Mikah Meyer is about to embark on his next great adventure.
Starting Friday from State Line Wayside Park west of Montevideo, Minnesota, on the border with South Dakota, Meyer will run about 200 miles at a pace of 6 miles or so a day, traveling due east through Hutchinson, Medicine Lake and suburbs of the Twin Cities before reaching the Stillwater Lift Bridge on Oct. 11, National Coming Out Day. Meyer is an LGBTQ outdoorsman who has made it his mission to make the outdoors safe and inclusive. The Minnesotan took his first step on Monday, with a little help from Winnebago Industries in Forest City (Iowa).
Meyer picked up the new 2021 Solis 59PX Class-B Gas Camper Van, affectionately named “Soren the Solis.” The van retails for more than $100,000, but Meyer’s is a loaner. It’s built on the exact same frame upon which Meyer traveled to the national parks — with some notable exceptions.
Meyer, from Minneapolis, is not new to these types of road trips. He took his first in 2016, when his Lutheran pastor father died of esophageal cancer at 58. His father was a fan of road trips and was that year supposed to take Meyer off to college.
Instead, Meyer took a short road trip in his dad’s car. That turned into an annual experience/bucket list item – visiting all 419 U.S. National Park Service sites. In 2019, and three years to the minute after Meyer started his road trips, he finished it at the reflecting pool of the Lincoln Memorial.
Click here to read the whole story from Jaci Smith of the Globe Gazette in Mason City, Iowa.
Those journeys weren’t undertaken in style but they were done in a Winnebago, with the cargo van shell that Meyer rebuilt himself with the same queen-sized mattress he’d slept on for years, a solar-powered fridge and a 7-gallon jug of water.
