Four Corners
It was my birthday, and I couldn’t decide where I wanted to spend it. I wanted to go everywhere and be everywhere all at the same time. The closest thing I could come up with was the four corners’ monument, where Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah intersect deep in the middle of the desert, so that is where I went! I flew to San Antonio and drove to El Paso and then North to the four corners’ monument. I continued north to Salt Lake City, then turn back around and ended up in Vegas, where I decided to check out Hoover Dam before flying back home. On the way, I saw a few creepy Mormon ghost downs, brilliant sunsets, and amazing desert rocks.
Pacific Northwest Splendor
I discovered that the best way to recover from a long vacation is to have another vacation. Likewise, the best way to pack for a trip is to not have to unpack from your previous trip! A few days after returning from Africa, I decided to fly to Seattle and drive a loop East to Montana, where I visited the magnificent Glacier National Park, North, to Calgary, Alberta, West, to Vancouver, BC, and back South to Seattle. Highlights of my visit to Seattle include hearing about the history of the sunken city in the underground tour and taking a cityscape photograph from Kerry park. The space needle building provides Seattle with one of the most recognizable skylines in the country. Also, while driving through Alberta, I discovered a small pristine town called Canmore, nestled in a valley in the Canadian Rockies, which has since become my favorite provincial town in Canada! The small town is the gateway to Banff National Park and among the most popular Albertan locations for outdoor activities, including climbing, canoeing, hiking and skiing. I enjoyed a marvelous Quebecois brunch at the 514 with outdoor seating in perfect weather with a beautiful stream and mountains in the visible distance. To me, it was a quaint and welcoming town in the middle of nowhere that no one else (that I know) knows about. Although, I suppose, if you are reading this, now YOU know!
Safari
I recently procured a 150-600mm, and I could not think of a better way to put the lens though it's paces than a two week safari through Southern Africa. After a brief visit to Cape Town, I flew to Johannesburg, where I hopped on a tour through South Africa and Zimbabwe. I went on numerous safaris though several national parks including Kruger National Park in South Africa, Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, and Chobe National Park in Botswana. In between the visits to the parks, I went to see a few traditional African tribal dance demonstrations, the historic sites of the 1967 Uprising Soweto, the awesome ruins of Great Zimbabwe, and Victoria Falls.
Desertscape
I had a three day jaunt driving from Las Vegas to Reno and decided to visit some National Parks. It was bit of a rushed adventure, and I was happy to be able to slow down just enough to compose some great panoramic photographs. I spent a night outside under the stars in Death Valley and watched the sun rise over the cracked Earth. I then made my way down to Sequoia National Park, where I met General Sherman, the largest tree in the world! There, I met a fellow traveler who told me about Mono Lake, and it's amazing tufa formations, which I visited the next day. I had wanted to visit Yosemite, but the Eastern road was snowed over and closed; so instead, I drove up to Lake Tahoe and got to the North Beach just in time to see a breathtaking sunset at Sand Harbor.
These Beautiful Ruins
I flew out to a conference in Chicago, and I decided to skip the return flight, and instead, rent a car and drive back home over five days. I took the opportunity to explore Indiana, Michigan, and Detroit, and found myself enraptured by the dust, junk, and endless blocks of abandoned buildings and industrial complexes in the city. There is nothing quite like the thrill of finding a way inside a place that has been long abandoned and immersing oneself in it's quiet apocalypse. I finished the trip by cutting though Ontario and re-entering New York through Niagara Falls.
Australia
I took an amazing tour through Central Australia starting from Alice Springs going South to Melbourne. Along the way, I stopped in Coober Pedy, Adelaide, Flinders Ranges mountains, and several coastal locations. Only after the trip did I realize that I covered an enormous distance, more than halfway down the continent, in about a week! It is amazing to see how diverse the landscape, weather, and wildlife can be when one travels that long of a distance, from the harsh desert of central Australia to the incredible coastline to the urban sprawl of Melbourne.
A Life Worth Living: My Journey Across All 50 States in One Year
In 2018, I decided to visit all 50 U.S. states within one year, having already been to about 12. I accomplished this in five epic road trips, that I've named: "Coast to Coast," "Eternal Sunshine," "The Great Midwescapade," "Memento Mori," and "Almost Heaven." I went through an overwhelming number of photographs taken during these adventures and put together a photo series called, "A Life Worth Living," as I’ve been struggling for a long time with the question of what it means to live a purposeful and fulfilling life. I'm not saying that this endeavor has answered the question, but it does give me new perspective. The greatest satisfaction one can achieve is to narrow the pitiless existential gap between our fantastic perceptions of life and our short visceral existence. No?
Coast to Coast
My first trip was a long journey from New York City to Chicago and then along the entire length of Historic Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles. I then drove up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, and finally, East, through Nevada, to Salt Lake City. The order of states that I drove through on this incredible two-week-long trip are NY, NJ, PA, OH, IN, IL, MO, KS, OK, TX, NM, AZ, CA, NV, UT. My personal rules for having been in a state are to have at least visited one unique attraction in that state and taken one photograph in that state. I averaged about a day in each state, but I'd already been to all the Northeastern states, and, on the first day, had driven from NYC to Chicago. This allotted me some extra days to spend in the Grand Canyon and to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway in California. The adventure is named coast to coast, because I had driven from a beach on the Atlantic Ocean in Staten Island, across the entire continental US, to a beach on the Pacific Coast: Santa Monica, which is the trail's end of US Route 66. This adventure was almost four thousand miles of driving! One could never imagine going that far in such a short time until he gets into his car and actually does it. Some of the major highlights of this trip are all the fantastic retro-Americana attractions along Route 66, the Grand Canyon, the beautiful small coastal towns along the California coast, and the breathtaking mountains of Utah. The low point of this trip was the overcrowded crime-ridden cesspool known as L.A.
Eternal Sunshine
As I had managed to drive the entire width of the continental United States, I figured I'd travel the length of it as well. For my second trip, I drove from New York south through Virginia and the Carolinas to Atlanta. From there, I down the western coast of Florida until and crossed over to the Eastern coast to Miami. I drove south of Miami through the Florida Keys and ended this eleven day trip drunk on a schooner in the Gulf of Mexico along the coast of Key West, Fl. My favorite parts of this trip included visiting the famous Roanoke star during a sleet-storm, the graffiti wall in Atlanta, the beaches along the Western coast of Florida and the Everglades, the ghost town and magical Tudor cottage near Tallahassee, and, of course, the 75 degree weather in February in Key West. I didn't however, take fondly to Montgomery, Alabama. Besides the F. Scott Fitzgerald house and museum, there is very little of interest to anyone in that city.
The Great Midwescapade
In Spring, I flew to Milkwauakee, WI, and made my way West through MN, IA, NE, CO, WY, ID, OR, and finally WA. One of the most amazing, yet totally obscure spectacles I had ever seen was the High Trestle Trail Bridge in Iowa, which is an architectural marvel that spans across a stream in the middle of nowhere along a nature trail in a forested area in Iowa between one massive stretch of endless corn fields and another massive stretch of endless corn fields. It was a long hike to get to the bridge and a long wait until sunset, but it was definately worth it: the bridge lights up with blue neon squares at twilight! I also visited the Maroon Bells in Aspen, CO and Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming, where, like thousands of great photographers before me, I had the honor of capturing the most photographed barn in the country, the T. A. Moultin at sunset! I ended my journey in the wonderful city of Portland, OR after a brief excursion to Washington State. The absolute low point of this trip and of all my travels that year was when I lost my wallet with my credit cards and my ID in a grass field in Wyoming after I had to run away when I got too close to a herd of buffalo and one of them started to stomp the ground. It was quite a thrill panhandling for gas money across Idaho and trying to get through TSA without an ID during my flight back.
Memento Mori
For my most ambitious trip, in about eleven days and nights, I first flew back to the Midwest to sweep up the states I had missed during my first pass: ND, SD, and MO. I also went back through Wyoming, because Wyoming is awesome and I wanted to see the Devil's Tower! I then flew from Montana to two islands in Hawaii, and then took a direct flight from Honolulu, HI, to Anchorage, AK. I drove up from Anchorage to Fairbanks and toured Denali National Park as well as the Arctic circle. This trip was full of amazing adventures including watching a blood-orange sunset over a Nineteenth century US soldier's grave at Little Bighorn, visiting the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor and actually seeing the sunken vessel beneath the water, and coming within twenty feet of with a wild caribou in Alaska! Of course, this trip was riddled with difficulties as well including a hurricane threat canceling flights from Hawaii and falling off small cliff into a stream on an unmarked trail to the Kaniakapupu ruins while carrying all my camera gear. Due to rain and clouds, sadly, I was not able to photograph the Northern Lights. And I, again, lost my wallet and ID during the fall into the stream, but his time, luckily, I was able to recover my wallet 50ft downstream wedged between two river rocks.
Almost Heaven
For my final road trip, I drove into the deep south, from NY to WV, then crossing over to KY, TN, AR, MS, and finally, New Orleans, LA. I rented a mustang convertible for this trip, much like the one I own, and immediately regretted it when I had to drive up the treacherous and mostly unpaved roads of the West Virginian mountains in the pouring rain. Luckily, I was eventually able to make my way to the New River Gorge Bridge right as the rain stopped and the fog lifted for a few minutes. The terrifying and pulse-pounding eight hour drive back after dark along the "country roads" of a steep and dangerous mountain face, however, was another story. I visited a hodgepodge of interesting locations during this trip including the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah river (something a lot more difficult to visualize and still remain within the state line of West Virginia than the song suggests), the original Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, Elvis Presley's home in Graceland, the historic Little Rock Central High School, and the ruins of an old cotton plantation in the Mississippi bayou. I was thrilled to end my amazing journey in one of my favorite cities in the country, New Orleans, with big a plate of Jambalaya and a lifetime of amazing memories.
Rushmore, Four Ways
Whenever I visit a place that is well known and frequently photographed, I always feel that the onus is on me to find a different angle, use a different means of expression, and simply to see the place somewhat differently than it has been seen before, millions of times, by millions of people. Whether one visits the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, or the Grand Canyon, one should try to make it his own. Otherwise, what would be the point of going?