Bit by the travel bug

Thomas climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in July 2013, kicking off a lifestyle change that’s lead to extra passport pages, loose change in a dozen currencies, and an Instagram account that makes armchair travelers drool.

“I like to see, taste, and experience things that people in other cultures think is normal, but which I would never encounter in my daily life,” explains Thomas, a middle and high school educator at a boarding school in Switzerland.

Thomas’s photo, of an abandoned tow truck on Maryland’s Deal Island, is a perfect example. Deal Island is one of the last Bay water and land mosaics on the East Coast left unblemished and untouched by the sprawl of modernism. At 6 miles long and 3 miles wide, it is a bastion of small town living surrounded by the Chesapeake Bay. Thomas visited Deal Island during a NYE trip to the Mid-Atlantic Coast and was struck by the rusty truck and weedy field, representative of the small island.

Outside of Deal Island, Thomas’s favorite trip to date was four weeks he spent in Bali, which he says was the best trip because the tiny island offered so much variety: he hiked a volcano at sunrise, rode a scooter through a coffee plantation, went scuba diving at a shipwreck, attended surf camp, and snorkeled through a turtle hatchery. He doesn’t have the luxury of many 4-week vacations, but uses long weekends to explore new places across Europe and longer vacations to experience things outside of a tourist’s usual path.

As for his art, Thomas is an amateur photographer who’s looking forward to a week-long photo class aboard a schooner in Maine’s Penobscot Bay this summer. His photos, which capture light and shapes as much as culture, are available for viewing on Instagram (@thjoyce).