American Festivals Project

The AFP is headed West, entering the lands of Colorado and New Mexico.  Once again, it seems like all free time is taken up with finding veggie oil, making travel arrangements, and planning the next events.  I’m only one week out and already behind on blogging.  There will be a few good pictures coming from The Middle of Nowhere Celebration in Nebraska, as well as some on the road shots.  I took the photograph above at the Colorado welcome center, just minutes before I realized I had lost my phone somewhere back in Nebraska.  The next few hours consisted of calling every gas station I had stopped at, and calling Verizon to cancel my phone.  Oh, the inevitable problems of road trips!  I found this scene to be very intriguing, however, due to the artificial nature of the subjects.  I felt like the scene was created because that is what people coming into Colorado expect to see.  In a way, it is authentic, and almost believable–but then one notices the Conoco gas station sign over the horizon, and the tractor trailer streaking by.  Perhaps the West is forever lost, and this is the new frontier.