Road Trip 2018 Continues; Seredipity And A Confession

The road trip continues west. 

We can’t seem to escape the heat.  In each state the temperature has been in excess of 90 F (32 C) but with less and less humidity as we drive west.  Even though standing in the sun is hot from the radiant heat, it is a bit more tolerable due to diminishing humidity. Isn’t September supposed to be cooler than this?  

I love driving.  I always have.  Driving 500 miles in a day is no chore for me.  I don’t get tired unless traffic is really heavy.  In the Midwest and western U.S., traffic never seems very heavy as compared to the east.  There is just so much empty space and nothing is crowded together.  Except the bugs, that is.  I think I have half the bugs in North America smashed on the front of my vehicle.  At least half!  Lol.  Kind of looks like a Jackson Pollack painting.

We continue our journey west through Missouri and Kansas with our intermediate destination of Colorado.  The father west we go, the flatter the terrain.  I'm glad my wife and I get along so well.  Being together 24/7 can be stressful and being together in the confinements of a vehicle can make for a bad trip if a couple doesn't get along.  We merrily make our way toward Colorado have good conversations, listening to interesting podcasts and finding stations we both like on Sirius/XM radio.

Serendipity.  Yes, a very pleasant but unexpected happening.  We have some lifelong friends who have been on a road trip for the past month and have been driving east on I-70 as we have been driving west.  Turns out that we were both in the same geographical location the other day so, by text, we arranged to meet each other, have lunch and share some brotherhood.  

We met in the small town of Hays, Kansas.  As an aside, if you have been wondering (and I know you haven’t) about the old saying that “Kansas is as flat as a pancake,” was scientifically tested several years ago and the state of Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake in a relative manner.  Another useless fact that has been hidden in my old brain. 

Hays is a neat small, mid-western town.  All of the street in the oldest area of town are still paved in red brick.  Not just some, but all.  Even the residential neighborhoods. Since we arrived in Hays about an hour before our friends, my wife and I had time to just look around a bit.  I found a couple of sets of the very large cement grain silos next to a railroad track that I wanted to photograph, just as a record.  We don’t have these kinds of structures on the east coast.  As I was photographing one set, I heard a train horn and all of you have read this blog for some time know that I’m a railroad aficionado so I availed myself of a few images of a Union Pacific train passing by.  Another serendipitous moment!

It was great to see our friends.  They did a northern route across the country all the way to Seattle, Washington and were heading back to Virginia.  They were driving a Subaru Outback with 190,000 miles on the odometer and pulling a popup tent trailer.  They are braver than me!

Confession time.  Do you remember me writing that I chose to take my Olympus m4/3 gear for the specific reason that my intention was to be able to photograph wildlife in the Rocky Mountains?  Since I no longer own my Fujifilm 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens that meant my Olympus 300mm f/4, without and with the 1.4X tele-converter, constituted my best chance at photographing wildlife at a distance?  Well..... I decided to take our other vehicle instead of our SUV and our other vehicle has more room so, logically speaking, when a vacuum exists nature wants to fill it... I filled it with my Fujifilm gear.  Yes, I brought both.  I kind of felt a bit guilty leaving my tried and true X-T2 at home while we were gone.  Shame on me!

Next post I’ll write a bit about which gear I have been using for what kinds of photography and in what circumstances.

Until next, post, we continue our westward journey.  By the way, isn’t it wonderful to be in a country where you can drive 5 or 6 days in a single direction and still be in the same country, but with vastly different geography, flora and fauna?  I love this country!

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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