a year of midwest adventure :)
rock climbing, sea kayaking, and backpacking oh my!
This time last year, I was driving across the country with all my belongings packed into my Subaru feeling like a failure because I couldn’t hack it on the West Coast. Four days of driving, the coast fading to the Cascades then high desert then the Rockies. North Dakota plains and eventually the Northland, woods and lakes and ice. Home.
Last new years eve, I wrote all of the reasons i am the problem from a hotel room in Fargo. It became my most read Substack of 2023.
Back in the Midwest, 2024 was actually a great year— I haven’t had one of those in a while.
A year in review of Midwest Adventure (plus, add these trips to your list for 2025)
From my solo southern Midwest Road Trip to my first custom women’s paddling trips, here’s what I’ve been up to in 2024:
January: back in the midwest
I tried on pants in the Minneapolis REI. I met up with a friend, Rachel, and we explored some Minnesota slot canyons (which freeze for a short window every winter and become hikable— given the current weather the are likely currently impassable).
Mostly though, I spent the month getting used to being back home in the Midwest, and appreciating how good it felt to be back in a place I wanted so badly to be.
February: winter kayaking & the Keweenaw
By February it became clear we were not having an ordinary winter up north— just one long, gray March. I visited the Keweenaw Peninsula on a project with Visit Keweenaw. I went winter kayaking and took one of my favorite photos of the year:
I wrote this piece, which promptly became one of the most read things I’ve ever written, both in the audio essay I posted on Instagram, the source piece, and the version of it that was republished at Paddling Magazine.
My sister came to visit, and I got to play North Shore tour guide.
March: Arizona Spring Break
In March, I hopped on a plane and headed out to the Grand Canyon for a super cool little backpacking trip.
Read the trip report here and the how-to guide here.
April: home & mud season
In April I stayed home and worked on freelancing projects. It was uneventful.
May: from winter straight into summer
At the tail end of April, I packed up my Subaru to spent three weeks travelling the Midwest, alone. I started off along the Great River Road (my favorite was Wyalusing State Park), then headed south to the Shawnee National Forest. I revisited an old favorite, the Red River Gorge, before heading home to Michigan to spend some time with family.
Read part one here, part two here, and part three here.
June: sea kayaking season, driftless wisconsin, rock climbing
I hosted my first women’s rock climbing trip and discovered I am terrible at rock climbing. I spent a weekend exploring the Driftless Region of Wisconsin, which I found surprisingly beautiful.
Guiding season started to guide busy, and I started to spend more and more time out on the water.
July & August: out in the islands
I spent all of July and August out in the Apostle Islands. I guided two women’s trips (join the 2025 trip), which were honestly two of my favorite overnight kayaking trips I’ve ever guided— the first trip we had crazy weather and it was high intensity with a lot of pushing at comfort zones and type to fun, but we made it to some of the most unique sea caves in the Apostles. The second one was near perfect weather the whole way, with a crew that meshed seamlessly and crushed miles with plenty of beach swims and the best attitudes I’ve ever encountered on an overnight trip— no one complained, not even once and everyone was so completely in the moment.
I also literally forgot to pack my tent on one of the trips I was guiding, which led to this kind of iconic sunset shot. Reality is it was about 90 degrees and humid all night. I slept in a bug shirt and woke up with about 20 bites on the scrap of wrist that was exposed. Zero stars.
September: last trip of the season, rock climbing, Ely
By September I was fried on guiding. I was tired of helping people set up tents and answering the same questions. The overnights aren’t so bad— they’re more work physically, but I enjoy getting to know people for real and helping them “become” paddlers and campers. The day trips got really hard.
Guiding is ultimately a service industry job; people do not always treat service industry workers well, especially when they’re on vacation. I wrote I don’t care about your vacation :) after a particularly rough weekend, and it became my second most read substack post of the year.
The guiding season ended; I went up the North Shore for my second women’s climbing trip, which was nothing short of literal magic. (Shout out to Emily and Cheyanne who came to both climbing trips and then spent literally this whole weekend traipsing around the woods with me. I thought the women’s trips would be a fun way to help other people make friends, but honestly I made a ton of friends too :)
October: everything sometimes works out
I think that most people in their twenties have a rough patch out of college. I know I definitely did. I was lucky in that I got to travel a lot, but truth be told for so much of what has looked really glamorous on social media I have had no clue what I’m doing. This year though things have finally sort of fallen into place, both with my freelancing work, and my personal life, and moving to a place I love. If you’re in a place where it feels like you’re lost, and nothing is working out for you and you’re falling behind and a failure, read this.
One thing I glossed over somewhere in the September-October range is that I now live within a reasonable day trip distance from the Porcupine Mountains, where I’ve been spending a lot more time exploring.
November: inside time and very outside time
I went whitewater paddling for the first time in November! I also barely left the house beyond that. A quick jaunt to the Black River in the UP, a quick trip up the North Shore. Looking back, it always seems like I did more than I actually did. November felt really slow for me.
December: Berlin, winter paddling, right now I’m in Michigan
Which brings us right up to this month. At the beginning of December I headed out to visit my best friend and college roommate at her home in Berlin. I also got super, super lucky and made it out on an absolutely magic winter kayaking trip at the sea caves.
Right now though, I’m home in Michigan visiting with my family. They’ve got a lot of snow here but it’s raining and it’s melting. I don’t have any real plans, just visit with them and eventually drive back home, the long route over the bridge and through the UP back to my home at the western side of the Big Lake.
2024 was actually a pretty great year, for the first time in a long time. I’m really looking forward to 2025. I have a soft resolution to only buy used and from small businesses/artists whenever possible. I sort of already do that, and extremely rarely buy new clothes and things like that, but I always think there’s room to be more conscious about the way we consume things.
Wherever you are, I hope you have a great New Year and enjoy this in-between time before 2025 begins,
Maddy
Great adventure Maddy