Bittersweet. That really is the best word to describe being home. It’s nice to be back, to sleep in my own bed and shower regularly, hang out with my friends, my cats, my mom, get back into the local music scene, but at the same time I’m really kinda sad knowing that my big, once in a lifetime trip is done and over with. It was in the works for So long while I came up with the money and planned out where I wanted to go and when I wanted to be there, and then it flew by…and just like that, it was over.

That said, it was an amazing experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Well, mostly. I’d take the ferry up to Alaska instead of driving, and I’d probably avoid Death Valley in August, and I’d make sure I was on time for the leaf change in Vermont, and give myself some more time to check out Florida. There are a lot of things about my trip that in hindsight I would have done differently, but am I sorry that I spent the better part of three-and-a-half-months sleeping in the back of my truck and traveling the country…not at all. It was one thing to say I was planning on doing that, but I actually DID that and I am so proud of myself. I feel so independent now, and empowered, as if I can do anything I set my mind to. And any lingering shyness I might still have had before I left is Gone; I can talk to anyone and everyone now, and do.

Besides having grown as a person, I’ve also grown as a photographer. And I AM a photographer, and a good one too. I definitely shoot my share of crap, but what photographer doesn’t? Part of this trip was for me to see if I even Want to try to pursue photography on the professional level. I’ve come to the realization that while I love landscape photography, I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in wedding or portrait photography, which is where the money is at. Not to mention, while the creative part of my brain has gotten a great workout the last couple months, I feel like the geeky part of me that loves the freight industry, spreadsheets and databases, puzzles and problem solving, has been shriveling up and dying. I have a beautiful portfolio now, and I think that I should be able to get a coffee table book published one day, and hopefully have a small gallery one day as well….I have no intention of giving up on photography, but I think I will be happier (as will my bank account) if I also have a job that will keep that other half of my brain challenged too.

So…Tiff’s Big Ass Road Trip has come to an end. For a while there I thought “Tiff’s Big Ass Mishap” might have been more fitting, but now I think the best title is “Tiff’s Big Ass Adventure.” An adventure it most definitely was. And I must say, luck was on my side. I ran out of gas once in Alaska…as I was pulling into the gas station. Killed my car battery once in Alaska too, but my parents had bought, and then loaned me, a portable jump start system (I thought “Wow, that’s really loud!” when I went to use it…turned out I’d turned on the air compressor – no wonder it didn’t do anything when I tried to start my car!). Only one flat tire, and that was at least in a safe place to be changing a tire (and I changed it myself!). And who can forget my stint as a deer serial killer? I walked away from both encounters, and my truck is even still driveable, if not quite as pretty as it once was. Oh, and the evening I tried (not intentionally) to lose my tripod head and zoom lens off a cliff in the Columbia River Gorge? Despite the fall and subsequent stepping on, my zoom lens has worked great. All in all, I think things went pretty well. Thirty-two THOUSAND miles and forty-three states without major incident.

I was well traveled within the U.S. before I even started my trip (a line from my favorite Modest Mouse song has come to mind often the last few months…”I think I know my geography pretty damn well…”) and I’ve always believed that we live in a beautiful country, full of good people. My trip has reaffirmed those beliefs for me. The actions of a few give everyone a bad name (Congress, anyone?) but everywhere I’ve gone I’ve met the nicest people. One day I hope to get a chance to travel and take pictures abroad, because I think the same can be said of the rest of the world. I’ll be sure to keep a travel blog.

Oh, and for anyone who happens to read this last message and has been following along, will you leave me a comment, even if all it says is your name? I’m curious to see how many people have been keeping up with my adventure…

Acknowledgments:

Thank you to my mom, without whom this trip would likely not have been possible. Besides not charging me any rent to live with her (which made all the difference in my ability to finance my adventure) she took care of my attention-whore cats all summer and cleaned up an inordinate amount of cat puke and grasshopper carcasses once Squeaker Zeke, after two years of just sticking his head out the “window,” figured out how to use the cat doors. She also had the fun job of keeping track of where I was at any point in time and even added a text messaging plan to her phone, just for me.

Thank you to my dad, who helped me shop for my 4Runner, sat with me all afternoon at the dealership when I was ready to buy, and fielded all of my car/not-quite-dead-deer related questions.

Thank you to (in the order visited) Peggy & Greg, David, Grandma & Grandpa W., my dad, Jim, Lisa & Kristin O’Neill, and Ayan & Sheetal for sharing their spare bedrooms and couches, showers, and heat/air-conditioning with me along the way. It was lovely to get out of the back of my truck, if only briefly!

Thank you to my favorite super geek, Chris, who had to listen to the bulk of my rambling over the course of my trip. And I talk A Lot. Mostly he just adds to my life in general, even if it’s been a while since we’ve actually gotten to see each other. Soon though…fingers crossed.

Thank you to Tracy, Shauna, Laura, Aaron, Glade, Sean and Neal, my former coworkers at Stonepath Logistics, who have been some of the biggest supporters of my trip and sent me off with snacks, jumper cables and flares (which I’m sure I never needed precisely because I had them), and dollar bills for the toll roads (which also saved me at several campgrounds when I was lacking small change).

Thank you to all of the wonderful people I have met along the way: my Wind Point friend, Kathi, who has emailed me every week or so since we met despite the fact that I was terrible about responding to email from the road; A.J. and the crew of the USCGC Mustang in Seward; Robert Doebeli, the overseer who granted me permission to shoot at that property in Homer with the abandoned boats and who recently mailed me a copy of a newspaper article about the property; Jack and Helen (or maybe it was Ellen?) who I met at the Windsor Ruins in Mississippi – they gave me their phone number and told me to give them a call if I ran into any trouble while I was in their neck of the woods; the guys at Fire Station #7 in Gulfport who let me wander around their particularly well-ventilated fire station; Brad, the security guard at Norwich State Hospital who didn’t call the cops on me when he caught me trespassing; Richard and Erik, who I met separately at Arches National Park and have sparked my interest in night photography and painting with light; the guys at Big O Tires in Cortez who made my truck driveable again after my first deer encounter; the guys at Kingsway Toyota in Edmonton, who fit me in on a Friday afternoon even after they weren’t taking anymore appointments and kept my trip on schedule; Gail, the flagger at a British Columbia road construction site that I chatted with while I waited for the pilor car – she thought her 8-year-old granddaughter had more common sense than the flagger at the other end and was only working because there was a pilot car in between them; the couple from Eastern Texas that I met at the Ninilchik Russian Orthodox Church, who saw my license plate and promptly asked if I’d called my mother yet; Ian, the calendar photographer I met at Cape Hatteras who pointed me towards the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse in Maine and shared many of his favorite places to photograph with me; Neah (sp?) from the St. Augustine Lighthouse; all of the employees at the various Panera Bread Co.’s where I updated my website who never cared how many hours I spent there; the grocery store clerks, fishermen, photographers, retirees, etc. whose names I never knew but chatted with at length anyway.

And last but definitely not least, thank you to all of my family and friends who have followed along with my adventure, offered their support and encouragement, and given me a reason to update this website.

Thank you. It wouldn’t have been the same without you guys.

There, the last of the pictures are Finally posted! Yay. Unfortunately, that only represents the last of the half-assed editing…the real, print-worthy editing is just beginning. Yuck.

Let’s see if I can still remember where I last left off when I was updating from the road. Hartford, I think….When I left the Walmart parking lot, which was conveniently located next to Panera’s, I headed towards Newtown in search of the Fairfield Hills Hospital. For some reason I never actually printed myself a map of the hospital’s location and really did have to search for it. I drove down all the main roads and then eventually followed the sign for the prison, which I guess I should have followed from the start, ’cause lo and behold there was the hospital. The grounds are open to the public, so long as you stay fifteen feet away from the buildings and I had a grand time wandering around. From there I headed down to New Haven to check out the Grove Street Cemetery, which seemed to be in the middle of the Yale campus. Besides the really cool sign above the front gate, “The Dead Shall Be Raised,” I can’t say as I was all that impressed with the cemetery. Maybe I’d just seen too many of them by then, or maybe it was just a boring cemetery…I still had four lighthouses in the area, though one of them I never did find, and one I couldn’t get a decent view of. It was a really dinky little black lighthouse, I don’t really think I missed out on much by not getting to add it to my “collection.” Not to mention the wind that day was COLD. Actually, come to think of it, most of the last couple weeks of my trip were COLD…Ahh well, I can’t complain too much, I was really pleased with the shots of the Fayerweather Island lighthouse (it’s connected to the mainland with a breakwater) and I was even able to somewhat hide some of the graffiti on the lighthouse with the beach grass.

I had wanted to be in Long Island by that evening, but didn’t particularly have any desire to sit in New York traffic so I figured I’d kill some time at Panera’s and make some backup discs. As luck would have it, there was a movie theater in the same building and “The Departed” was getting ready to start so I spent the evening at the movies instead. Wound up being a great movie, and it was just a nice way to spend the last night of my trip where I wouldn’t be driving til I could no longer see straight. Thankfully, the drive down to Long Island proved easy, though I was not exactly excited the next morning when I awoke to Gloom, of the flat-boring-gray-variety. Ugh. What a way to spend my last day on the coast. I even drove all the way out to Montauk Point only to find that the lighthouse grounds happen to be closed on whatever day of the week it was that I was there. What a waste. I did get a bit of a break…by the time the I finally found the Cedar Point County Park and started hiking my way out to the lighthouse on Cedar Island (which hasn’t been an island since the 1938 hurricane), the clouds were starting to clear up. It did insist on raining on me several times in the process but that didn’t ruin my afternoon any. I was very much enjoying the mile-and-a-half walk down the beach, listening to the waves and picking up seashells as I went…a lovely way to finish off the last of my lighthouse shoots.

I was a tad sad when I had to drag myself away from the coast, but the Weston State Hospital was calling to me…yeah, yeah….not like That! I took a little more roundabout way of getting out of New England than I had intended, but it was too hard to drive and read the map so I just started following any freeway that was going either south or west until I crossed into Pennsylvania. It worked, more or less, and I made it to Weston by about eleven the next morning after getting a few hours of sleep at a rest area (I still remember my very first cross country drive by myself, when I moved from Seattle to Chesapeake in 2001…my mother told me I could not use the bathroom at a rest area after dark, I had to find a gas station…and now I quite comfortably sleep at rest stops…who knew?). I was highly disappointed when I got to the hospital, the sign on the gate clearly said that anyone caught on the grounds without written permission would be prosecuted. Plus, the security guard was sitting in his car nearby. I’d been under the impression that the grounds were open to the public, same as Fairfield Hills. Fortunately, the fence was short and I figured I’d still be able to get some good shots from the sidewalk with my zoom lens. I’d barely gotten my tripod set up when the security guard drove by and hollered that I was more than welcome to come onto the grounds and shoot. No need to ask me twice! I chatted with the guard for a while and got the scoop on why the woman I’d emailed about getting permission to shoot inside had never responded. They were actually giving tours of the main building up until not too long ago, but the fire marshal shut them down since the woman refused to fix any of the electrical wiring and was just running extension cords all over the place…and then there’s the little matter of her taking the money she was making off the tours and putting it into work on her own house. Oopsie. The security guard was full of all sorts of info and while discussing the fate of the hospital (it’s entirely too expensive to restore, but it’s still a National Historic Landmark so it can’t be demolished until it becomes unsafe), I learned that they had just the one guard to cover the very large grounds during any given shift. Very good information for someone intent on shooting the interior of an abandoned insane asylum before the end of her trip…I will be purposely vague as to how I pulled it off, but I was actually successful in my quest, and the inside of Weston State Hospital was amazing. Creepy as hell, but awesome nonetheless. It was gutted when it was shut down ten years ago so there’s not much left besides the sinks and one lone hospital gurney that I stumbled across during my wanderings. Broken windows and puddles of water from leaky ceilings in some places, and peeling paint Everywhere. The doors in the patient wards were bizarre…in some wards the doors were still hanging straight and in decent condition, and then further down the wing there would be a section with the doors half on the floor and completely falling apart. Very much a “pins and needles” shoot for me, but I doubt if I’ll have another opportunity to shoot there again before it does get torn down. I did eventually run into the security guard again, and we had a very interesting discussion about the ghosts who haunt the buildings. Apparently some days they’re quite active and he hears lots of indistinct voices, and the doors have a habit of opening and closing on their own, including locked ones. I can’t say as I was bothered by the fact that it was a quiet day for them. I was freaking myself out plenty without needing any extra help. The guard, who I should add has been there for several years now (though they have hired others in the past who have worked one shift and never come back) told me he doesn’t mind the ghosts, it’s the snakes in the tunnels that he can’t handle. I think I’m with him there…I’d take ghosts over snakes too.

After spending several hours at the hospital I did have to get on my way again and I headed south to Babcock State Park, home of the Glade Creek Mill. I’ve seen many, many beautiful shots of the mill, but it wound up being the price I had to pay for my little adventure at the hospital. Turns out that the mill is very much a morning shoot, and by the time I got there in the late afternoon, I was shooting into the sun. Oh well. I figure the mill will probably be there longer than the hospital; I may get another shot at it yet. After that I had to shift into heavy driving mode and made it about two-thirds of the way across Kentucky before I had to find a rest area and get some sleep. It had been rainy when I went to bed and the gloom and drizzle continued the next morning. I stopped at the Bollinger Mill & Covered Bridge anyway, but decided it just wasn’t worth driving the extra miles to go down to Arkansas and shoot a couple mills there. I spent the extra time I gained at the Panera’s in Joplin, Missouri making some backup discs (I would have been soooo angry if I’d had a hard drive crash or something and lost the asylum shots) and then wound up getting sidetracked for a couple hours more talking to a gentleman (Kelly, if I remember correctly) I met there (he was actually giving me crap because i was hogging both of the outlets, but I have an external dvd burner, I couldn’t help it). He’s into photography as well and was very much interested in how one goes about planning a trip like mine, and what items have I found most useful (the rubbermaid tub I used as a dresser, which doubled as my desk and dinner table), and what could I have lived without (all the random stuff I packed for “just in case” like duct tape, rope, a gas can…all the stuff that I’m sure I would have needed if I hadn’t actually had). He eventually had to pee, thankfully, or we might have stood there in the cafe all night talking about traveling and places to shoot.

Unfortunately, I was still a couple hundred miles from where I needed to be if I wanted to be shooting at Big Basin Preserve in southwestern Kansas before the sun was up. I made a valiant effort and covered about half the distance before I had to get a couple hours of sleep. It was so rainy and windy that I thought I might have made a wrong turn somewhere and parked inside a carwash. I got up at a little before five to drive the rest of the way to the preserve but didn’t quite make it in time for the shots I wanted, though the weather did at least clear up midway. I was still pleased with the shots I did get in the relatively short time I spent there. It was just way too cold, especially after I’d stood there in the field in my underwear while attempting to put my running tights on underneath my jeans. From the preserve I headed over to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. I must only have ever seen photos of the dunes during summer, because it Never crossed my mind that they might be covered in snow this time of year (above). They looked very cool and I was very glad not to be repeating my little heat stroke adventure at the sand dunes in Death Valley a couple months ago. I was just constantly amazed by how white and pristine the snow looked.

The “accident-free” portion of my trip ended the next morning when I hit a deer (my first) just east of the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park (see previous entries). That was an absolutely miserable experience, though my truck was still driveable with a little bit of help from the guys at Big O Tires in Cortez, and I was still up at Arches National Park by early afternoon. I’ve been there several times and knew what places would be good in the afternoon so I just crammed in as many of those as I could before hiking out to the Delicate Arch for sunset. My deer encounter was very much on my mind still so I was quite glad when I met Richard, a fellow photographer (though he’s also in the Army and should be deploying to Qatar about now) while waiting for the sun to go down. He was a great distraction and we chit-chatted at length about great places to shoot while we got our shots, and then continued chatting even after it got dark. He was going to hang out at the arch to get some night shots but I wasn’t dressed warmly enough for that and was glad my dad had loaned me the use of his headlamp when I had to hike back down to my car in the dark. Richard and I had been talking about long exposures and I decided to try a couple myself at the Balanced Rock before leaving the park. As luck would have it, I met another gentleman there, Erik, who introduced me to light painting. He had a portable, hand-held spotlight and was moving it across the rock which was giving it the appearance of glowing against the night sky. I was impressed. My shots sucked since I was having trouble getting the camera focused in the dark, but I did see a lot of potential.

The following morning I backtracked south towards Hovenweep, which I had intended to shoot on the first half of my trip but got bumped when I left a day late. I had never been there before and found the place really interesting. Plus, I was the only one there until after I’d finished the two mile loop at the Square Tower Group….always nice when I don’t have to wait for people to move out of my shot. From there I headed over towards Valley of the Gods, which i also was supposed to have been to on the first half… which meant my notes regarding where exactly it was located and how to get there were in a notebook…at home. I vaguely remembered, and I’d drawn in a road on my map…I just wasn’t quite specific about what the road number was or anything like that. I turned off the highway onto a small dirt road with a county road number that seemed like it was heading in the general direction I thought I should be going…which I eventually determined must have been some sort of ranch road and very definitely required a high clearance vehicle, 4wd in some spots, and judging by the number of stream beds I crossed, is likely impassable in the spring or after a heavy rain. Oh, did I mention the cattle gates? Three times I had to get out of the car to open up a barbed wire gate and then drag it closed again after driving my truck through. The view was lovely though, and my little dirt road did eventually run smack into this nice wide, mostly gravel road that I was supposed to have taken if only I’d been a bit more patient and not turned off the highway so quickly. Ahh well, it wouldn’t have been nearly as much of an adventure that way! I had intended to shoot Monument Valley on my way over to Bryce but it was already five and it turns out the park closes at five. I wasn’t really all that disappointed. I had one more day of shooting and then I’d be home.

I shot sunrise at Bryce Canyon the next morning, though my heart wasn’t really into it. I think I spent more time chatting with a photographer from British Columbia that I met a little later than I did actually taking pictures. Sharon has been a photographer for fifty years and has just recently quit teaching workshops. This was her first real trip in forever that was just for her, no students, no curriculum, etc. I could relate, because my trip has been all about being very selfish, and doing something that is just for me. I stopped in at the gift shop on my way out of the park (I’d had 3 1/2 months to pick up a little something for my family and closest friends, and I’d procrastinated just a bit….uhm, til the last day…). It was there that I saw some notecards featuring Wally Pacholka’s work. I was in awe. He does night photography of southwestern lanscapes, Zion, Bryce, Arches, etc., but it’s his skies that are truly amazing. Timed exposures that show the Milky Way, shooting stars, the Hale-Bopp comet passing by in 1997. And the foregrounds of his shots glow….light painting! After leaving Bryce (with a couple of those notecards) I headed over to Zion National Park. I’d been expecting to have to take the shuttle through the park, but as luck would have it, the shuttle had stopped running the previous day and I could actually drive myself. The sun wasn’t quite where I wanted it so I drove down to Washington to find a Walmart. I’d decided I wanted my own portable spotlight to play around with some light painting myself before heading home that evening. With the batteries for my new acquisition charging as I drove, I headed back up to Zion and wandered along the Virgin River before crawling into the back of my truck for a little nap while I waited for it to get dark. I started the evening off playing around with some different camera settings, trying to get a feel for what I needed to use in order to get a nicely exposed shot without the stars having moved so far as to leave noticeable streaks. I then drove through the park looking for some rock that would be close enough for my new spotlight to reach. I was having a great time playing around, getting a feel for how far away from the camera i needed to stand so that beams of light wouldn’t show up in the exposure. In fact, I was having such a good time that I decided I was going to go home by the longer, slower back road and detour through Red Canyon to play some more. Red Canyon was not meant to be, as shortly after that my mother received the “I am a deer serial killer” phone call. I’d hit a second deer, this time just east of the entrance to Zion (see previous entries). That was about when I decided I’d better just go straight home, and the second deer encounter had damaged some of the wiring to my lights and my brights were no longer working. I was not about to drive along the back highways without brights and instead backtracked through Zion and Toquerville and got onto the freeway from there.

Thankfully the rest of the drive home was uneventful (two deer in three days were plenty of excitement) and I arrived home, safely, at about 2:30am Monday night. It’s nice to be home, though I’m a bit sad that my Big Trip is over. I figure I’ve got one more blog still to write, my final thoughts on my big adventure…just not tonight. It’s way past my bed time.

Firstly, I just heard from the law firm in Canada that is defending me in a bodily injury lawsuit (for a car accident I was the cause of in Vancouver two and a half years ago) and they no longer need me to fly up later this month for something or other I was supposed to be present for. Yay! If I must get sued, I’d much rather be getting sued and not have to have any part in it!

Secondly, tomorrow I’m meeting with the head of one of the vendors I used a lot at my last job about a position they may have open. We shall see…

And thirdly, if you are curious to see who the finalists are in the Canon National Park Photo Contest that I entered a while back, go to http://www.photoworkshop.com/canon/nationalparks/votingcenter/index.htm. Sadly, my Zabriskie Point entry is not among them, but that’s okay, I had no expectations of winning.

On that note, I’m off to unload my truck. I really will get the last of the pictures posted soon, I swear….

Oh, and $2500 to fix my truck. I went to the auto body shop this morning to get an estimate and had them pull back the other side of the bumper and get my lights working again (which they didn’t even charge me for! Thanks, Shine Collision of Sandy!). It’s very driveable, just not really pretty. Still debating whether to cough up my deductible and whatever increase I’ll get hit with on my insurance premium, or if I should just leave it as is…Decisions, decisions…