The Story Behind The Image; Route 29, Nebraska

Route 29, Nebraska (click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1; Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 140mm; ISO 200

I love road trips.  Long ones, short ones, long distances, regional ones, whether alone, with family or friends.  It doesn't matter.  I love the feeling of getting out on the open road and exploring places I've never been as well as revisiting places I've been.  For the most part when possible I like to stay off the main, multi-lane highways, go through small towns, eat at local restaurants and meet wonderful people.  I love road trips because I am in control of where I go, when I go, which way I go, how long I stay and I get to retain the flexibility to create new plans, change plans or go elsewhere at the spur of the moment.  I love road trips because of discovery, the sense of wonder, infinite flexibility and being in control of the trip.

In the spring of 2014, the three guys whom I have known the longest (since I was 2 years old), with whom I grew up, remain best friends, consider brothers and with whom I shared so many memories, good and bad, over our lifetimes and I decided to take a road trip together.  We decided to study Lewis and Clark's expedition of 1804-1806 and "loosely" follow their path from their starting place near St. Louis, Missouri along the Missouri River to Ft. Clatsop on the Oregon coast.

Our plan was to meet in St. Louis and go from there.  Initially, we were going to rent a large van at a very high cost so I decided that if they would pay for the gas, we would take my Honda Odyssey.  As an aside, that Honda Odyssey was the best "road trip" vehicle I've ever owned.  Imagine four lifelong friends, known to be less than serious (I'll leave it at that) when we are together, spending about 3 weeks wandering the countryside.  Perfect!  Of course, I brought a camera and a couple of lenses.

As we made our way west, we ran into some really nasty weather in the vicinity of Omaha, Nebraska.  We were staying in a hotel in Council Bluffs, Iowa which is across the Missouri River from Omaha when the weather forecasters predicted severe thunderstorms storms and tornado warnings for the next day.  After all, this is the Midwest of the U.S. in the springtime.  What else would you expect?  The storms were moving from south to north, right along the path we had planned to take the next day.  So, we made a command decision to go west instead of north.  We would drive across Nebraska on I-80, then head north to meet up with the Missouri River.

It was a good plan but Mother Nature had other plans for us.  She decided she didn't want us getting away without her messing with us a bit.  As we drove west on Interstate 80 across Nebraska it started to snow!  Snow in the middle of May!  That is something with which I was not familiar as I grew up in mid-Atlantic area of the United States.  Snow was over in early March.  Not only did it start to snow, as we continued west we found I-80 closed!  There were gates across the highway and we were forced to exit.  

The first order of business was find a place to spend the night.  Luckily, we spent the night in the small town of Sidney, Nebraska.  We each had a nice dinner, hung around the lobby, drank some red wine, talked (and laughed) most of the evening then went to bed.  The next morning, the sun was out (it was still very cold) and we found that there were about 300 tractor-trailer trucks  that also were forced to exit parked everywhere.  So, after breakfast, we headed north.  We decided to visit the Mt. Rushmore area for a couple of days on our way to rejoin the Missouri River.

Part of the day's journey north was along western Nebraska's Route 29.  I was driving and as I topped a hill ahead of me I saw the scene you see at the top of the post.  I just had to stop and make a few images.  Immediately, I was taken by the starkness of the area, the contrast between the cold snow, blue sky, warm hued pavement and yellow lane markings.  Additionally, I was struck by the graphical nature and isolation of the place which all came together in my mind to want to record this.  I really like this image.  It gives a very different feeling than does early morning "golden hour" light or a crisp autumn day.  I made several images with slightly different focal lengths and slightly different compositions as I wanted to enhance the compressed perspective and the graphical element of the scene.

After a brief pause, we continued on our journey west to the Pacific coast and, after a couple more weeks, finally returned home.  I brought back many, many images that I liked as well as many "record" images of us and the journey itself.  Ah!  Road Trips.... Wonderful.

Join me over at my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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