The Great Wander of 2026 - Day 6 - Part 2

 

NOTE: My self-imposed rule for travel essays is 500 words exactly, no more, no less. But Camel's Hump deserves two essays, so here we are. 

The air felt heavier with moisture. The trees were thinning, the sounds were more distant, and rumbling of thunder far off threatened with its ominous echo against the rocks. On the other hand, when would I get this opportunity again? 

Near the summit, a lovely person and their dog warned me of how windy it was up there, to the point that it scared the poor little doggo. 

I should've listened. Moreso, I should've noted that even this person was taking the out-and-back. Now I know. 

What I later learned is called alpine tundra, an exceptionally rare landscape of terrain and flora, the ending of the trees gave way to massive rocks, unique moss, and absolutely no protection from the wind that would've made Gordon Lightfoot reconsider a few choice lyrics. Even having stood through Minnesota winters on the Big Lake, nothing prepared me for these gales though. 

Pulling out the camera I lugged along for this trip, my priorities quickly shifted to practicality and speed. These were no normal wind gusts, they were consistent, frigid, and made stability at any point an extreme difficulty. The photograph above does not capture the ferocity of these conditions, but it might be the one of which I'm most proud on this journey. 

The views were stunning, and that word undersells how incredible they were, even with the dreary conditions surrounding me. Different pockets of rain were intermittent throughout the panorama of visibility, a sign that I should not spend too much time getting back down. Oh, the folly of my decision to not do the out-and-back. "It's a mile longer," I said. "How much harder could it be?" I said. I should stop saying shit sometimes.

Then there were the signs about how fragile the flora on this peak are. Alpine tundra, as ere noted, is exceptionally rare, and Camel's Hump's peak is an example of this type of terrain. The second part of the "fragile plant life" sign directed hikers to "stay on the rocks." The white blazes were a guide, as tends to be the case on trails such as this. But, "staying on the rocks" turned out to be a significantly more difficult task than anticipated. 

Fortunately my bare arms were regaining feeling as I once again became submerged in the tree line. How they even got white blazes on some of these rock patterns is beyond me, but it no longer felt like a trail. Thank the gods I took my trekking poles for this one. Aids for joint impact on the ascent notwithstanding, having two extra posts of stability and reach is probably the only reason I completed this descent unscathed. 

The rocks were massive, and sometimes the descent required extension of 5-6 feet just to reach a stable landing point on the drop. Even still, some of these drops I could only drop to my ass and slide down out of fear for not being able to reach them adequately. 

5 hours. 6.7 miles. Yep. 

The Great Wander of 2026 - Day 6 - Part 1

The Great Wander of 2026

Day 6: May 29th, 2026

States Hiked: Vermont (8 total so far)

Trails Hiked: Camel's Hump via Forest City, Long, and Burrows Trail

Distance Hiked: 6.7 miles

Elevation Gain: 2536 ft

Cumulative Wander: 38.4 miles

Duration: 5h 8m

Now this was a fucking hike. 

I hadn't been to Vermont since 2017, and shall we say, my previous visits were not of the pursuit of hiking. That said though, memories of staying at a ski resort in May at a place with zen concepts instead of room numbers, lobby puppers, musical instruments, and a ski mountain free of tourists were prominent in my mind as I prepared to go on an adventure. This was why I'd opted for limited tracks until this point. I wanted to get out and do a real mountain. Not an Iron Range mountain, not a Mississippi Bluff, not even a delightful rock staircase in Wisconsin, I wanted to traverse a real mountain as I'd done with seven others in the summer of 2025. 

Though it was cheating on the concept of a wander a bit, I googled what the best mountain hikes in Vermont were, but I had a purpose in mind. I happened upon some discussion, where many contributors were saying that X and Y were good, family friendly, accessible, and wouldn't be too difficult, whereas Burrows would use muscles you didn't know you had. The one they were avoiding, Burrows: that was what I craved.

I checked the weather. Thunderstorms were possible later in the afternoon, which with summers on the east coast is practically an obvious consideration. Therefore, I found my destination as soon as I could, though perhaps I should've given a few extra seconds of thought to not wear a tanktop. Spoiler for later.

Nearly immediately, the trail reminded me of Cougar Mountain and other places in the Pacific Northwest that I hadn't visited since my summer in Washington. It may sound silly, but while the aesthetic was nearly identical, it somehow felt... older. Which, in the strictest of geological senses, is accurate, but still, this place felt ancient in grandeur and respect of the environment. I was captivated by its awestruck imposition. 

Vermont hikers are on a different level, though I did question my decision to do a longer, more difficult loop while seeing so many descending on the out-and-back. I should've listened. While strapped in with my hiking pack, covered in bug spray, leg strings clenched, and extra water stowed, many of the descending parties were in shorts with no supplies at all, much to my surprise and respect. The most badass of all though was a young woman coming down this slick, muddy, rocky trail with a very small baby strapped to her chest. What impressed me most about them as a whole? All of them followed trail code. All of them were extremely nice, not Minnesota Nice. All of them seemed sincere, and even I, the mountain recluse, stopped for several lovely conversations. 

The mud was deep, slippery, and abundant with puddles. The rocks invoked dry spot hopscotch, but weren't exactly arid. The inclines got more intense and the air felt like rain. By contrast to later, this would seem a stroll in the woods. 

The Great Wander of 2026 - Day 5

The Great Wander of 2026

Day 5: May 28th, 2026

States Hiked: New York, Vermont (8 total so far)

Trails Hiked: Capital Area Regional Welcome Center, Crown Point Trail

Distance Hiked: 1.0 miles, 4.6 miles

Elevation Gain: 227 ft

Cumulative Wander: 31.7 miles

Duration: 20m, 1h 33m

I really, really didn't want to get out of the car for a while. 

The skies looked ominous, I wasn't eager to go out in Pennsylvania again with my return imminent, and memories of the last time I headed northeast in the state didn't exactly endear me to traveling there. Former friends who turned out to be liars at the most critical of times, an unfortunate incident at an Arby's, and a lack of any affinity for that show that took place in Scranton, my energy was lacking after sitting through an entire live wrestling show for the first time in a solid 10 years. 

Also the skies grew even more ominous as my trip approached New York. What kind of fraud was I to at least get some steps in at a freaking rest stop with an Adventure Lab? One who sat in traffic near Schenectady and thought, as the opening of Tin Cup would so eloquently remind us, "a little bit is better than nada." And, perhaps, a great philosopher would also proclaim, "sometimes you want the whole enchilada." 

My travels continued into the Adirondacks, and I'm pretty sure I missed the appropriate turn-off to head into Vermont, but the wonderful thing about a wander is that there are no accidental turns when there is no destination. That is precisely what led to my choice of hiking location, albeit on the second attempt. 

The first was a wander up near Ticonderoga, depressing as that area was to drive through unfortunately. The idea of adding a mountain to the wander statistics list was indeed endearing, but the mountain apparently closed at 4:30, as mountains are wont to do. The rocks are always changing, and sometimes a jiggy jaggy hilly boi needs a nappy around the same time as the rowdy folx start storming the Golden Corral for the early bird special. Tale as old as time, song as old as the whole enchilada. 

If there's one thing that can get me to turn around on a dime and go back because I need to go climb it, it is a majestic bridge I've never seen before.

Okay, it's not the one thing. See also: lighthouse, a loon calling, a goth in fishnet, Timeless Toni Storm. 

The sun was near set, a lighthouse was off to the right (so it was a two-fer), and I didn't see a single other person on the bridge or the lovely rustic journey along the ancient fort to the side. Plus, for the second time on this trip, I knocked another state off the list by crossing a bridge and raising the technicality flag for such joyous exploitation of colonial lines and their arbitrary tendencies to accumulate on lists such as this one. 

There were geocaches, there were giant stones that men decorated the hills with, and there was a trail that descended into buggy madness. Not all wandering hikes are glorious, sometimes they're just vague specificities to fit a certain absurd need. 

The Great Wander of 2026 - Day 4

The Great Wander of 2026

Day 4: May 27th, 2026

States Hiked: Pennsylvania (6 total so far)

Trails Hiked: The Parking Garage to the Arena and Back

Distance Hiked: 1.9 miles

Elevation Gain: 17 ft

Cumulative Wander: 26.1 miles

Duration: 

Does this technically count as a hike?

Probably not. 

Am I going to make up for the Pennsylvania count on the way back through, since I grew up there and know the spots?

Most likely.

Is anyone but my own dumb head holding me to this arbitrary standard I made up for no other reason than setting ridiculous goals akin to “do the Minnesota Hiking Club in one winter?”

Definitely not. 

But hey, when you're already heading to the east coast, Pennsylvania besties call up and say they have tickets to AEW Dynamite, and your schedule is flexible since the whole point of a wander is having very few actual plans, well… shit got bumped back a few weeks. 

Four years of commuting to Philly for uni must've been a big factor in not having returned there but once in the nine years since I accorded my graduation in case 45 showed up again like the previous year. 

Oh, the sentences one gets to say as a token poor kid at a rich school…

Speaking of Shit Privileged White Kids From Prep Academies Say, a game more popularly known as Rory Gilmore in seasons 1-3, the show was at Temple, and the way those kids reacted when I drove Uber there…

“You went to Temple? It's so dangerous there!”

“I know, I got murdered three times on the way home.”

Five of us packed in for the ride, and what a nostalgia trip it was, only this time I wasn't driving on the roads designed for particularly stately horse carriages and Ben Ftanklin’s ere days of the party bus prototypes. Essentially cuddling with my new friend as three of us sat in the backseat, the conversations and whimsy was in full effect. 

The “hike” was walking from the parking garage to the venue and back, but when one is dressed like chick Darby Allin in vinyl shorts, fishnet, and the quality makeup of a professional dominatrix goth who also officiates weddings as Crow-era Sting, the standards of difficulty are alerted appropriately. 

The show itself was tremendous, but more fun was watching my four carpool cuddle buddies experience their first live wrestling show, unlike this moderately jaded fuck who told stories about the show in Philly 20 years ago where I slept on a marble dorm room floor (oh to be young again), melted in the sun while hoping that LiveJournal friend (Google it, kids) showed up with the tickets he promised, and actively enjoyed the Philly crowd special called “We Don't Care Who Wins As Long As John Cena Loses.”

The true wander was about to begin, but calling an audible to keep a five-year-old promise to go to their first show with my favorite people beats upholding the roles I made up myself every time. I was going to get plenty of hiking in. This was an opportunity that only happens once, and I'll pay my own late fees by doing a difficult Pennsylvania hike on the way back.

The Great Wander of 2026 - Day 3

The Great Wander of 2026

Day 3: May 26th, 2026

States Hiked: Michigan, Indiana, Ohio (5 total so far)

Trails Hiked: Riverview Park (Niles, Michigan), Loon Lake Reserve (Angola, Indiana), Wauseon, Ohio (Adventure Labs)

Distance Hiked: 1.8 miles, 1.0 miles, 4.3 miles

Elevation Gain: 43 ft., 52 ft., 69 ft.

Cumulative Wander: 24.3 miles

Duration: 3h 12m

I could've picked up Illinois on the list, but after driving into Chicago on Memorial Day and spending 20 minutes trying to get one block (because what's the best place to stand around on Memorial Day, the middle of the street is the best place to stand around on Memorial Day, because something something the troops freedom sad face?), I opted to yeet myself from the state rather than try to figure out where in the concrete jungle I should go while also hoping I'd escape the worst of Tuesday morning rush hour.

Turns out, anywhere in Chicago would've been better than Niles, Michigan. 

I spoke in Flint in 2017, and it was a transformative experience in my life. That not withstanding, I am an Ohio native and come from several generations of Buckeyes, and even though I don't care about sports nearly as much as I used to, crossing that state border still makes me feel like some kind of traitor, even knowing that states are irrelevant, arbitrary, invisible colonial lines. Then again, I'm tallying up said lines, so maybe I'm the problem. 

The roads immediately upon crossing into Michigan start feeling like they're going to punish you and your poor decision making for daring to enter. I only picked this place because it was close to the Indiana Turnpike, and I wanted to make the cameo brief while checking it off the list. All three hikes today were shorter than my standards normally allow, but I needed to make Pennsylvania at a reasonable hour. 

Then I got called a "dumb fuck" for daring to get in the way of a mediocre white guy while he was jogging. Slight overreaction for a momentary inconvenience, gosh Chad LaRue, what are you gonna do when someone gives you a real problem like stopping for a red light when you didn't want to? Second thought, bad idea, you'd probably blow out a tire accelerating your F-150 through one of those intersections at some dangerous speed like 30. Fuck your face, douchebag. 

After my bad mood of that hike, which had a cool bridge and little else, Indiana was a temptation to skip. After all, the most amusing thing in Indiana is normally the Bill Engvall billboard near the Ohio border advertising a show that happened in... ::checks sign:: 20-goddamn-18. Here's your sign, indeed. But once I checked the AllTrails map near Angola and saw something called Loon Lake, well... Loon Whore, thy name is me. It was a tick-infested nothing of a trail, but it checked the list.

Wauseon, Ohio had a bunch of Adventure Labs... for some reason. But it's emblematic of the reason I love to randomly wander: cool old buildings, amazing pink house, mural of magicians, repurposed train depot, and a bunch of Geocaching finds to approach my monthly goal. I still don't know how to pronounce your name, Wauseon, but you're an all-star... at least compared with Niles, Michigan. Extremely low bar to clear, but alas, cleared nonetheless.

The Great Wander of 2026 - Day 2

The Great Wander of 2026

Day 2: May 25th, 2026

States Hiked: Wisconsin, Minnesota

Trail Hiked: St. Croix Loop

Distance Hiked: 5.6 miles

Elevation Gain: 351 ft. 

Cumulative Wander: 17.2 miles

Duration: 1h 37m

Before you accuse me of being lazy for knocking off the second state this close to my home area, hear me out. 

Something sucked out my mind and replaced it with stupid on this day, and I did the best I could without completely losing it. 

My first true wander in years started off with buggering it up no less than five times just simply trying to find my way to saying goodbye to someone. I went to the wrong branch of the restaurant, then got off the wrong exit (twice) trying to get to their partners’ place (that I’ve driven to no less than seven times), missed the turn to get back on the 94, and parked in the wrong spot trying to use a gender neutral restroom on the way out. By the time I reached the last part of that series of shenanigans, I conceded my own mental state to hike through a tourist town on a holiday Sunday, put on my headphones and my “shit is way too fucking bright” sunglasses, and ignored everyone and everything until I completed it. 

Half of it is in Wisconsin, and I parked on the Houlton side, so it counts. I hiked in the second state on my list. I even stopped in Beloit to do an Adventure Lab for all of .3 miles later, so if this one doesn’t count, I’ll combine the both for the technicality of the checklist I completely made up. 

I’ve hiked the Stillwater loop more times than nearly any other trail in Minnesota, even before I really considered myself a hiker at all. It’s a lovely trail, albeit a heavily-touristed one, as it crosses two impressive bridges to complete the loop. Granted, one is the iconic lift bridge, so it’s vastly more appealing. The other is a beautiful suspension bridge that would be wonderful for hiking and the views as it ascends (or descends, depending on the direction of travel) over the St. Croix Valley into/out of Wisconsin, but what ruins it is not just the amount of traffic, but how loud said traffic is. Nothing quite says “escape into nature” like Dale and his souped up F-150 that’s like all his other friends’ souped up F-150s in order to showcase how he’s a rebel and a unique individual, floor it while crossing lanes and making sure to own the libs with that sick, sick obnoxiously loud engine designed to do nothing more than tell who he is as a person in enginicular form. 

But, after screwing up five times, which is five more times than I usually do while traveling (I wasn’t called the human GPS for my tendency to make navigational errors), I really didn’t care about anything but putting in a few miles and doing a hard reset on this Great Wander of 2026. Got it out of the way, headed to Chicago once again as my first resting point, and put some miles and a pushpin on the map.

The Great Wander of 2026 - Day 1

 

The Great Wander of 2026

Day 1: May 24th, 2026

State Hiked: Minnesota

Trail Hiked: Big Rivers Regional Trail

Distance Hiked: 11.6 miles

Elevation Gain: 499 ft. 

Duration: 3h 32m

I came to the conclusion that I needed to return to my roots. 

After traveling for so many years with the purpose of seeing another, or speeding somewhere else in the country for an emergency, I started to realize that while my frequent flier miles weren’t accumulating anymore, my travel budget had concurrently expanded rapidly. I’d limited my wandering to a confined area in the hopes of finding the everlasting, lost-to-me home through which I hoped my spirit would find solace and station. But, as it turned out, even with graduating DBT therapy, a proper diagnosis and the according medication, and the happiest and most stable state of being I’d ever experienced, the nomadic spirit does not dissipate. 

I have this deep deep feeling in my ribs again…

Therefore, with all the PTO I’ve managed to not use, I decided that I needed to wander like I once did in my youth, while leaving out the part of not having any gas money, or the mental stability to pay attention to where I was, or a fixed address, or any kind of support system, or any kind of impulse control. But in every other way, just like it used to be. 

I set an arbitrary goal for myself: 17 states/provinces in which I would hike (and Geocache.) Very little else was permanent and non-adjustable, as evidenced by bumping up the dates by two weeks when some friends invited me to AEW: Dynamite in Philadelphia, so returning to my alma mater and keeping a long held promise to be with them when they went to their first wrestling show, I was more than willing to accommodate that into my (lack of an) itinerary. That’s the great thing about wandering with no particular destination; never late, never early, always right where one needs to be.

I started off the wandering by knocking out the easiest state, the one where I live. I didn’t take the car, for during a holiday weekend in nice weather, it wasn’t even worth trying to find a place that wasn’t flooded with trail tourists, so I walked across the 494 and finally tried to get the Verified Complete badge that had eluded me several other times on the Big Rivers Regional Trail. Despite there being more bikes than mosquitos, and my personal distaste for the branch of the marked trail that requires crossing roads and meandering through suburban hell, I managed to finally achieve that squiggly circle on the fourth attempt. 

This trail is lovely, though I imagine it’s more fun on a bike. Running next to the rivers, looking down at Pike Island where they split, and also making a brief cameo in Mendota (no Heights), it’s adequate. I wasn’t hiking for the enjoyment of it, it was just to remove the need of hiking before I left the state and the real travel began the next day. 

I am my own arrow, I am my own home. It’s alright, it’s all I’ve ever known.