11,299 Miles Preview ~ Travel

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I hit the road a little over three weeks ago.  I drove across a continent, then made a right turn and drove up a continent.  I went through Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington,  British Columbia, The Yukon, Alaska, back through The Yukon, British Columbia, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, then Missouri and into Illinois.    I experienced 7 time zones.  I saw mountains, rivers, oceans, skyscrapers, forest fires, storms, grizzles, supercells, permanent banks of fog, walked on glaciers,  climbed a mountain, crossed international borders,  basked in the midnight sun and touched the sand of a desert.  I visited San Francisco,  Vancouver, Portland, Boise, Salt Lake City, Homer, Anchorage, Prince George, Yosemite, Cheyenne, Denver and drove past countless other places.     I’ve seen things I will never forget, some I imagined, others I could never have imagined without seeing.  I’ve see the fiercest regions of one of the wildest areas on the planet.   Places where nature controls and dictates.   To undertake this journey I realized I would have to drive a lot.  I slept for short periods of time in rest stops as I went.  It wasn’t easy.  I am just now catching up on sleep.  But it was worth it.  To me life is about exploring.  Sort of ironic because I am such a routine bound home person most of the time.  But when I have the opportunity, I explore.  The adventure and the unknown are what drives me.  Photographing the elements that appear before my eyes as I go.   We live on a planet that is almost incomprehensively beautiful.  Both the areas touched and untouched by our civilization.   Even in the areas that are heavy with human activity, Anchorage, San Francisco,  Vancouver,  and Salt Lake, natures hand was so visible.  These incredible beautiful places where humans chose to carve out these fantastic hubs of activity, are wrapped up in deserts, mountains and ocean.  Nature was much more visible in these places than my home in the Midwest, which seems so ordinary to me now.   I feel as though my journeys are just beginning.  This trek hasn’t fulfilled me.  I am not sure if any single or collection of journeys could ever do that.  I kind of enjoy being inflicted with this virus to explore.  11,299 miles later I sill have the fever, I want to see more, and I want to see the places I have already seen again.  Returning to them like a slightly experienced explorer but still for all practical purposes an alien.  But there is so much yet to see.  I know I will never see everything I want to, but that will not stop me from exploring.  This post is not a comprehensive one.  It is a broad overview of all the things I have seen.  Over the next several months I will be blogging the specific areas I travelled to, sharing some of the photographs I took while there.  11,299 miles.  This is just the beginning.

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Brian Rickey Photographer