Hello from Brookings, Oregon! Firstly, thanks again to Amber, Colin and Tiggy (Happy Late Birthday, Tigzilla!) for letting me spend last weekend with them, and letting me eat most of the Skittles and Butterfingers out of the Halloween candy stash. Speaking of Halloween…that’s today! Where has time gone??? My trip is almost over…Also, thank you to my Grandma and Grandpa Van Stone, who fed me a lovely French Toast breakfast on my way out of town Monday morning. I stayed longer than I should have for needing to drive six or seven hours, but it was just really nice to hang out in their toasty warm living room, roasting by the wood stove and chatting about the different places we’ve traveled…they’ve been Everywhere! I wound up missing sunset on the Oregon coast, but it was raining, so I don’t think I really missed out on much.

Rain seems to be the common theme this last week. The Weather Gods did indeed hear me and granted me a reprieve, and contrary to the weather forecast, for several hours yesterday there was actually a nearly cloudless blue sky. Unfortunately, a reprieve was all it was, and as I type this, the rain is once more running down my car windows. It rained for a while leaving Spokane, cleared up and gave me false hope for the drive through Oregon (I followed the Washington side of the Columbia River part way, per my grandparents’ suggestion, and it did offer a much different view, though I wound up crossing over at The Dalles to make it easier to get through the Portland rush hour traffic), and then started raining again once I arrived on the coast. The sound of torrential downpours on the roof of my car woke me several times, and although Tuesday dawned fairly gloomy, it’s wound up being one of my best days on this last part of the trip.

I detoured back up to the wreck of the Peter Iredale, and unlike my July visit, this time I had much better light and no fog. The wind was blowing extremely hard though, causing the sea foam from the waves to accumulate on the beach and blow across the sand, which I had never seen before. It rained off and on during the drive down the coast to my favorite place in the world, Cape Arago, but was at least clear enough that with patience the sun occasionally made an appearance. There are actually three small state parks all linked together, and this little strip of coast just south of Charleston calls to me like nowhere else. I’ve made many trips to the Oregon coast over the last few years, but I have Never seen the waves like this! They were phenomenal, huge swells that crashed into the rocks and cliffs and sent spray taller than the cliffs themselves. I was in heaven, at least until it started to downpour and I had to try to backtrack through the woods in the growing darkness, emerging highly wet and dirty after I was unable to find the path in one place and had to go through the brush. It was worth the effort, I’m very pleased with the shots I got from my perch on a cliff above Simpson Beach, though I may need to wash my camera pack after this trip, it has an odd brown tinge to it these days.

It’s rained most of the last few days, with the exception of my several hours of blue sky yesterday, which I took advantage of by hiking through the Indian Sands area of the Samuel Boardman Scenic Corridor. A photographer I met near Cape Arago had said this was his favorite place on the coast, so I thought it was worth checking out. It was a neat spot, though I don’t think I was quite as excited as he was, the sea arch was directly in the sun, and none of the waterfalls he’d mentioned falling over the cliffs seemed to be running. However, from the bluffs it was easy to tell that something cloudy was quickly moving in off the water, and by the time I had hiked back up to my car, sure enough, the fog was covering the coast. It cleared up again a couple hours later and I thought I might get in a real sunset after all, but the fog returned yet again and none of the photos from last night were even remotely interesting.

My grandma and I had an interesting conversation over breakfast, she’s followed my trip blog quite religiously for both trips now, and pointed out that I seem a little more jaded this time around, that the “wonderment” that was apparent when I traveled the first time seems to be missing. I’ve given this some thought and there’s some truth to it, though I don’t think I’d say I’m “jaded.” When I set off on my 2006 trip, I had never had to check myself into a campground alone, didn’t even know that Walmart parking lots were a good place to sleep, and besides two trips to the Oregon coast, where I slept in motels, I really hadn’t gone all that far from home for the purpose of taking pictures. Everything was new and a learning experience. Fast-forward three years and I am a pro at traveling the way I do. Since that first major trip, I’ve done several smaller trips, working my way down the West Coast and through the Southwest, as far as I can manage over a long weekend or by taking a few days off work. Taking pictures and sleeping in my car has simply become a way of life for me now. I think that if I do sound jaded, it’s because I just had much better luck with the weather in 2006, and because I covered so many more miles in a shorter amount of time, I was just on the go so much more and had less downtime. That said, I also wasn’t spending time on the coast during the rainy season, so I can’t really say that I’m surprised by the weather I’m encountering…

But enough rambling, I’m headed down to the Redwoods to get in some hiking. And if the weather is still lousy, I may start the six hour drive down to Point Arena, the forecast further down the coast was looking better than up here. Hopefully, because Salt Point, Bowling Ball Beach and Pt. Reyes are coming up in the next few days, places I missed when planning my Big Ass Road Trip and have since been extremely excited to photograph…Wish me luck!

All new photos are posted in the Oregon album.

At this rate my book stash isn’t going to last me more than a couple days. I’ve read three books in the last two days, seven in the last week, and have taken next to no pictures (though Tuesday was good, the waves were phenomenal). Weather Gods, please send me some partly clear skies, at least give me a fair chance…I can read at home!

Hello from Spokane…which isn’t even remotely along the route for this third and final part of the trip, but here I am anyway. As usual these days, things have been pretty hit and miss lately. After leaving Salt Lake last Sunday evening and driving the four hours out to Great Basin National Park, I found myself in one of the areas of the country with the darkest night skies. With no moon or light pollution, the stars and Milky Way were amazing. It was extremely windy, but I was able to take some thirty-second exposures with high ISO’s that at least give an idea as to how many stars were visible. After a chilly hike the next morning at roughly 11,000 feet, the highest elevation I can recall being at without being in an airplane, I headed toward Mono Lake on California’s eastern border. I got out of the car in the parking lot at the South Tufa Area and thought, “Wow, this smells like home!” I knew from my research that Mono Lake is highly salty, but hadn’t realized until I was reading some of the exhibits along the lakeshore that it’s actually the sister lake to the Great Salt Lake. While they smell similarly, Mono Lake is a bit different in that it has tufas, rather ugly rock formations that are actually petrified springs that formed when the water levels had been much higher. Ugly or not, with good clouds and the right light, they make for great pictures!

After an uneventful sunrise at Mono Lake Tuesday morning, I headed out to Bodie State Historic Park, a preserved gold mining town that was home to 8,000 people at its peak in the early 1880′s. Much of the town was destroyed in a fire in the 1930′s, but the remaining buildings are still very worth the drive out to the park. My original plan had me driving down to the Devils Postpile National Monument after that, but I had heard from a fellow photographer at Mono Lake that the road up to the monument was already closed for the season. I contemplated heading through Yosemite, on the off chance that I’d like it better in the winter, but Tioga Pass was closed, as well as the next pass to the north. I wound up just moving along to the next spot on my itinerary, Lake Tahoe. I was supposed to spend two days there, but Tahoe and I just don’t seem to like each other. There is so much potential there (if you’ve never checked out Elizabeth Carmel’s work, Google her) but there weren’t any clouds at the lake (well, two, but that hardly counts) and I was highly uninspired. My mom checked the weather for me and once I knew that I wasn’t likely to get any more interesting weather, I left the lake after only a couple hours.

Unfortunately, Pyramid Lake, my next stop, didn’t prove all that more inspiring, and my quest to photograph the Fly Geyser was unsuccessful. I crossed back into California by way of many miles of bumpy gravel back roads and made my way out to Lassen Volcanic National Park, where I hiked out to the aptly named Boiling Springs Lake before heading to the main entrance of the park and doing a quick drive through. I spent Thursday shooting waterfalls…Burney Falls were amazing, and later I was very glad that I had borrowed a pair of hip waders from my parents, since I wound up having to wade up the creek to get to Lion Slide Falls. Middle McCloud Falls were also lovely, though I spent too much time there and didn’t make it out to Castle Lake in time to scout the trail before sunset to prepare for my hike in the dark the following morning. By this time, I was four days ahead of schedule (technically six, if you count to the two days I was already adding to the Oregon Coast since I left two days earlier than I had planned) and when I finally found an internet connection near Mt. Shasta, I discovered that it was raining all along the coast and my newest plan to head back up toward the Olympic Peninsula in Washington wasn’t going to work out as well as I’d hoped.

After my early morning hike Friday up to Heart Lake for the view of Mt. Shasta and Castle Lake (which sits below Heart Lake) at sunrise, I chatted with my sister and decided that I’d much rather drive the eleven hours up to Spokane and spend the weekend with them than spend several days sitting in my car in the rain. And that’s how I’ve come to wind up in Spokane, nowhere near the Oregon Coast, spending time with my niece and reading obsessively – I’ve read three of the four books in Scott Westerfeld’s “Uglies” series since my arrival late Friday night. Amber is bringing Tiggy, who’ll be having her first birthday in a couple days, down to Salt Lake in another week or so, but I’ll still be on the road and won’t get to see them again until Christmas. Tig is walking now and I’ve had lots of fun watching “Tigzilla” destroy my building block towers. We also went to dinner last night with Grandma J, who we conveniently forgot to tell that I was in town since it seemed like much more fun to surprise her, and tomorrow morning I’ll be heading out to the farm to have breakfast with my Grandma & Grandpa Van Stone. From there I’ll be headed down towards Portland and the Oregon Coast, where hopefully I’ll find some interesting weather, and inspiration. These next couple weeks are the part of the trip that I’ve been most looking forward to, I am so in love with the Pacific Ocean and the coast, and I am really hoping that I can find my groove there. Fingers crossed…

New photos have been posted in the Nevada, California, Mono Lake, and Bodie SHP albums.

Greetings from Salt Lake City! Yes, I admit, I have been slacking off…I should have posted this days ago, seeing as I’ve actually been home for nearly a week now. My big plans for last Saturday’s Balloon Glow were foiled by wind (the shot above was taken that morning during the Dawn Patrol) so I got a head start on the drive up to Mesa Verde National Park (after running over some poor dog, which of course made me cry for hours…I now have one duck, two deer, two ground squirrels, two rabbits, one dog, and one bird on my conscience, though thankfully this has not all occurred during this trip). There were good clouds at Mesa Verde Sunday morning, but the light wasn’t in the right place for any of the cliff dwellings and I found myself highly uninspired. Heavy cloud cover over both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks made it easy for me to head right on home, it’s hard to be patient with the clouds when I’ve been gone for nearly two months and am only four hours from home…

It’s been wonderful to be home. I got a music fix at the Broke City and Supersofar shows, and have spent time with most of my “most favoritest” people and my cats, all of whom I’d been missing quite a bit. I also got my mom all caught up again with the insurance companies, and stopped by Reaction Cargo to say hi to my co-workers…we actually made money last month and are doing much better now, and it’s sounding like I should be able to go back to Reaction full-time, now that my mom has discovered she can live without having me in the office once a week.

As great as it’s been to come home (I get to shower daily, and eat hot food!), I’m still highly excited about this last leg of my trip, and will be hitting the road again late tomorrow afternoon. Since I came home early and have accomplished what I needed to, I’m going to squeeze in a couple extra days on the Oregon Coast and see if I can get better weather than when I was there back in July. And if not, I’ve stocked up on books, just in case…I’ll be starting this part of my adventure off by heading to Great Basin National Park on my way to Mono Lake, and then heading up towards Lake Tahoe, which if memory serves me right, is where I’ll find my next internet connection. Until then…

Oh, and the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta photos are finally up…

Greetings from ABQ! I’m short on time today so this will have to be quick (really!)…The last few days have been completely hit or miss. My big plans for going back to catch the San Antonio Missions at sunrise after my last update were thwarted by heavy clouds that rolled in over night and lingered all morning. After yet another oil change and tire rotation, I opted to get a head start on the drive to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, where I caught a cloudy sunrise and quickly decided I just didn’t really have much patience for waiting around for better light…might have a little…lot…to do with being so close to home. I’m getting antsy…antsy to the point that I have completely reworked the last couple days’ plan so that I can go home a day or two early.

The upside of leaving the Guadalupe Mountains shortly after I arrived (well, after attempting to sleep parked in a picnic area, where the wind was so strong it rocked my 4Runner all night) was that I wound up with extra time at the Carlsbad Caverns, which were absolutely phenomenal. Were I not so ready to go home, I would have spent another day there in a heartbeat. I only saw the Big Room during my visit, since it wound up taking me five and a half hours to work my way along the mile-long path through that portion of the caves. Carlsbad actually allows tripods in two of the caverns, which made it possible for me to take up to 90-second exposures that made use of the ambient light (and according to the Park Service, none of which is colored). This left me with a lot of time to let my imagination run wild while pondering the various rock formations, many of which looked like big-teethed monsters. This is one of those rare times where it’s easier to just say “Look at the pictures!” than try to explain how amazing Carlsbad was…and I apologize that the size photos that I post on my site really don’t do the Big Room justice, if it’s even possible for a photograph to. Oh, and I’ve decided that my old camera starting to crap out when it did was a blessing in disguise…the new 5D Mark II handles noise from long exposures much better, and I would have been dreading having to edit out all of the dead pixels that would have showed up had I shot the Big Room with my old camera. Not to mention the level of detail I get with 21-megapixels…I’m still highly impressed with this new camera!

I caught a cloudy sunrise Thursday at the White Sands National Monument, where I wandered around barefoot in the cold sand for a couple hours. My patience was eventually rewarded with great light and my favorite kind of clouds, and I was exceedingly pleased with the photos from there. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same of my visit to New Mexico’s Badlands – The Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness & Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wash. All three areas are completely wild and not highly visited, and a look at the sign-in sheets at each of the access points confirmed that half of all the visitors are from Germany or Austria (the majority of the photos I found online were taken by European photographers). There are no trails or maps showing where the most interesting hoodoo and rock formations are, and I spent the majority of my time there hiking around for miles in a state of frustration. The German photographers with the best images from Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah were wonderful and at least mentioned in their blog where to find the hoodoos, which would have been very cool had there been a single cloud in the sky. Yesterday was just one of those days where I couldn’t take a good photo to save my life, though I did add a lot of cracked mud shots to my texture collection.

Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to be the case today. I started the morning off at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, though the photos from there will have to wait until I post again from home, I had to edit like mad to make it through all the Carlsbad shots I found myself puttting in the “Edit Now!” folder. I’ve been to the Fiesta three times now, and whereas two years ago it was windy and many of the balloons refused to launch, the weather was perfect this morning, complete with wispy clouds and everything. I think I may have gotten the shots I want, but I need to quickly flip through the several hundred photos (and a couple little movies clips, just because my new camera can!) before deciding whether I want to freeze my butt off again tomorrow morning, or get a head start on home….Regardless, I need to hurry up, I still need to head back to the Balloon Park for tonight’s balloon glow. It also looks like it’s starting to get cloudy and windy…at this rate I may be home by Monday for sure…

New photos posted in the Texas, New Mexico, and Carlsbad Caverns albums.