Old Photo Albums > July 2003- Driving to Alaska (123)
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When I was a kid, my grandparents had a photo album that included a picture of them standing in front of their station wagon with a cardboard sign that read "Big Bend or Bust!" This photo loomed large in my child's imagination, and it was very conciously re-created here.
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Yukon Ho!
I won't soon forget standing in Julius's driveway, just about to pull out. Truck all packed. I can't believe it's been over two years. Tempus fugit.
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After three minutes on the road, we stopped for gas at 7-eleven. We got many comments along the road about this ad hoc bumper sticker.
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Standing in front of Palo Duro canyon at the end of our first day.
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Stephanie looks across Palo Duro canyon. She said this was what she expected the Grand Canyon to look like; she she couldn't imagine how big the latter could be.
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Stephanie in front of the cars of Cadillac Ranch.
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I can't believe this was like my fourth time to visit this lonely little spot. It was just down the road from this location that I had my wreck a few years back.
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Looking for pavement-free roads, Stephanie and I spent a winding, dusty road through New Mexico, and came out by this little spillway with these three girls. It looks so cool and inviting. Stephanie and I both wanted to stop and swim, but alas, we did not. I will think back on this image when I am an old, old man.
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An old adobe building in NM.
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This was where we met the old man camp host, and first entertained the idea of being camp hosts ourselves in our retirement years. Also, this is where we bathed in that first freezing cold stream.
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The next morning, Stephanie and I had an appointment to go river rafting. On the way, we had this tread separation. We were only a couple of miles from our destination, and since the tire was still inflated, we kept going.
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This was my spare that had next to no tread wear. I bought four new ones to match it, only for it to die 500 miles later.
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Camel Rock
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One of the happiest times of my life.
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The view.
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Stephanie and Tooly in the great southwest.
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This is Navajo Bridge. I believe this is where a sceen from Natural Born Killer was filmed.
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I take a picture of Stephanie.
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And Stephanie takes a picture of me.
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We always made our campsites into the coziest little places. Here, Stephanie and I relax in the high altitudes, cool temperatures and reclining chairs.
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It's funny now to look back on what we were so enamored by on that trip. This was the first mountain spring water we saw flowing beside the road. We were so hot that anything that felt or looked remotely cool drew our attention.
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I don't know if you can see it here, but Stephanie and I set up our reclining camp chair on the edge of this ridge overlooking the valley below. An relaxing couple of hours of just sitting.
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I think it was in Durango, we asked a local about primo camping locales, and he recommended this little Canyon. At the turn off, we saw a wooden sign that said "4X4 Only" and I couldn't resist. It was a hairy afternoon, but it paid off big time. And it was great dispersed camping.
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In Colorado, this was our first snow of the trip. Stephanie takes a picture her foot, and the picture she took is next.
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Stephanie marvels at snow under her Teva clad toes.
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And Brian standing in Colorado snow.
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Up switchbacks we had driven.
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Tuleracito
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If you've ever been to the Four Corners, you know there's nothing there. But still, if you haven't been, it isn't the kind of thing you can just drive past. Stephanie puts an extremity in each of four states.
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Stephanie takes a picture of me...
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...as I take a picture of her.
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Shiprock, New Mexico, jets up dramatically out of the flat desert.
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This is the entrance to Antelope Canyon- a small slot canyon east of the Grand Canyon. See the next picture.
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If ever I needed a tripod... this is the inside of Antelope Canyon, a natural marvel, a narrow slot cut in curves through solid rock forty feet high.
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Stephanie was particularly hot on this day.
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These are some ruins and precariously perched rocks just on the way to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. During the summer of '88, I drove to the Grand Canyon and at that time, took this same picture. I was glad to see the same place fifteen years later.
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Here is another breaktaking view and photo that I recreated from that '88 trip. I was knocked out by how immediate the memory of that time was when suddenly arriving at the same spot.
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Brian and Stephanie at the often overlooked and much less crowded north rim of the Grand Canyon. After many roadweary days, we spent several nights at our campsite here, just sitting, napping and relaxing.
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Stephanie snaps Brian as the sun sets on the north rim.
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A park ranger explains geological time at the north rim.
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Stephanie takes a mule ride.
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A Native American jewelry and jerky stand.
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Nothing could get us to pull off the road faster than a road-side sign that advertised jerky of all kinds. We ate jerky from Texas to California.
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The tower at the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
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Spare tree with shadows at the south rim.
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Another picture consciously re-created from photo albums of my childhood... Stephanie sits hopefully on the edge of the chasm.
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A hazy and seeingly infinite view of the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
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After leaving the south rim and heading further south into Arizona, we were seduced by a sign advertising buffalo jerky and sacred albino buffalo.
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The buffalo weren't that albino, and the jerky wasn't that great, but the setting sun was vibrant, and we spent some time being guided by this young Native man who told us about his family and his future. It isn't pictured here, but there was also a fence with thousands f little trinkets and offerings left by Native Americans in the area. An unexptected medium, it was found collage.
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Brian holds a little bleating cabrito as shadows lengthen.
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Hoover Damn. Where we met the grumpiest tour guide I've ever seen in my life. A tour guide who hates people.
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Missle shaped shadows hang from Hoover.
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There it is again.
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Brian screams.
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We stopped in Vegas for a couple of nights and on this evening, we saw the Blue Man Group.
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Stephanie gets an 'autograph' from a Blue Man.
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This is the General Sherman in Sequoia National Park. I think this is like the largest tree in the world.
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Looking up at the giant sequoias.
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Brian sits on a fallen sequoia with tunneled path
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A great photo if you could see it a litle closer. This fallen sequoia extends in to the distance.
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Stephanie stands next to a giant root ball.
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The Watsons, Woodwards and Rozells all crouch in front of a big tree.
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One of my very favorite photos... Giant sentinels standing guard for thousands of years.
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Giant sequoias tower.
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After leaving the Watson's, we went on to Salinas, where we saw the Steinbeck Center.
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A bookstore full of books by and about Steinbeck. I was in my element.
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This is the truck... I think he called it Rocinante after Don Quixote's horse... that Steinbeck drove across the US when he was writing Travels with Charlie. __
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This is the castle rock that is on the cover of the Penguin edition of The Pastures of Heaven.
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I had just finished writing my master's thesis on Steinbeck's Pastures of Heaven before our trip. In my research, I had read that Steinbeck based this location on a real place outside of Salinas called the Corral de Tierra. Stephanie and I found this valley- now a housing development- and took some pictures. It was surreal to visit the fictional place that was the subject of so much of my time and study.
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San Fransisco's Fisherman's Warf with the tour boat to Alcatraz.
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I wonder how many people have been to San Fransisco and seen these same seals.
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The Harbor at Fisherman's Warf
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We spent a month on the road, and it wasn't nearly enough time to see all that we wanted to see. We crossed the GGB, and that's all the time we could give it.
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Stephanie films a northern California beach.
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Leaving San Fransisco was like stepping off into the abyss. San Fransisco was the western limit of my experience. Leaving there and stepping out into the unknown, the whole trip, and the whole move suddenly became a lot more real. And more scary.
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