American Festivals Project

Howdy folks!  It’s been a long time since we added some content to the land of the blog-o-sphere!  We have some fun photos and interesting stories to share with you from the last few weeks of the project.  In case you have not been able to figure it out, the AFP is back in the land Virginia working on decompressing and sharing the project with the entire world!  Our extensive road trip has come to an end, but the life of the project lives on!  As we wrap posting about the last weeks on the road, stay tuned for more announcements about exhibits, speaking events, and when you can select your pre-ordered prints (don’t worry, we have not forgotten you faithful supporters)!

From our last location on the Bonneville Salt Flats, the AFP made a monumental hike across the vast state of Nevada, stopping only once to photograph a rodeo from afar.  We couldn’t stay long though.  The skies turned dark and threatened to release a mighty wall of rain and lightning.

Our long trek southward put us in Mojave, CA.  On the way, we stopped at the base of Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in California, and spent a night camping.  We woke to a glorious morning and decided on a hike up to some alpine lakes. That was some frigid water!

In Mojave, we had quite the experience staying with a fellow Couch Surfer named Zach.  Unfortunately though, we never met Zach.  He called the day before we arrived and told us he had to go to a funeral.  But despite not being in town, he let us stay at his house anyways.  Zach rents an old adobe church in downtown Mojave, and has the entire cavernous space to himself!  It proved to be a great home base as we traveled back and forth to California City to shoot Our Lady of the Rock.

The other interesting thing about Zach, as we learned through his lady friend (who was also crashing at the adobe church), was his involvement with the Virgin Galactic spaceship.  It turns out that Zach is the lead wing engineer on the mothership.  Amazing, yes.  Oh, and our roommate at Zach’s just happened to be Sir Richard Branson’s right-hand woman and is responsible for setting up the new airport where these futuristic crafts will soon launch into space.   It’s pretty amazing that this small team of people lives in the dusty desert town of Mojave, CA and is responsible for the future space travel.  (Notice the Chuck Yeager autograph in the photo above!).

The most remarkable part of our conversation was learning how commercial space flight is setting the pace to revolutionize international flights here on earth.  Within our lifetime, commercial flights will travel sub-orbital (where revolution around the earth takes only 90mins) which means we can be in Australia in about an hour.  be able to jump on a plane, launch into the earth’s first ring of orbit, circle around the earth, and re-enter the atmosphere above the desired location.  In other words, instead of taking eighteen hours to fly to Australia, it would only take forty-five minutes.  How far away are we from seeing humans pay for commercial flights to space?  Well, the first flight is scheduled to take off in two years.  Get in line though–there’s already a waiting list with 300 people.

photos courtesy of Virgin Galactic

From Mojave, we drove north through California, stopping at Sequoia National Park where the world’s largest living organism resides…the General Sherman.

After Sequoia National Park, we continued further north to San Francisco.  Before we drove into the heart of the city, we dropped our bags with Jessy and gang at the Rainbow Mansion in Cupertino.  The R.M. is a residence for eight highly educated and technically brilliant people who split rent for the multi-million dollar mansion overlooking Silicon Valley.  Jessy works for NASA and the others are Google engineers and computer wizards.   A french guy was building his own cloud computing company.  Even after a five description of what that actually means, we were still confused.  We’re keeping an eye on these folks because they will probably soon take over the world.

Jesse, host extraordinaire and chef of green beans.

Despite the AFP’s first visit to the West Coast, our experience in San Francisco was short-lived and scenically disappointing.  We spent our only night in San Fran shooting the Drag King competition, and the day after required us to hit the road and make the long trek up to Montana.  As we were leaving town, Andrew suggested we take a small detour to actually see the Pacific Ocean and drive across the Golden Gate Bridge.  We had made it so far–why not add an hour to the trip to see the sights and smell the salty air?

Well, when we left Cupertino, we had clear, blue skies.  However, as soon as we came up the downtown of San Fran, a deep fog enveloped the city.  While crossing the G.G. bridge we could only see a few hundred feet ahead of us!  As we passed the large red towers above our head, we sensed the great Pacific swaying below, but we never actually saw the body of water.  San Fran held true to its stereotype of the foggy city!

We made another epic drive from San Francisco, putting the pedal to the metal while breezing through Nevada, Idaho, and Montana.  No matter the driving shift, we hit road construction in every state.  On one of the windiest and scariest roads that we experienced on the trip, we were stopped at 2am by a ghostly construction worker.  She probably hadn’t talked to anyone in hours, and we became the victims of her life story in the black of the night.

Why was the AFP blazing through the night on the back roads of Montana?  Well, we were headed to Missoula.  This is Andrew’s old stomping ground for two summers, and we were scheduled to meet up with friends and then spend a few days exploring Glacier National Park.

Andrew in front of Ze Fun Haus on Front St where he lived for a summer in 2003.

Homemade ice cream before the 2 hour jaunt from Missoula to West Glacier, MT

Jenna and Buster at Frita’s in West Glacier after a day on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River.

Sally Thompson, Rich Thompson, and Rossaroo at the Glacier Raft Company end-of-the-year party.  Could there be nicer people than the Thompsons?

At Triple Divide Pass in Glacier Nat’l Park.  Water drains to the Gulf, the Pacific, and the Hudson Bay in Canada from this point.

Medicine Grizzly Lake.

Walking the Red Eagle trail through a forest burned in 2006.

Tiny Andrew leaps into a waterfall.

After all that grueling hiking in MT we soaked our bodies in the Goldbug Hotsprings outside Salmon, ID.

Wyoming delivered a fantastic rainbow, which made Buster instantly rip off a herky like she was back in Mississippi cheering on the football team.

In a recent talk at National Geographic live, we commented on how America has some distinctly beautiful places, but one must drive a VERY long way through depressing, poorly-planned, or arid landscapes.  It was very refreshing ending a year-long road trip in such a beautiful place as Glacier National Park.  It redeemed our hope in America.  Let’s take care of the pockets of paradise that still exist across our great country.

What a beautiful farewell to the West and the AFP’s 13 month journey!