The road! The ocean! The Pacific Coast Highway!
Somehow this roll of film survived my camping trip to Maine where I woke up with several inches of rain soaking my pillow, daypack, camera, etc. Here’s what was almost lost forever!
Also, to show how fragile film is, the other roll I took in to get developed (photos of last weekend’s trip to the beach) did somehow get screwed up. Sadness.
Otter Cliffs at Acadia National Park offers some of the best rock climbing anywhere on the east coast. Luckily we had Andrew and Jacob’s expertise to show us the, er, ropes. I didn’t participate this time around, but photographed some of the brave folks who did. Phil set the tone by being the first — his first time! — to rappel down the cliff on the lip of the Atlantic Ocean.
I don’t like hot weather. I don’t like cold weather. I don’t care much for warm weather either. I like cool weather. And I especially love cool, foggy, Members Only jacket weather. When I lived in LA, I hardly ever went to the beach during normal beach hours. I went in the evenings or at night. I went for a drive. I went to the pier and wore sandals and a hoodie.
I’ve milked this road trip enough to get a few writing exercises out of it. Now it’s time to put it to bed with an index of one-sentence reviews (with a few exceptions), which is an idea I took my friend Alex’s travel blog.
States Touched
- New York. “Launching pad.”
- New Jersey. “They have cheap gas here, and a former/current conman/mobster will pump it for you free of charge! (or maybe it’ll cost you your life?)”
- Pennsylvania. “One hell of a bitch to drive across — endless, long, long! — but the parts of the farmland you’re awake for are New England-caliber beautiful.”
- Virginia. “I’ve been to Shenandoah National Park and The Blue Ridge Parkway here a couple of times before, so this time we just drove straight through it on the interstate.”
- West Virginia (barely). “I’ve never actually gotten out of my car in any of the numerous times I’ve driven through this state, but I always find myself humming John Denver tunes when I’m here.”
- Tennessee. “It was bone-chilling cold in the Smoky Mountains so we played ‘Quick! Your turn to run outside, read the sign, snap a picture, and then get back inside the car and let’s never do anything like that ever again!’”
- North Carolina. “The Native American town zoo of Cherokee (a.k.a. “land of unsold tchotchkes”) right outside of the Smoky Mountains is one of the saddest places I’ve ever been too — imagine Atlantic City with only one Ho Jo-quality casino, no ocean, and a million Burger Kings and Dairy Queens.” (Yes, we stopped for lunch at the BK.).
- Kentucky. “Where the birthplace of bourbon and Tanveer meet. And fall in love! And get married…etc.”
- Indiana. “An excellent location to play Guitar Hero on the Nintendo Wii.”
- Ohio. “I didn’t even know I was driving through this state until I was beyond it.”
- States intended to but not covered: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia. “Ah, well, there’ll be more road trips.”
“Some road are only seen at night,
Ghost roads, nothing but neon signs.”
-Stephin Merritt, The Magnetic Fields.
