These piccys are from my trip to California back in January of '96. The story behind this adventure goes something like this.. My friend Alan, who has lived in Maryland most of his life, decided to move to California and live with his mother and step-father. Because of complicated circumstances he couldn't take all of his stuff with him so the best we could do was stuff his car ('95 Honda Accord) with as much of his possessions as possible and drive there. His parents sent us $600 to make the trip, which we split between us incase something happened to one of us. We had 5 days to make the trip from the time we left (3AM Monday morning). We had to get to California by 6PM Friday so I could catch my plane home.
My purpose in going was to help my friend get to California safely (a 3,000 mile/5,000km drive). Having fun and taking 7 rolls of pictures was secondary. We had to do it and we didn't have time to plan anything but the route so we just made the best of it. And I must say we did pretty damn good.
We stopped in Knoxville, Tennessee to eat breakfast..or was it lunch.. I don't remember. Alan had some kind of inside joke with his ex-girlfriend about the Waffle House chain and that is the reason he wanted to take this picture.
There are a bunch of pictures that we took on the trip that, somehow, turned out really good. This is one of them. I'm at the helm in Oklahoma as we chase the sunset headed toward the Texas panhandle. As dim as the light was, I'm surprised it came out so well.
Another one of those cool pics I mentioned. This was taken a few minutes later after the above shot in Oklahoma, still chasing the sun. I don't know how Alan got it to turn out this way. Looks real neat, though.
Meteor Crater Arizona. 570ft deep and 4100ft across. I remember when we got there it was 4:10PM and the place closed at 4:30pm. As I said, we didn't make any kind of planning other than directions to California, so I guess we were lucky to have the 20 minutes that we did. This is Alan catching some wind on the rim of the crater. Neat place. Go see it.
I did a lot of experimenting with photography during the trip. This is one example and I think this experiment was a resounding success. On the way back to Rt. 40 from Meteor Crater we pulled over and took this one. That little white streak isn't a scratch, by the way, it's the contrail of an airplane in the distance.
As you get closer and closer to the Grand Canyon the cracks on the side of the road get bigger and bigger. We pulled off the road to see one of them. There are NO RAILS. There are even signs warning that small children should be restrained so they don't wander off the cliff. As we got closer and closer to the edge, we both got down on all fours and crawled the last few feet to the edge. You see..we've never walked up to the edge of a 800ft. sheer-cliff before. Not only that, but it was REAL windy that day and we were afraid a gust of wind would blow us off the edge(!?). Quite an interesting experience, to say the least. If you ever goto the Grand Canyon, you should really stop and see this. This is a mosaic of two pictures I took that I put together to help see the full scale of the cliff.
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A few more choice photos... This is about the time that we ran outta money (!?). Fortunately, there was a Western Union near by. Otherwise the 80 bucks we had left would have to get us a place to sleep and gas for another 600 miles. Forget about food, other than a small meal for both of us for the next 24 hours. Not good... We got ahold of his parents and they injected another $140 into our travel fund.