it was great to see everything so wet and green. On our first full day we hiked up the Mist Trail to Vernal and Nevada Falls and there was a ton of water coming over those waterfalls. Everyone got absolutely soaked, but thankfully it was a sunny day and we dried out quickly. The last time I did that hike was last November when those waterfalls were barely a trickle and the trail was completely dry. The next day we went out and hiked to the Giant Sequoias in the Mariposa Grove in the south of the park and it’s always awesome to see these massive 2-3,000 year old giants. In our meetings with the rangers and staff, we discussed fire management and bear conservation and the conversation was quite interesting. Leaving the park we headed south and around the mountains and ended up in Barstow for the night. We did some serious grocery shopping and then enjoyed a nice dinner at Peggy Sue’s 1950s Diner just outside of town. That night we had our first group discussion and I really enjoyed hearing the student’s opinions about Yosemite and what they had seen and heard over the previous few days.

We left Barstow early the next day as we had a pretty long drive to Grand Canyon that day. We stopped in Seligman to get our kicks on Route 66 and then headed on to the South Rim…

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This Week on the Road - May 17th-23rd

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This Week on the Road - May 17th-23rd

Hello Everyone,

I am officially back to work and my first tour of the season is behind me. This is my 16th tour season and my second working for Incredible Adventures here in San Francisco. I had a great summer working for Incredible last year, one of the best I’ve had in my career in fact, and I’m looking forward to another great season to come. I will still be running tours for Exodus and Intrepid, two of the brands I have guided for many years now, and will continue to run short Incredible Adventures tours as well.

The start of the summer tour season is always exciting. It is full of possibilities and just thinking about the places I will visit and the people I will meet puts a smile on my face. I know it will be exhausting and things won’t always work out as planned or as hoped, but I also know I am up for the challenge. Over the winter I visited an old friend of mine, Brett, at his home in western Wales. Brett came on tour with me many years ago and he asked me while I was there if my guiding personality is the same as my real personality. I told him that the only way to be truly happy and successful in this job is to be yourself. The more you try and be like someone else or act in a way that isn’t reflective of your own personality, the more people will see through you and it will always backfire in the end. That being said, I also told him that while when I am guiding it is absolutely me that people are seeing, I also believe that it is the very best version of me that there is. It’s the version of me who is outgoing and confident and an absolute expert in my field. I think three steps ahead and change my plans based on each individual group I take out. There are a lot of unknowns in this game from traffic to the weather to the individual personalities and expectations of my passengers and being able to think on the fly and make things run smoothly is a real skill. Being a good guide doesn’t just happen overnight. Like any other profession it takes years to hone your skills, but it’s so worth the effort when you do. I’ve been turning people’s dreams into memories for the better part of two decades, and I’m thrilled that this is the skill I have to offer the world.

After I left you last week, I had one more day in the office which I will spare you the details of. I had to go grocery shopping to feed 12 hungry people for the weekend which is always a challenge. Thankfully I got all of that finished at a reasonable time and was able to take a nice long walk around downtown San Francisco and then tuck into a good book to refresh my knowledge of Yosemite and still get a good night’s sleep. I was up early on Friday as I had to get to the office, hook up my trailer to my van, load my coolers and get back downtown before 8am. I picked up my group on time and we headed out to Yosemite for the weekend.

Yosemite is pretty wild right now with all of the snow melting into the rivers and pouring over the edge of the cliffs and into the valley below. The waterfalls are crazy and there are even waterfalls flowing that I’ve never seen before. The river has overflowed its banks and the meadows have turned into lakes…

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This Week on the Road - May 10th-17th

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This Week on the Road - May 10th-17th

Hello Everyone! Well, it’s definitely been a weird and challenging week out here. Nothing went as planned, but everything has worked out okay, at least for now. I had already left Lake Tahoe when I wrote this post last week, but when the master cylinder went on my van I headed back to the lake and spent the week with friends while I waited for it to be fixed. I got it back on Monday and then had to make a beeline for the Bay Area to get to the office in time to start my season. And I did make it, so that’s a good thing, and I will take out my first trip of the year this Friday. It wasn’t the week I had hoped for, but sometimes that’s what happens out here on the road.

After I finished this post last week, I went and had a nice lunch at the Truckee Airport with an old guiding friend of mine, Mike. I met Mike when I first started my guiding job back in 2000 and we worked for the same company for many years. He currently owns Tahoe-Sierra Transport Company which shuttles clients around the Reno and Lake Tahoe areas. We had some interesting Mexican/Indian fusion tacos and caught up for a little over an hour and it was really nice to see him. I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Truckee and taking photos. It’s a really cool little town with some great old buildings and everyone seemed pretty friendly. In the evening I went to a place called RMU which is a bar in a nice old house on the edge of downtown. I enjoyed some live music and a couple of beers and chatted with some of the locals. Truckee doesn’t allow overnight parking in the winter, but since it was after April 30th, I stayed in one of the downtown lots overnight with no problems.

On Thursday morning I got up early and had a nice breakfast at a little family-owned coffee shop on the main drag. I took some more photos and then headed just outside of town to Donner Memorial State Park. This is the site where the Donner party spent the winter of 1846-47. I think most of us know this story, at least to some extent, because of the cannibalism that took place as the winter wore on, but I didn’t know much beyond that. It seems like they made some bad decisions along the way, none of which seemed particularly hard to understand in context. The Donners and several other families headed west in the spring of 1846, hoping to make it to California before the winter. Traveling with covered wagons along rough trails was slow going and they only averaged 2 miles an hour on their journey. At one point they decided to take a “shortcut” from the accepted route and this seems to have been their fatal mistake. They got to the valley where Reno is now and could have safely stayed there until spring, but chose to push forward and try and get through the mountains before the snows came. They were only a couple of weeks’ walk from their destination in the central valley and were desperate to start their new lives. The snows came early that winter and didn’t let up for months, stranding them just a week’s walk from safety in either direction. They dug in and did their best and rescue parties eventually came to get them out. It wasn’t until after the first groups had been rescued that they came to the decision to eat their dead comrades. 87 people walked into the mountains with the Donners that winter and only 48 came out alive. The whole story is obviously a sad one, but it is interesting to learn about.  

As I was leaving the park on my way up into the mountains, I stepped on the brakes and my foot went down to the floor with the ABS and Parking Brake lights coming on at the same time. Brakes are obviously not to be messed with, especially when I had mountains to cross. I immediately texted my friend Mike who I had met with the day before and he called his local mechanic shop and connected me with them. I headed over there and they said they could get to it the next day. Then I called my friend J.D. who I had been staying with in Tahoe City and he came up immediately and picked me up and brought me back to his place…

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This Week on the Road May 3rd-10th

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This Week on the Road May 3rd-10th

Hello Everyone! It’s been another great week out here on the road in California. I’ve spent most of the week in the Lake Tahoe Basin, visiting with friends and taking it easy in the lead-up to my impending tour season. It’s been cold up here and has snowed almost every day since I arrived, but it’s been beautiful and relaxing and a lot of fun to be here. I know that spring is quickly turning to summer just down the mountain from here, so I’m going to enjoy the cool weather while I can.

I left you last week in Gardnerville and when I finished this post I headed up through Carson City and on to Virginia City. Virginia City was ground zero for the Comstock Lode mining boom which took over 700 million dollars’ worth of gold and silver out of the surrounding hills. In its heyday it grew to a city of 25,000 people and had 36 schools and over a hundred saloons. Money from the mining going on in Virginia City helped build San Francisco into the city it became (and was until the fire of 1906) and hastened the separation of Nevada from the Utah Territory as its own state (The Silver State!). When the gold and silver played out, the town’s population dropped significantly  but after the TV show Bonanza debuted in 1959, interest in the town grew and tourism became its main industry. It’s one of the better “old west” towns that I’ve visited and maintains a lot of its frontier character. I enjoyed wandering up and down the main street through town and taking photos and stopped in for a beer at the Bucket of Blood Saloon. It turned out that the bartender there was from Washington D.C. and three of the patrons were from just outside the city and south of Annapolis. I chatted with them for a while and enjoyed their million dollar view from the huge picture window at the end of the bar. The sun was going down as I left, so I wandered down the street to the Red Dog Saloon which was doing an open mic night. While others were welcome to perform, it was really some of the locals jamming out on stage and they were really good. I stayed the night just down the hill and it was extremely quiet out there.

I woke up early on Thursday and took another stroll through town and got some more photos with the sun lighting the other side of the street. I stopped in and had a coffee at The Roasting House, which had a great view out towards the valley, and then headed back down the hill to Carson City. I stopped into Bob’s Shell downtown to get my emissions test done. They were surprised that I could use a Nevada emissions test to pass my DC inspection but I promised them it was true. There are a few benefits to coming from such a transient city. I decided to fax it in because that seemed more likely to reach its final destination than if I dropped it in the mail and FedEx was happy to help me make that happen. Once that was signed, sealed and delivered, I headed on out of town. It was snowing which was a shame because I wanted to make a stop in Genoa, Nevada’s oldest town, but it was just too wet out there so I kept moving. I headed up and over the Kingsbury Grade, which is the back way to South Lake Tahoe, and my preferred road up and over the mountains. It’s a pretty steep road, but it was cold up there so we did just fine on the climb. It was really snowing hard up at the top of the hill, but it lightened up as I came down the other side and was barely a flurry when I pulled up at my friends’ house just outside of town.

I walked in to find my friend, Rob, with a huge batch of lemon marmalade on the stove. Rob and I were roommates way back in 1999 and have been good friends ever since. Since he moved to California I get to see him more often than most of our friends from back home and it’s always good to catch up with him.

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This Week on the Road - April 25th - May 3rd

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This Week on the Road - April 25th - May 3rd

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from Gardnerville, Nevada! I have popped out of California for a few minutes on my way through the Carson Valley and am overjoyed to see gas prices that start with a 3 instead of a 4 or 5 which is the hardest part about traveling in California. It’s a bit gloomy out today and the temperature is hovering just above freezing, so it’s a perfect day to hunker down and get this post written. It’s been a wonderful week out here on the road, slowly making my way up California 395 on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I’ve driven this road dozens of times between Yosemite and Las Vegas or Death Valley, but I have usually had to make it all the way between the two in a day which doesn’t leave much time for exploring. Being able to stop off and see the sights and do some hiking and take my time is what this trip is all about and I’ve definitely enjoyed doing just that this week. In the beginning of the week, it was pretty hot out during the day, but the nights were cool and pleasant and seeing snowy mountains out my driver’s side window was been amazing. Towards the end of the week I made my way into those mountains and even saw some snow.

I left you last week in Ridgecrest, a nice little military support community near the China Lake Naval Weapons Center. After I finished this post, I ran across the street to the little Maturango Museum which had a small but wonderful collection of local artifacts. They highlighted the plentiful petroglyphs (ancient rock carvings) in the area as well as the natural history of the local desert environment. The museum had some wonderful photos on display, both recent ones from a National Geographic bird photography competition and some great old ones from the area which had been taken by naval photographers practicing for their official duties in the local community. Perhaps best of all, the museum also served as the local visitor’s center and the ladies there gave me some wonderful ideas for my trip north. When they closed up for the day I went across the street to a very nice park where I cooked up some dinner and read my book before calling it an early night.

Wednesday morning I was up and off nice and early and made my first stop at Fossil Falls. This small recreational site is in the shadow of an ancient cinder cone and there is plentiful evidence of the area’s volcanic past. During the last ice age, the snowmelt fed into a river and that river ran over Fossil Falls. There hasn’t been any water there in a very long time, but you can still see where the water flowed over the rock on its downhill trajectory. From Fossil Falls I headed on to Lone Pine and stopped in at the Museum of Western Film History on the edge of town. The nearby Alabama Hills have served as the setting for over a hundred movies in the last hundred years, with their wonderfully textured western landscape and the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. While most of these films were made before my time, names like The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy were certainly familiar to me. In more modern times Tremors and Django Unchained were filmed in the area…

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Snapshots: Avalon - The Jewel of Catalina

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Snapshots: Avalon - The Jewel of Catalina

Avalon! Just hearing the name of this magical place will always make me smile. Avalon is the only town in California’s beautiful Channel Islands and is located on the easternmost island of Santa Catalina, just a short hour’s ferry ride from the mainland. It may be only an hour away, but it is a world apart and landing at the port feels like you’ve arrived in a far off land.

Catalina Island was once home to the Tongva people who used the island’s abundant soapstone to trade with other bands on the mainland and the other islands. It was purchased in its entirety by James Shatto in 1887 and Shatto built the island’s first pier and hotel hoping to attract tourists from Los Angeles. He had a tough time of it though and sold the island to the Banning Brothers just four years later. They had some level of success in developing the island’s tourism potential, but a devastating fire in 1915 and the general decline in tourism due to World War I caused them to look for a buyer themselves.

The man they found was William Wrigley Jr. of Wrigley Chewing Gum fame who purchased the island from the Bannings in 1919. Wrigley had the capital and the drive to make Avalon and Catalina Island a success. Wrigley built the Casino which is a theater, ballroom and gathering place and has never been a gambling hall. He purchased steamships to bring people to the island and built hotels to house them and restaurants to feed them. Wrigley owned the Chicago Cubs and had the team hold their spring training on Catalina from 1921-1951. Tourists came in droves, including many Hollywood stars.

After William Wrigley’s death in 1932, his son Philip took over and continued to promote Avalon and Catalina Island. During World War II, the island served as a training facility for the military, but after the war tourism would continue to grow. Philip was sensible enough to think of the long-term health of the island and signed over 88% of the island’s land to the Catalina Island Conservancy in 1975 to be kept in its natural state in perpetuity.

I had a great time in Avalon. I enjoyed some beach time at Descano Beach under the palm trees where I also tried the island’s signature cocktail: Buffalo Milk. I toured the Casino and saw the world’s largest circular uninterrupted dance floor. Our guide told us stories about the heard of bison which was brought to the island for the filming of Zane Grey’s The Vanishing American in the 1920s. They were left on the island and now roam free in a herd of over 150. We learned how Norma Jean Dougherty moved to the island when she was 16 and married a naval enlisted man. She worked pulling taffy at Lloyd’s Candy Shop (which is still there) and her husband was a projectionist at the Casino. Years later the world would meet her as Marilyn Monroe, but the island still remembers her as Norma Jean. An exotic bird park on the island was used to record the sounds used for the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. The stories went on and on, one more interesting than the next. I learned more island stories at Avalon’s wonderful history museum and enjoyed a wonderful fresh fish dinner at the Lobster Trap and delicious strawberry pancakes at the Pancake Cottage the next morning. I climbed up the hill to the beautiful Chime Tower which chimes the quarter hour and provides amazing views over the town. I was only there for a day and a half, but I felt like it was much longer. I will always remember my time on beautiful Catalina Island and will definitely return in the future. I hope you enjoy these photos from Avalon, the jewel of Catalina Island.

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