Stepping into the Road

"A lone wolf doesn't tread paths its ilk leaves;
it makes its own footprints in the snow."  
_{~Savas Mounjid}

Welcome to Lone Wolf Journeys! I’m your intrepid blogger, Mike. Lone Wolf Journeys is a place for independent travelers to get inspired and begin taking some epic journeys of their own. Along the way, readers will also pick up some practical tips and information that will hopefully aid them in planning their adventures, whether your destination is a remote desert outpost, a sunny Caribbean island or a bustling urban metropolis.

But first, a little bit about me:

When I was a kid, I had a subscription to National Geographic Magazine. I would wait with excitement and anticipation for each issue to arrive in the mail. Reading through the articles, looking at the amazing photos and maps, I fantasized about traveling the world, going on adventures and documenting them with a camera and a pen. I even wrote to the National Geographic Society asking them what kind of education I would need to become a contributor to their magazine one day. They wrote back to me with information about careers in journalism, while gently cautioning me that they don’t often have openings for the kind of job I was looking for and when they do, the applicants need to be extremely qualified just to be considered.

As it turns out, I went another route with my career, becoming a high school history teacher in Baltimore, Maryland. I try to convey the wonder of our world and its people to a new generation. I have also kept up my amateur interest in journalism, having worked on a number of small publications in various capacities over the years. For over a decade, I have been the faculty advisor for my school’s student newspaper. So photography and writing have always been a part of my life.

Over the years, I have been lucky to have the opportunity to experience a lot of amazing places. One summer in college, I worked in Yellowstone National Park, where I got to watch a baby moose learn to walk, and tracked wolves with the legendary ranger and author, Rick McIntyre. I lived for short stints in New York City, Philadelphia, and Seattle. I took a train across the country from west to east. But I still hungered to see the world beyond my country’s borders. So I planned a 2 month, 6 country trip to Central America on a shoestring budget. It was a lifechanging experience and from that point on, I knew I wanted to travel every chance I got. Since then, I have been to Canada, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Mongolia, China, and most recently, Iceland. I’ve explored ancient ruins, dipped my toes in the frigid waters of Lake Baikal, taken the Trans-Siberian Railroad, slept in gers, ridden a camel to the edge of the Gobi desert, entered the Forbidden City, and hiked atop the Great Wall of China. In Iceland, I sailed into a glacier lagoon, watched seals and puffins, arctic terns and arctic foxes, and witnessed a live volcanic eruption.

Throughout all of these adventures, I have taken great pleasure in sharing my experiences through the medium of photography. Until recently this has mostly been via Facebook and other social media sites. However, I finally pulled the plug on my Facebook account in March 2023. At that same time, I created a free travel blog so I could continue sharing my travel photos with friends, family, and anyone else who wanted to see them. However, I soon realized that I needed more storage space than a free blog would provide, so I decided to take the plunge and buy my own domain that could give me full creative control and hopefully reach a wider audience. Where I take things from here will depend in large part on you, my readers. If you like what you see here, please leave comments and share it on social media (or if you ditched it like me, share it directly with your friends and family). If you want me to write about a particular topic or location, send me a message at mike@lonewolftours.com and I will see if I can make it happen. I plan on writing at least one or two posts a month, and if I see a lot of traffic picking up, I might increase the frequency of my posts.

I’m going to start the blog with three articles I wrote about my recent trip Amsterdam, Belgium, and Paris (originally published on my old blog over the past few weeks). Later this year, I will be visiting Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Portugal, and Morocco, and I will definitely be sharing stories and photos from those destinations. In future years, I hope to go even further afield, to places like India, Nepal, Central Asia (the “Stans”), Greenland or other destinations in the Arctic Circle, or perhaps even Antarctica if I can swing the hefty price tag. I’ll also eventually post photos and notes from some of my previous trips, like the ones I mentioned earlier in this post, as well as some shorter posts of a different type, focusing on tips and ideas for independent travel. I don’t claim to be a great photographer or a talented writer worthy of a Pulitzer like the ones who filled the pages of those National Geographics from my childhood, but I hope this blog will help you cultivate your love of travel and inspire you to go on some trips of your own. Wanderlust is contagious like that. To quote JRR Tolkien in the Fellowship of the Ring, “It’s a dangerous business…going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.”