Friday, December 31, 2021

2021 Summary and Reflection Post

I have 3 more hikes to post from earlier this month, but the impending turning of the calendar says that it is time for my annual summary and reflection post.  2021 has been a challenging but rewarding year.  We hiked 52 new trails this year for a total of 127.2 miles.  The hikes came across 21 different states including 2 new states: Oregon and Washington.  With the addition of those two states, 49 states (and Canada) are now represented in this trail journal.  I had planned a trip to Hawaii for December to complete the 50 states, but the ongoing pandemic combined with my back injury from October told me that this would not be a good time to visit Hawaii.  We completed the transition from Mathprofhiker to Parking Full Time this year, and we added disc golf reviews to the fleet of blogs that comprise Parking Full Time.  The YouTube channel saw roughly a tripling in views this year, and we did our first foray into Bible study and prayer times with the Colossians Bible study on YouTube this past summer.  Overall, it has been a rewarding year on the trail with God's creation.

Looking forward to 2022, normally in this post I give a list of hiking trips I hope to do in the new year, but I am not going to do that this year.  2022 is going to be a transition year for me: it will mark my final year of math professing (hence the aforementioned rebranding of this project) and the first year of whatever comes next.  So I probably will not be doing my usual schedule of hiking trips this year.  My first priority is to let my back heal, which is happening but slowly.  I still hope to get out on the trail, and we will probably cross 900 hikes in this trail journal in the first half of the year.  IF I take a long summer hiking trip, it will be to the sand dunes around Lake Michigan.  Continued growth of the disc golf review blog and the YouTube channel is also desired.  Finally, we might add a stadium review blog for sports fans in 2022; we'll see.

Lord bless and see everyone on the trail in 2022,

Big Dave the Parker

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