Road Trip

So, recently, I went on a bit of a road-trip, from here to Kentucky and back.  I’ll get into the why at some point in the future, as I’m not completely comfortable laying everything out right now.  Suffice it to say, it was a LONG trip (3600 miles in 5 days), and the return trip was made better by the addition of my brother and his camera.  He flew into Louisville and we stayed with some family friends for the night before going to the early service at Beechland Baptist, which was a really, really good thing.  Thank you Pastor Ken, it was good to hear one of your sermons again.

So off we went.  Mike brought his tripod and camera, and had standing orders to get pictures at each of the state border crossings.  Unfortunately, the first 3 were on bridges, and we almost missed the one for Missouri, but he managed to get a shot off between two trucks so we didn’t have to loop back across the bridge twice more.

First, out of Louisville we hit IN:

Then IL:

Then MO:

Along the way, there was a lot of this type of thing going on:


(I haven’t bothered adding up the fuel cost, as it would probably make me sick)

Being in the neighborhood, we made a stop at Wash U and walked around campus in the snow:

We then went and ate lunch, and got back on the road.  I got a bit of a headache and nausea due to the combination of mild dehydration (I didn’t drink as much water on the way back since we weren’t stopping as much), and nasal issues.  Blech.  At any rate, we managed to hit OK before having to call it a night:

Best Western, your rates were exorbitant compared to the other places I stayed on this trip, but I was too drained mentally and physically to even care.  Oh, and put some more blankets in your rooms in the winter fer pete’s sake.  It’s friggin COLD.  Semi-delirious pass-out session completed, we were back on the road the following morning.  Neither of us are real big TX fans, Mike because of some issues with a car sale a couple of years back, and me because I had just driven ALL THE WAY ACROSS… Please, TXDOT, make the speed limit 100 in West TX, as there’s nothing to hit.  Seriously.  Of course the return route was across northern TX, which was thankfully much shorter than the way I had gone heading east:

We turned left at Amarillo instead of further west along I 40 in Albuquerque, on the way down to Roswell.  I hadn’t been that way before, and Mike had never been out this far west, so we figured what the hell.  We cleared TX in much less than the nearly full day going out:

Yes, that is “I’m on leave and haven’t shaved in 5 days” stubble I’m sporting.  I can almost grow out a beard if I’m off for a week or more.  Funny, since I was the guy who didn’t really have to shave in HS.  Roswell was interesting, but not really that interesting.  Aliens?  Meh:

After a good bit more traveling, we hit the AZ border:

I was back in better spirits, having hydrated much better that day.  I’m really glad Mike came out to help co-drive, as I’d have made it back, but would have been a damn sight more grumpy afterward.  As it was, I nearly went ballistic the morning I got back due to some pseudo-exercise nonsense over at the installation ops center… but I digress.  The camera as a ‘reflective’ tool was pretty cool, and having the tripod was definitely a good idea:

Since it only took us 2 days to get back vice the 3 days to get out, and I had an extra day since I took 6 days of leave, Mike came down to Huachuca to check out where I work.  It was nice having another photo buff along, as we’re both usually the one behind the camera, and don’t have nearly proportional numbers of pictures of ourselves.  Reservoir hill afforded some cool photo opportunities:

Mike’s lenses are a bit faster than the ones on Amanda’s camera, so background blurring shallow depth-of field (wide aperture) works even better:

Funny thing, my sister-in-law’s favorite wine is made about 10 minutes from my house.  When I moved out to Vail, Mike said she kept saying “Vail, why does that sound so familiar…” and eventually figured it out.  He of course would have been grossly remiss had he not taken the opportunity to stop by and pick up some wine.  They had just finished the first pruning, so everything was cut way back.  Still the view from the place is incredible:

Mission accomplished, I dropped Mike at the Tucson Airport on my way in to work the following day.  We did stop on the way home from Huachuca and Mike shot a 1600-someodd shot sequence of the sun setting over the Santa Rita Mountains.  If I get froggy, I might even put a link to the Vimeo video he posted of all the images strung together at 30fps.  Maybe.

Thanks again for coming out Mike, I really needed that.  I love you bro.