Anne and Mike Poe hiking Frigid Air Pass Crested Butte Colorado

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Mike Poe harbored a gypsy soul that nourished his life choices from the inside out. It was not that he wouldn’t stay put ~ he couldn’t. His learning curve was exponentially related to the number of new experiences he could bump into and chase after. His internal fullness fed on change. It did not matter that where he had been or what he had done filled him with jubilation; he could not linger in just one pleasure and succumb to its comfort and security because they were more horizons that he had to explore.

His instinctive spontaneity burst out of a compact muscularity that rippled like a gated thoroughbred anticipating sudden release. Shocks of brown curls fell against a neck as stout as an oak tree; his thick broad shoulders were his Czechoslovakian grandfather’s bequest.  Full moon brown eyes sparkled with curiosity, mischief and dreams. A temple crown of thick, bushy eyebrows said his clean-shaven face could grow a beard by mid-morning.

In 1965, when young American men were exploring the new drug scene, expressing free love and unraveling societal bonds, Mike too fled the confines of his strict Minnesota upbringing and college obligations to taste life on his own terms.  He hitchhiked through Europe in the dead of winter; a pair of downhill skis and boots served as his only companions.

When he returned to the states, he tried for two years to use his business degree by marketing products for a major drug store chain in Southern California, but the walls of predictability tightened a noose around his zest for living so he left ~ and became an enviable 1960s ski bum at Lake Tahoe’s Squaw Valley. Life was simply too wonderful to waste.

Spring thaw transplanted him from his snowy mountains to the beaches of Honolulu. An unexpected opportunity, a hidden lust, prompted him to purchase a burned out hull of a fifty-foot catamaran.

I cast off my chains of filial obligation in June 1966. That was the day I graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio and fulfilled my parents’ and my grandmother’s dreams for me. For Grandmother had married into the fortunes of Pittsburgh Steel and she placed the social status that fashioned her and my father’s lives onto my mother’s shoulders, my two brothers’, my sister’s, and mine ~ the end of the line.  My dreams saw me sailing my own Kon Tiki around the world, galloping across the badlands on my own faithful Black Beauty, or plunging down the Amazon River in my own dugout tree, but my choices remained harnessed, my directions guided by love and concern steeped in a smothering propriety.  Banned from making my dreams a reality, I escaped into books and fashioned a College major out of world languages and religions with the hopes that someday I would touch them in the flesh.

Then that day arrived. I had discovered a job in that graduation year that unleashed a festering wanderlust too long smothered by suburbia.

I had no choice upon my return to the States. I needed to forsake the former familiarity and obligations of home and chase after new experiences. I went to Vail, Colorado with a girlfriend.  We had never skied.

Book images of Hawaii’s warm beaches flashed through my snow-bound brain as I visualized a tropical paradise for my recovery. It was easy to find a good paying job as a folk singer in Davey Jones locker in Honolulu. It enabled me to put my travel yearnings on slow burn and settle into a musically creative recuperation. Life overflowed with rich fulfillment.

For the next twenty-seven years together, we structured a hodgepodge of jobs around our common desire to explore. We eventually settled in Sandpoint, Idaho where white water kayaking, mountain backpacking, and glacier skiing mixed well with working for a logging mill, for the U.S. Forest Service, teaching downhill skiing, owning a Shaklee business, a health food store, appraising Real Estate, and instructing Outward Bound wilderness canoe and whitewater rafting courses. Our adventurous lifestyle came to an abrupt halt in 1980 when I, after ten years of chronic sciatica, finally consented to lower back surgery.

A long, painfully slow road to recovery introduced us to a new activity: cycling. It did not hurt as much to ride a bike as to walk down the street or stand and wait. Over time, I was able to challenge the damaged nerves to respond and build up my weakened legs. By 1983, short rides had metamorphosed into our first big adventure: a six-month cycling odyssey from Costa Rica to Peru, much of it on cattle trails and beaches, including an attempt to make it through the road less Darien Gap of Panama. Exhausted, but stronger, we took the rewards of our accomplishment and carried them into the future.”

Excerpt from On Our Own A Bicycling Adventure in South East Asia,

by Anne and Mike Poe

Anne and Mike Poe had been adventuring for 43 years. Their first bicycle journey in 1984 was a result of long imprisoned dreams. Mike had always wanted to travel in Central and South America. Since they were not bus travelers, they decided to ride bikes. Neither of them had ever ridden more than 20 miles. They chose to start in Costa Rica  because it was a peaceful country in the midst of 1980’s revolutions and strife. The plan was to go all the way to the tip of South America, but their route was so difficult, it took them six months just to get to ride on though Panama, Columbia, and Ecuador to Lima, Peru.

“We had become so used to traveling by bicycle, that on our way home from South America, we stopped over in Jamaica and cycled for two weeks around that beautiful island. By the time we made it back to our home in Idaho, it was summer. It felt so strange to drive a car, we much preferred to ride a bike, so we caught the ferry to Alaska, spent 2 months touring around, and then rode back to Idaho.”

The following winter did not put a crimp in Anne and Mike’s travels. They flew to Europe and found an apartment in Ischgl, Austria and spent four months ski touring on various glaciers.

The next winter, they went to Vail, Colorado and worked for the next six years as ski instructors. The summers, they spent working as Outward Bound instructors in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. It was there, on a course with eight students, that they had to deal with a rogue black bear. It attacked a 16 year old boy who was sitting by himself. The bear soon attacked two other parties nearby. You can read that story on www.//BWCAW_bear_attacks_of_1987

In 1988, Anne and Mike Poe drove to West Virginia and bicycled the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way to Tennessee. It was a thrilling 10 days through exciting fall color in an historical setting.

“In 1996, we drove our van all the way to Belize. Packed inside were our bicycles and our folding sea kayak. We kayaked for 14 days along the coast, and then found a fabulous bike route through Mayan villages, staying at Mayan homes that participated in a tourism Guesthouse project. That adventure is also featured in a published magazine article.”

Grinding corn in a Maya homestay program

El Tronador Argentina

Then back to Argentina in 2006. It is one of our favorite countries for hiking. We backpacked The Cerro Catedral outside of Bariloche, El Tronador,  and other destinations.