American Festivals Project

onTHEroad-Summer launch slideshow

The long push home!

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!

On the road from the past month

We take so many more pictures than just at festivals and events, and we meet so many good people in our journey from place to place.  Here are some pictures of people and places from the road as early as the beginning of July!

At a campground in southern Colorado, on the way to the Rainbow Gathering.  This guy was smoking a stogie and was probably quietly reciting lines in his head to “A River Runs Through It.”

Our gang caught a few trout that proved to be good eatin’.  That night a bear came trompin’ through our campground.  My friend Mark slept on the picnic table because he didn’t have a tent.  He woke to the bear sniffing his feet at 4am.

The most beautiful clouds in northern New Mexico.  Don’t shoot and drive.

The beautiful sunset was followed by a full moon over the desert.

In Bloomfield, NM, Ross stayed with the Harris family.  They’re a big family, and two others from the gang are not even pictured!  Thanks for your wonderful hospitality!

Cadillac Ranch.  Amarillo, TX.

In Dallas, TX, Uncle Alex proved to be the host with the most.   Alex is so proud of his Texas outdoor smoker.  It probably weighs two-tons, can be towed behind a truck, and has a steel state of Texas welded onto the handles.  He smoked a delicious pork tenderloin for dinner, and concluded the evening by renting “Fitzcarraldo”, a movie about a German guy who tries to build an opera house in the Peruvian jungle.  Thanks for the great time, Alex!

Don’t be fooled by the tropical backdrop…this is rural Oklahoma.  And these nice young ladies served us up some sweet and cold snowcones while the Dodge Lodge cooled off en route to the Noodlin’ fest.  They also sell kitschy antiques in the adjoining shop and what they do for fun wasn’t real clear.  We just got a bunch of giggles when we asked.

Sooners call it like it is.

It was so hot in Oklahoma that tent sharing at 90 degrees at night was impossible.  Ross found a better alternative on top of a stone picnic table.

“How much weed you boys hauling in that truck?”  That was the question  the officer on the left kept asking repeatedly.  He was kidding.  Kind of.  We stopped to ask directions to a place to eat.  It was July 10 and Ross was wearing a Happy July 4 tiara.  We had Virginia plates.  We told them we were photographers.  Our truck ran on veggie grease.  We were in a tiny Oklahoma town that looked like it hadn’t recovered from the great depression of 1929.  When the cops looked in the back of the truck and saw the veggie oil set-up, they thought we were running a portable meth lab.

Breyerfest wasn’t the only party in Lexington, KY.  Dave Kaplan and Buddy the Beagle hosted us for 3 nights with a final celebration to break in the new house…inside out burgers, hay bails,cornhole, champagne at midnight, and Roofie Ball.

Dear President Obama: The AFP has a plan to put to use our nation’s foreclosed and vacant homes and strengthen our communities with a new active sport…Roofie Ball.  Here are the 10 rules:
1. Find a vacant house with a sloping roof
2. Grab 2 tennis racquets, a racquetball, and an opponent
3. Keep score like ping pong
4. Serve the ball onto the roof to begin the game.
5. The ball must touch the surface of the roof at least once and is not allowed to touch the ground or go off the side of the roof.
6. Points are awarded to the person who last hit the ball on the roof and a single point is deducted for hitting a bathroom vent.
7. For mult-level roofs, the second level (called “the precipice”) makes that point worth two points.
8. Hitting windows is legal, only if prior to or afterwards the ball touches the roof.
9. Protective eyewear is recommended but not required.
10. Roofie ball should be played during social gatherings inolving the potential for high levels of intoxication.

In St. Louis, Ross’s aunt and uncle, the Sprongs, took us in for a few days and really treated us to a good time. From the All-Star game, to wonderful meals, to epic table-tennis matches, the Sprongs showed us an excellent time in Kirkwood, MO. Cousin Emmy is going to kill us for posting a picture of her in a towel, but it’s the only picture we had!

At Busch Stadium in St. Louis, with the famous “gateway to the west” arch in the background, a stealth bomber flew over head to cap off an overly sentimental and patriotic opening ceremony.

President Obama threw the first pitch of the game, but it was pretty pathetic.  From behind third plate, we could just make out the ball kicking up dust as it bounced IN FRONT of home plate.  Oh well, you can’t be good at everything.

Cousin Celia provided hours of entertainment in the pool.  We’ll never forget her overwhelming excitement at sharing youtube videos of a Megladon.  What, you might ask, is a megladon?  Come on, even a seven year-old knows it’s a giant, prehistoric shark. In fact, Celia is looking kind of sharky in this photo.

Breakfast, Springfield, MO.

Friend Keith took the time out of his hurried departure out of Chicago to meet us for lunch.  It was really great to catch up with this old Charlottesville friend.  Our Korean waitress insisted on coming over to the table and offering eating suggestions to Andrew.  “More sauce, more sauce!”  “Here, this meat, eat this meat”.  We died laughing.

In only the most unusual of circumstances will you find yourself in Wisconsin Dells twice in a year.  But instead of cheerleaders we found a giant cowboy who wasn’t quick enough on the draw.

Dropping the “National Geographic” bomb helped land us a free entry into the Freshwater Fish Museum with the World’s Largest Muskee presiding over the park. We’re talkin’ major access, folks.

We find the best people through couchsurfing. In Hayward, WI, Rob Smith gave us his front yard to pitch a tent at his family’s Callahan Lake Resort while we were in town for the Lumberjack Championships.  Their family resort is the kind of mom-and-pop place you would imagine when you think of Wisconsin lakes.  Rob’s mother still tends to the bar at night, and she can tell you some good stories if you have the time to sit down.  Rob’s heading out on a road trip of his own to kick off 2010.

You have to visit Callahan Resort to see the muskee water fountain.  Or as they call them up there–bubblers.

The underwater camera gets some more use in Callahan Lake as Andrew gets airborne off the Loose Caboose.

Uncle Jay and Aunt Lisa hosted us up in Duluth–the land of COLD.  They were much more welcoming than the Hells Angels.  Jay is an excellent nature photographer and ladder climbing extraordinaire.  Their apartment looks out over Lake Superior from the terraced hills of Duluth.  We had such a nice time talking photography and art.  All our meals were eaten outside on the porch, in the cool breeze from the lake.

Aunt Lisa trains animals.  Her favorite bird, Tico, plays dead.

From Minnesota, we made an epic, all day and night drive to the Badlands.  We arrived in the park at 2am, spread out our tarp behind a hill, and fell asleep watching shooting stars.

In the morning, we were woken at 6am by some crazy tourists who thought it would be a good idea to watch the sunrise and tromp through our campsite.  Despite the lack of sleep, at least we got up in time to catch good light.

Later that day we drove into Wall, SD, and visit the infamous Wall Drug.  It was a great experience.  5 cent coffee, roaring dinosaurs, funny bumper stickers, and a most impressive historical photography and painting collection, all made Wall Drug a place to be remembered.

Driving through the open plains of South Dakota, we had to get out and run through the green fields.  Unfortunately, the grass is infested with grasshoppers and tiny flies.  We were quickly attacked.

Honey!  On route from Pine Ridge Reservation, S.D.