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It’s my ten year anniversary of reaching Machu Picchu after an arduous four-day hike of the Inca Trail through rain, sleet, and altitude sickness. Despite my tribulations, the journey and the destination were more than worth it. It’s an experience I will never forget.
My traveling has been on hold since the pandemic—I hope to get back to it again someday soon. In the meantime, here are my journals from the entire Peru trip, culminating in my arrival at Machu Picchu.
The Peru Journals:
Last year, Amazon launched a new web fiction platform geared toward episodic, serialized storytelling called Kindle Vella. This week, I have thrown my hat into the ring as a Vella author. However, rather then tell one serialized story, I decided to experiment with using it as an outlet for my short stories. Thus, I have launched a new anthology series called Millers Grove, based on an idea I’ve long had to compile my short stories into a Twilight Zone-ish anthology centered around a single small town.
I have so far published five episodes, with five more to come later this year based on interest and engagement. From what I have read, Vella is not likely to be a lucrative platform for the average writer, but at the very least it gives me the opportunity to release some of my content that may not otherwise fit into traditional formats while testing the viability of the platform. One complaint I have so far is that Amazon does not let you link Vella content to your Amazon author page, which is a big missed opportunity for cross-promotion with your other published work. It seems that Amazon wants to keep Vella as a self-contained ecosystem that its users never leave. I hope that is something they change one day.
If you feel inclined to give my anthology a look-see, I would be grateful for any reviews—or for thumbs up on individual stories that you may enjoy 🙂. The first three episodes are free. Subsequent episodes are unlocked with tokens. If you are new to the platform, you can claim 200 free tokens. While Kindle Vella is designed to be read within the Kindle app on mobile devices, you can also read the stories in a web browser.
Here is the synopsis:
Nestled deep in the heart of the Pine Barrens, a spooky stretch of New Jersey wilderness made famous by the Jersey Devil, is the mysterious community of Millers Grove. On the surface it looks like any other small town, but something sinister lurks beneath the veneer, setting the stage for this multi-genre anthology series of tales exploring themes ranging from the wonder of the fantastical to the drama of the real world, from the horror of the supernatural to the mortal darkness within humanity.
I hope you’ll check it out!
I’m finally getting around to sharing travel photos again after a long layoff—(the instagram fiasco soured me on photo sharing for a while and in the interim I switched my attention to writing prose again)—but I’m back.
First up: Prince Edward Island. We only allotted two days to spend here but it ended up being one of our favorite legs of the trip. We stayed on the less-touristy northeast side of the island at a charming place on a cliff overlooking the sea called the Johnson Shore Inn. The view from our room was spectacular. The entire visit was relaxing and serene, and during our walks it felt like we had the entire island to ourselves. I only wish we could have spent more time here.
This collection includes shots from the inn and our hikes along the shore and the cliffs, as well as a couple of shots from our visit to the Souris Historic Lighthouse.
Click on any photo to open up a gallery.
Nine weeks ago I was kicked off Instagram.
“Kicked off?”, you might ask. “Wow, considering the type of behavior that’s permitted on Instagram, you must have done something really horrible to get yourself banned. What was it?”
The answer? Nobody knows. And Instagram/Facebook is not talking. All I know is that I somehow twice ran afoul of Instagram’s flawed “suspicious activity” detection algorithm within the span of two months. I managed to get my account restored the first time, but now when I try to log in, all I get is a message stating that my account was deactivated for violating their terms of service.
Umm, what violation? All I did was post photography pics and like photography pics. I was dumbfounded.
So I clicked on the link they provide if you think your account was deactivated by mistake. From there I filled out a form and then received the following automated email from some weird facebook address (everything in this process is automated, which is the crux of the problem):
(code withheld for privacy)
Please make sure that the photo you send:
– Includes the above code hand-written on a clean sheet of paper, followed by your full name and username
– Includes both your hand that’s holding the sheet of paper and your entire face
– Is well-lit, and is not too small, dark or blurry
– Is attached to your reply as a JPEG file
What a ridiculous hoop to have to jump through, but what choice did I have? I was angry and I let it show in this admittedly testy reply that I sent along with the silly photo they demanded:
Four days passed without hearing anything, but it gave me time to cool down, and I decided to follow up with what I felt was a more diplomatic message:
Another eleven days passed without a single word from Instagram/Facebook. Although I no longer really cared whether I got my account back, it occurred to me that there are links from my web site that are now broken, and that the “About the Author” page in my physical books directs readers to my Instagram account, which now does not exist. So I followed up with another message:
But it’s not just about my Instagram account. You are damaging my brand as a published author. I have physical books out there pointing to my Instagram account on the “About the Author” pages. Now any readers visiting my account are getting a broken link. If you refuse to restore my account, or worse yet, if you give my Instagram ID to somebody else so that my readers are directed to a stranger’s account that I have no affiliation with, you will do further damage to my brand. Please fix this.
Another two weeks passed. Still nothing, which prompted the following terse message:
Another 19 days passed with no response from Facebook/Instagram, so I resorted to a twitter thread. I knew this was pointless because neither Facebook nor Instagram has a customer support account on twitter (big surprise), but what did I have to lose? So I repeatedly tagged every related account I could think of. (Side note: whenever you tag Instagram with a complaint, you get spammed by multiple accounts claiming they know somebody who can get your account reactivated, a clear indication that the accidental banning issue is widespread if scammers have latched onto it.)
As I repeatedly tried to explain to @facebook in followup messages, anyone who spends 5 minutes with my @instagram account would find one of the most mundane accounts on the entire platform. All I do is post/like photography pics. The idea that I violated anything is laughable.
It was the 2nd time I had run afoul of @instagram’s flawed ‘suspicious activity’ algorithm–I was able to get my account restored the 1st time. In both cases, my apparent crime was accessing my account via my laptop and liking a few pics. @Facebook doesn’t care. @InstagramComms
The only reason I even want my @instagram account back at this point is so links from my website/books are not broken. Even if I manage to get it back, I’ll probably never again interact with it for fear of once again running afoul of @facebook’s ‘suspicious activity’ algorithm.
Honestly, @instagram is no longer a good platform for photographers anyway since they @facebook-ified it. I’m seeking an alternative to share my photography, but it would still be nice to have an active insta account so that my already sold books aren’t pointing to a dead page.
The fact that neither @instagram nor @facebook have a customer service/support account, nor any real way to contact them, shows how few craps they give for their users. So I am fully aware that this thread was just spitting into the wind, but it felt good to vent anyway. /fin
[Dec 28]
Addendum: I’ve resorted to filling out the “account was deactivated by mistake” form every few days until either @instagram or @Facebook finally has the decency to respond. I won’t hold my breath. @InstagramComms @Meta @MetaNewsroom
I’ve done the last item above about a dozen times now, but I’ve never again received the automated email like I did the first time I filled out the form, which leads me to believe that my ID was flagged from any further communication. So I’ve come to the realization that I’m never getting my account back, and that it was never even under consideration, which led to the following final kiss-off message:
And that’s that. I’m not broken up about not being on Instagram anymore–as I mentioned in my twitter thread, Instagram is no longer a good outlet for photographers anyway since they Facebookified the platform–but I am irritated that my books are now pointing readers to a dead account (or one that may be given to somebody else at some point). Facebook/Instagram doesn’t care. They don’t have to. When you have a monopoly, you’re free to treat your consumers like garbage because it has zero impact on your bottom line. It’s no wonder that there’s a growing movement in Congress to break up big tech firms like Facebook.
I will probably never know why I was banned from Instagram. I don’t even think Instagram knows. It was a decision made by a poorly-written algorithm, not a human being.
The moral of the story: If your Instagram account gets deactivated for some phantom violation of their terms of service, don’t even bother trying to get it back. You won’t. No amount of messages, tweets, filled-out forms, or silly photos of yourself with your name and info on a piece of paper will make a difference. You’re essentially calling a disconnected phone number–there’s nobody listening on the other end.
This collection compiles the photos I shot while walking around San Francisco at night. Fishermans Wharf and Pier 39 feature prominently, along with some photos of various buildings.
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
Here are some animals I encountered during my hikes in Glacier National Park. I was particularly thrilled that I was able to see a bighorn sheep in the wild on my way back down from Grinnell Glacier.
Click on any photo to open a full-screen gallery.
This is a collection of panorama and HDR photos from Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, and Zion national parks, as well as Cedar Breaks National Monument. The vast majority of these were not originally shot as panorama or HDR, but were converted from separate photos that I felt looked better merged together. The two that were actually shot as HDR/panorama are captioned as “True Panorama” or “True HDR.”
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
View More Southern Utah Photos View More Bryce Canyon Photos
View More Zion Photos View More North Rim Grand Canyon Photos
Cedar Breaks National Monument was my second stop on the way to Zion from Bryce Canyon (after previously stopping for a brief hike in Red Canyon). The drive involved a pleasant detour along a scenic country road in which I was frequently the only car on the highway. I didn’t have time to do a big hike here but I walked around the rim for a bit. It has a similar feel to Bryce Canyon (in fact, a couple of times while I was sorting photos from the trip I accidentally put Cedar Breaks shots in with the Bryce pics).
Overall, I wouldn’t say it’s a must-see if you’ve been to Bryce, but if you have the time, it’s a nice diversion with beautiful views along the rim at nearly two miles above sea level (so even in warm months you may need a light jacket).
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
In the middle of our long drive from Halifax to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, we stopped at The Ovens, a beautiful coastal national park featuring a hiking trail along a series of sea caves. We then had a nice early dinner at a little German restaurant on the side of the road before heading into the cute seaside town of Lunenburg for a walk. Lunenburg is another of those towns that made me fall in love with the Canadian Maritimes and fantasize about moving there.
Fans of Locke and Key may recognize both The Ovens and Lunenberg as filming locations for the series, though our visit was long before the show aired. I seem to have a habit of visiting places before a TV show begins filming there–years ago I visited both Split and Dubrovnik in Croatia before Game of Thrones had begun filming in those cities.
Click on any photo to open up a gallery.
On my way out of Yosemite National Park I stopped for a hike through the Mariposa grove of giant sequoias (aka redwoods). They don’t grow as tall as the coastal redwoods, but they grow wider–some are so massive that their branches actually look like trees themselves. It’s impossible for any photo to do these behemoths justice, but the people in some of the shots below, and the fact that many of the large surrounding trees look like sticks next to the redwoods, help to provide a sense of scale.
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
Michael Rappa 