Road Trip to Photography Discovery Day 1

I know, finally I am getting to these blog postings. When I got back from my trip I was slammed with so much to do, yay, that I had to safely put this aside, but I have a game plan on how to get it out otherwise I will never do it! So here it is, Road Trip to Photography Discovery Day 1!

Day 1 – June 5, 2014

We left a half-hour later thanks to me, I sometimes get ideas for my projects at the most inopportune times! But, soon we were off, music blasting and excitement in the air. We decided to take a different route than has been done in the past. (Trips to Utah were not uncommon in my family when I was teenager, that is where I am originally from, but now I claim to be a Washingtonian.)

We headed South on I-5 to 205 to 84 to 97 to 218 to 19 to 207 to 26 to 7 to Baker City! Whew.

Since I have never been down that way my Mom graciously drove the whole way. I was in awe as we traveled. We passed some beautiful wheat fields. I quickly took a snapshot with my cell-phone camera. If I was thinking about it, I would have asked to stop somewhere, however, there were not very many safe places on the highway. Perhaps next time I go around that way I will pick a spot.

Part of the idea of taking two days is because we wanted to find some ghost towns. Either my mind has a different idea of what a ghost town is or there are no more ghost towns. We stopped at a little town called Shaniko. Sure, a part of the town has old rundown old west buildings, one point may have been bustling with farmers and trappers, but it was just one tiny section. It didn’t feel abandoned. It was sad because it looked like they had wanted to turn it into a tourist attraction but failed. Regardless though, it was really neat and I got to photograph an old timey piano that was falling apart. As I was photographing it I could here old west music playing and envision dancing, drinking and laughing. (I have seen a lot of old west movies.) I would say those photos were some of my favorites of the trip, probably because I am also a musician at heart.

We had decided to stop and eat after that. We stopped by the side of the road to eat some of the food we packed. It was on this twisty road next to pastures and there was a large enough spot to pull over. We could see down into the valley by a little town. It was so beautiful. As we were chomping down on our pasta salads we heard some mooing. I at first joked that the nearby cow didn’t like us there. Suddenly, a little calf came running up! It wasn’t mad we were there; it was their lunchtime too. We had company with our lunch. Then another cow came up calling for its calf too and soon that one came running up. There we were eating lunch with two nursing cows. It was incredible.

Also along the road we stopped at the John Day Fossil beds. I didn’t see any fossils but the rock formations were incredible! The sights to see along the highways were so amazing. I am glad we got out and hiked the trails around the fossil beds a few times. Our earth is amazing. How it is always moving and changing. People always ask if you could see any part of history what would you see? I would see that area and watch the lava flow and molding it into what it is today. During this part I not only focused on nature and landscape photography but also on getting some textures. After all this is a road trip to photography discovery.

All and all, it not only made it a great first day for me to explore with photography, but also I got to spend some good time with my mom, talking about life and what we are going to do with it. Road trip, philosophy and photography, definitely makes it a good life!

We had finally arrived at our destination about 8pm at night. We spent 13 hours on the road and it was so worth it. Here are just a few of my favorite shots from day 1.