For the third and final installment of my August road trip, here’s an array of photos from along the highways. Taken out the window of a beat-up Honda Civic–documenting the seaside, countryside, and farmland up the pacific coast and across the upper midwest.The drive up highway 101 was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever taken.
California and Oregon offered views of deep, dappled forests and dense fog rarely seen on the east coast. We stopped for the night at a family-run motel in an Oregon shore town, and got on the road early the next morning blanketed by chilly, dense fog and salty breezes. As fingers of sunlight pierced through the fog mid-morning, I could see that this coast was dramatic–sharp and rocky, so unlike the sandy and palm tree’d West Coast that a person from back east might imagine.
It was a treat to connect with an old family friend in Seattle. We stayed a night in her house, nestled in a quiet cul de sac, perched on stilts above sparkling grey water. Unfortunately, there was no time to explore the city before we had to start driving once again, pivoting eastward to start our journey across the top of the country.
Sailing over Montana interstates, aside from getting to drive 85, the best parts were the great expanses of desert and the occasional perfect, sunbleached roadside building. Through this leg of the trip, it was rare to find an exit not marked with the familiar, blue-and-white “No Services” sign. And later, Minnesota and North Dakota, though at times growing monotonous with their endless fields of corn and soybeans, offered a particular kind of bleak beauty that lent itself well to photographs. The midwest also made a pleasing contrast to the golden, kodachrome light of the Montana desert.
So here, in the gallery below, I’ve tried to remember where each photo was taken and label them by place. I had limited success with this, considering that at some point in the past, I had apparently set my camera to scrub location from all metadata. But I did my best, and I think I managed to do it by memory, for the most part. And yes, I got a bit enthusiastic when it came to documenting signs and billboards. And no, I don’t regret it.
Enjoy! 😉
(And just a reminder: you can click on any of the images in the gallery below to view the whole slideshow full-screen.)
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