Atrophy | Laura

Just had to have a good laugh. It appears that after 11 days of road food my cooking muscles have atrophied. I just burned the heack out of breakfast. Yikes!
That leads me to another thought, after riding 3000 miles taking photos, am I going to remember how to drive? 

Rain | Laura

I am not writing this from a hotel room along I 40.  I am at home. Home. Finally home.  After 11 days, 9 states, and the worst storm Anne & I have ever seen. Of course it would happen that in the final miles the skies open and the heavens fall.  Hard.  We saw hours of great weather and apparently the road didn't want us to leave because what should have been the last two hours took four. Here are a few images... more to come tomorrow.

P.S. I have many many more photos to share.  Just because I am home doesn't mean the blog stops just yet.
I am now going to enjoy slumber in my own bed.  Share more in the morning!  :)

Coast to Coast baby!  We made it!

Rain | Laura

We made it across the country with relatively little rain. Only the occasional sprinkle. We would often  see the real storm off on the distant plain and be grateful for not going directly through. I was also thankful to have an interesting color as a backdrop for scenes that would have otherwise been bland. Clouds add such dimension to a photograph.

We have now crossed into South Carolina and were promptly greeted with the rain storm of all rain storms, courtesy of hurricane /tropical storm Emily no doubt.

I'm looking forward to unpacking in terrential rain after getting used to the dry, clear, beautiful, desert.*

*sarcasm

Cross-Arkan-Ville | Laura

Ironically today started out with good coffee from a place with a round logo and green straws. Being a proponent of local coffee shops and small businesses, said coffee dispensary shall remain unnamed. I say ironically because I snored my way through the second half of Arkansas and most of Tennessee... even after my grande brew! I think my excite-o-meter is broken. It was a struggle for me to make images today. I saw amazing things whizzing by outside my window and didn't reach for my camera. The combination of sensory overload on the front end of the trip and the back end of the trip being roads that I know so well I could drive them blindfolded, (stop panicking Mom, it's a figure of speech) made today creatively rough. How do you look at something that you swear that you know like the back of your hand and see it in a new way? So I am posting images of what today felt like. So grab a frosty can of RC Cola (I missed photographing a rusty old Royal Crown sign at 65 mph- sorry! I would have loved sharing) and put on a dusty vinyl record, cause this feels like a blast from the past as I travel the roads of my old home. 

The Middle | Laura

So we are in the middle. The middle of the country, the middle of the trip, the middle of the road. Just the middle. When you are in  the middle of the country it feels a bit like the middle of a roller coaster, the adrenaline is spent but you haven't yet arrived.  Nothing exciting, nothing terrible, nothing first, nothing last.  If you ask me how I feel right now, I would say: "Fair to middlin'."

The Most Asked Question | Anne

The question we are asked most often - Are you ever coming back?  Answer - The road needed us so we decided to stay a little longer.  How long you ask? We don't yet know.  The road will tell us.  

Abstraction | Laura

 This is what happens when a photographer has been there & seen that. I would venture a guess that, at day 8 in the trip, I might have a touch of whatever the travel version is of cabin fever.  The flat, sparse, muted Texas scenery left much to be desired compared to where we have traveled thus far (Laguna Beach, Sedona, Grand Canyon). So I decided to shake things up a bit. There was a storm off in the distance between the New Mexico boarder and Amarillo to provide a beautiful backdrop for play. It's a similar concept to the Night Bubbling that we did in Idyllwild, but this time in a moving car.  Enjoy!