This was about to be one big post–that is, until I realized I had thousands of photos to pick through and edit and if I wanted to do it in one go, it might not be up till Christmas. And given that it’s a post about a multi-week summer road trip, I suspect that Christmas might not be the best time for it.
So I think I’ll do this in three parts, the first part being a 3-day Amtrak trip from DC to San Francisco. The other installments will feature some fun on the 101, a gorgeous drive over Montana freeways, and a visit to the (questionably) famous 9th-and-Hennepin intersection, among other adventures.
During my train ride, I got to pass through some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, and to make conversation with an array of bizarre, remarkable people. I arrived disoriented and sleep-deprived (given that I hadn’t sprung for a sleeper and consequently got practically no sleep), but the whole thing was so, so worth it. One upside of being fully conscious at 5:00 am was that I got to take full advantage of the morning golden hour, a time that I rarely get to experience awake.
Honestly, most of the photos I took out of the train window didn’t turn out that hot. At first, I had my doubts whether any of them would even be usable–many were blurry or had too many reflections from the windows. But then I looked at them again, and decided that even the photos that might not be technically great still had a kind of interest about them. They grew on me. And after some editing and thinning of the photo crop, I realized that I did like this batch of photos–in fact, I liked them a whole lot. And I hope you like them too.
(A quick note: the rainbow sheen on some of the skies is the result of a weird reaction between my polarizing filter and whatever UV coating they put on the train windows. It was a surprise side-effect at first, but I ultimately decided I liked it.)
Check back for part II in a week or so!
~~ + ~~