Unaccompanied Miner

05/23/2026

New post up after a couple of weeks away.

My son graduated. That came first.

The new piece is about arriving in a city I had already decided I would not like, and what I found when I actually looked at why. It is the first in a Las Vegas arc. The rotation is still running. More to come.

What happens when a city offers you no obvious entry point, and the resistance you arrived with turns out to be less grounded than you thought.

05/09/2026

https://www.theunaccompaniedminer.com/post/travel-stress-solutions-how-to-cope-when-travel-is-hard

05/09/2026

New post this week on travel stress, and what experience actually gives you versus what it does not. Also launched the first tool in a new Tools for Travelers section on the site. Five questions, no checklist. Link in the comments.

04/29/2026

Incredible dinner at Loreto in Los Angeles, CA. Certainly out of my every day price range and well beyond my companies per diem. It is good to have the heavy credit card in your pocket to offset the cost. Final bill to my wallet- $2.60

04/04/2026

Thirteen years of full time travel taught me one thing about packing: the trips got smoother when I started pulling things out instead of adding them in.

Part one of a two-part series is up this week. It's about how overpacking becomes a system, what the system actually looks like, and the three things I stopped carrying that I don't miss at all — including a fairly pointed observation about the YouTube rabbit hole that convinced me to buy packing cubes.

Part two drops tomorrow. The gear list, the affiliate links, and an open question about my next bag that I genuinely need help answering.

The first year I traveled full-time, I brought everything. Two of most things, three of a few. My backpack was a contingency plan with shoulder straps. Somewhere around year four, I started pulling items out instead of adding them in and the trips got smoother, not worse. What began as overpacking s...

03/22/2026

Week 3 post: Navigating a Broken Hospitality System

I Asked healthcare travelers which posts to prioritize. Clear winner: six interventions that actually work.

Hotels have systematically trimmed everything that requires labor, decision-making, or local knowledge. What remains is shelter plus the absolute minimum required to avoid a one-star review.

These interventions won't fix the industry. But they'll make your travels more tolerable and occasionally, even pleasant.

Read: https://www.theunaccompaniedminer.com/post/navigating-a-broken-hospitality-system-six-interventions-that-actually-work?fbclid=IwY2xjawQs7vdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeqzwnQkOawIFwCZKdMesR06PEem6i4VAxC6ZU1-wbfjTyKhsxCcYw0OLLL9g_aem_7B4OmpZCYAf3py_5h3fWCw

There was a time when walking into a hotel felt like arriving somewhere. Staff greeted you by name. Housekeeping arrived without being summoned. The lobby had a pulse. Now? Even mid tier properties feel like self storage units with beds. The industry talks endlessly about "guest experience," but wha...

03/22/2026

Question for readers:

I asked a group of healthcare travelers which posts to prioritize next. Got some interesting feedback—including a few wildcard suggestions I hadn't considered.

Curious what YOU think would be most useful:

What makes your travel harder that I haven't covered yet? Hotel strategies? Airport navigation? Packing systems? Loyalty program math? Hospitality Expectations?

Drop a comment. Helps me calibrate what's actually useful vs. what just sounds interesting.

03/15/2026

New post: The Brown Sign Habit

The park was closed when I got there. I'd spent the day working at a West Palm Beach hospital and found a brown sign pointing toward Jupiter Lighthouse on my drive back to the hotel.

By the time I arrived, the gates were locked for the evening. I parked anyway and found a trail running along the perimeter.

Twenty minutes later, I felt like I could handle the rest of the week.

Read the full post:

The park was closed when I got there. I'd spent the day working at a West Palm Beach hospital and found a brown sign pointing toward Jupiter Lighthouse on my drive back to the hotel. By the time I arrived, the gates were locked for the evening.I parked anyway and found a trail running along the peri...

03/15/2026

What Experience Hides: The Things You Stop Noticing in Airports

After deplaning, I know which way to turn. At baggage claim, I position myself at the beginning of the conveyor belt. At Atlanta, I walk instead of taking the Plane Train.

These are small things. Tactical adaptations. But they're the difference between moving through an airport with confidence and moving through it with constant low-level stress.

The problem is, I don't remember what it felt like before I figured them out.

Read more:

I was standing in the check-in line last week watching two travelers lose their composure at the desk agent. One was a single mother traveling with a toddler. The other was a business traveler with an airline status tag hanging from his backpack like a merit badge.Both were upset. Both raised their....

03/12/2026

The Washcloth Test

We all have that one thing—the detail that tells us whether a hotel actually cares or just goes through the motions.

For me, it's the translucent washcloth. You know exactly what I mean. The washcloth so thin the color of your hand shows through stronger than the white of the cloth itself.

It's not dramatic enough to demand a new room, but it tells me everything I need to know about the property's priorities.

Read the full post:

We all have that one thing, Hospitality is Brokenthe single detail that tells us whether a hotel actually cares or just goes through the motions. It's not dramatic enough to make you demand a new room or ask for a manager. But it's the thing you notice immediately, the thing that gets filed away in....