Travel is a sickness. There is no cure.
Well it’s pretty long overdue, but I’ve finally back-posted some of the photos (and a few videos too!) from the Summer Road Trip, including Burning Man… Take your time, there’s a lot there.
Part 1: New Mexico, Arizona, & Nevada
Part 2: Death Valley & Yosemite
Part 3: Burning Man
Part 4: San Francisco & Marin Headlands
Part 5: Northern California & Oregon
Part 6: Yellowstone & The Tetons
Part 7: Utah & Colorado
Grand Tetons National Park, WY – Canyonlands National Park, UT – Mesa Verde National Park, CO – Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO – New Orleans, LA
Evening Colors, Canyonland
Headed south from the Tetons we arrived back in summer, in southern Utah at Canyonlands National Park. We soaked up some sun, and stood on the edge of the world before moving on to Mesa Verde and the incredible Anasazi cliffside ruins there. Then, a quick stop at the Great Sand Dunes National Park in eastern Colorado before hitting the highway for the last few hundres miles back home to New Orleans.
Portland, OR – Butte, MT – Yellowstone National Park, WY – Grand Teton National Park, WY
Mountain Homestead
Following Portland, we headed back east, over the continental divide and the Rockies. We found ourselves early the next morning in Butte, Montana, perhaps the most surreal stop of the whole journey (check the photos)… Then, we spent a few days in Yellowstone and got a taste of fall just around the corner. I think this was Lena’s favorite part of the trip, and she seemed to really love all the bubbling mud, geysers, and steam vents making noise all over the place. Plus, she was REALLY happy to know that buffalo still existed and that they hadn’t been hunted to extinction! Just south from Yellowstone we passed through the beautifully photographic Teton Range and into Grand Teton National Park where the aspens were already beginning to show their fall colors.
Sausalito, CA – Humboldt Redwoods State Park, CA – Redwood National Park, CA – Portland, OR
Avenue of the Giants, Humboldt Redwoods State Park
Trees, trees, and more trees. That’s the story of Northern California. We visited the ‘Avenue of the Giants’ in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, home to some of the world’s tallest trees- California Coastal Redwoods. We also visited the Redwood National Forest, where recently the new World’s Tallest Tree has been found. The redwoods were incredible, and walking under them really made you feel so insignificant and tiny. They were inspiring and beautiful… This was definitely a highlight of the trip for me. Then we continued north to Portland, where we visited Travis and checked out his new house, and visited Portland’s Japanese Gardens.
Gerlach, NV – Reno, NV – San Francisco, CA – Marin Headlands, CA – Sausalito, CA
The Golden Gate, From the Marin Headlands
From Burning Man we headed towards San Francisco… Unfortunately, we had to take a quick detour just before we crossed the Bay Bridge to bring Lena to the hospital due to what turned out to be a Kidney Infection. After an expensive trip to the emergency room, an IV, and some antibiotics in hand we were able to continue to The City By The Bay. We stayed there for a few days while Lena recovered a bit, then visited some of the sights in town before heading across the Golden Gate to the Marin Headlands. We were hoping for warm, sunny beaches, but of course found more fog and bomb shelters than anything.
Black Rock City, NV
People Gathered Around "Bliss Dance" by Marco Cochrane
Surprisingly, it seems there’s little in the way of words to tell about Burning Man. This was what we had driven 3,000 miles across the country in an old Jeep for. A week in the desert with 51,454 other crazy people. No food and no water, other than what you bring with. No showers, No Air-Conditioning… What’s not to love? Amazingly, this would prove to be only the beginning of what was shaping up to be a pretty incredible summer road trip…
Death Valley National Park, CA – Yosemite National Park, CA – Reno, NV
Sunrise in Death Valley
We made our visit to Death Valley as quick as possible to avoid… Well, death. Then, we moved on to Yosemite to trade the dry deserts for milder climates, and evergreen forests. along the way we picked up Jeffery Jones, a native American (even if the name is misleading) who had ridden his bike from Florida to Alaska… He was on his way back to his reservation in Arizona when his sprocket broke and he ended up hitching a ride with our motley cure, making it the strangest looking band of misfits when the cop pulled us over for speeding. We got off with a warning, dropped Jeffery at the nearest bike shop, then made a quick hike to the top of Vernal Falls in Yosemite (Half-Dome was vetoed by the group), and continued to Reno that night to gear up for the Big Event.
New Orleans, LA – White Sands National Monument, NM – Albuquerque, NM – Petrified Forest National Park, AZ – Flagstaff, AZ – Las Vegas, NM – Death Valley, CA
Sunset on the Highway
We left New Orleans at midnight, after an amazing Puppet Show that I unfortunately can’t remember anything from except the colors… and then drove all night and through the next day straight across Texas. Made our first stop in White Sands National Monument, New Mexico. A few more sleepless nights, including stops at Petrified Forest National Park, Route 66, the hottest day of my life at the Hoover Dam (116ºF!!!), and a sleepless night in 106ºF low-temps in Death Valley… Only the first four days into the trip and already I get the feeling the girls are all ready to kill me…
Baseball is one of the sports, that is typically American. (In addition to football, of course),. However, I always found football terribly stupid and dumb: A bunch of great guys, they clash against each other in their armor, making funny noises. Baseball, meanwhile, had at least raised the level of my fascination, the one sport in general that can be interesting. Sport was simply never my thing to begin with. But for some reason I always found far more aesthetic Baseball than Football. As matter of neccessity, I had to bring Jason as a true American on my true-America trip to a baseball game. The French were of course, totally exited to see it, however, every American, we told that we would finally see as Europeans our first baseball game, just shook thier head sympathetically. But this was probably because, that it is a game of the Zephyrs (Baseball team from New Orleans) ,, than it really was aimed against baseball in general.
Hwy 665 to Point au Chêne
A journey to the end of the earth… Clint brought us to visit his hometown of Houma, down the the steamy southern Louisiana Swamps. Bowling in Cajun Country, Naked Swamp People and their swampy hideouts, roads to nowhere, and Lena’s first taste of Louisiana Sugarcane…
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