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!

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.

Friends, fans, papparazi,
The American Festivals Project is officially back on the road after a long break throughout May and June.  But sadly, the AFP is only half present, as Andrew had to stick around Charlottesville for another week to finish up work and then attend a wedding.  But don’t worry folks, Andrew will be rejoining the project in Oklahoma in only 12 days!

There is a lot to come this summer, but we’ll give an official tour update in a few days.  For now, it’s back to driving the long stretch to Nebraska for the “Middle of Nowhere Celebration” in Ainsworth, NE.

Dropped on the side of the road.  A great view, but a very angry dog killed the silence.

Eleven hours later.  8:30 pm.  The place I would stand for three more hours, waiting in vain for a ride.  Made a soccer goal out of rocks.  The mosquitoes got really bad around 11pm.  Cursed every vehicle that chose to ride by and leave me in the middle of nowhere.

My saviors of the night picked me up out of the rain and took me to their java compound where I slept with a very drunk man in the camper half the size of the one pictured.

My ride to Tok was Ms. Sharon.  A real-life gold miner and story-teller extraordinaire.  It took her three hours to tell me the four husbands she’s been through!

The beginning of the middle of nowhere: Chicken, AK.  Population 17.  A world-famous bar sits in this desolate town.  Supposedly Prince, Jimmy Hoffa, and a whole slough of other famous people have graced the bar with their presence.

My final ride into Eagle with Jean.  Resident of Eagle for over twenty years.  72 years old.  Chain smoker.  Story teller.  Great driver.

My first site in Eagle.  A century of pioneers buried under the mossy earth in the middle of nowhere.

The AFP has arrived in Anchorage, Alaska for the World Beard and Mustache competition.  It was a long trip out to this beautiful state, but well worth the ride.  Unfortunately, Mr. Owen has to stay in Virginia and serve out his duties to another great festival–the Festival of the Photograph.  He’ll be sorely missed.
Alaska is a state full of its eccentricities, but now that there are 300 more men with big beards and mustaches, it proves to be even stranger.  I’m just going to show you a little teaser for now, but I promise there is some great content on the way.  The atmosphere at the event is contagiously friendly.  I’ve never met so many cheerful old men that look like the dwarves in Lord of the Rings.  And talk about other media!  I’ve never seen so many photographers and documentary video crews.  Here I thought I was going the farthest away in the U.S., only to be met with a crowd of other folks with the exact same idea.  Nothing remains to be photographed….

Today’s weather was sixty degrees and sunny.  I walked home from the beard party at 11: 30 pm and it was still perfectly light.  I actually passed two people playing tennis and another woman working in her yard.  It’s certainly bizarre.  And now it’s 4am my time, but I can’t fall asleep because the sky is still glowing a deep blue.  I’ve managed to eat quite locally, or so it seems.  Today I had a reindeer hot dog and a salmon sub.  But me-oh-my is food expensive.  I don’t think it’s possible to eat for under $10 a meal.

Beards rule Anchorage this weekend, and I’ll be there to see all the action!  Be sure to check back for more updates and some real purty nature shots later next week.

The AFP made its way from the deep south lands of rural Georgia to the welcoming city that we like to call home: Charlottesville, VA.  It’s been a long three months out there on the road.  What adventures we’ve had.  Despite two major truck repairs, being towed out of mud and ice twice, and arriving at almost every destination at least three hours late, we NEVER missed one festival or event!  For this we are very grateful (and proud).   Our return to home-base is three-fold.  For one, Andrew must dig in deep and return to the duties of his job for LOOK3/ Festival of the Photograph.  Secondly, the funds are drying up quicker than a lake in Ethiopia.   Lastly, there were no events on the calendar that interested us.  I don’t know what it is about the Spring, but maybe people are so glad to get outside that there is no time or desire to plan festivals.  We’re not complaining though–we were worn out!

Now, this does not mean that The American Festivals Project is over!  No, no!  In fact, we are planning another three month leg from June until the end of September.  Yes folks, that means more photos, more videos, and more posts from the great open road.  In fact, we have a few surprise events to photograph in the next two months–one of which takes place in our very own, picturesque town of C-ville.  The other, which we will announce later, will bring one AFP member to the wild state of ALASKA.  If you are a true AFP fan, and want to prepare yourself for this event, we suggest you stop shaving and grow your facial hair as long and decorative as possible.  Ladies, we ask that you opt out.   Additionally, we have some exciting publicity in store for the next few months, at which time we will certainly share with you.

The AFP will also be making some changes to its ways of transportation.  We regret to inform you that the better half of the Dodge Lodge has retired.  The 1964 camper could not live up to the endless travel on the open road, let alone the discomfort of being covered in vegetable oil.   It found a new home on a farm near Richmond, and most likely its body parts will be dissected and shared amongst other campers around the state.  Who knew that the lodge was an organ donor?  This sudden departure might mean the end of the Dodge as well.  We are discussing whether or not to keep the veggie-oil-powered truck and instead settle for a compact car with excellent gas mileage.  A camper is rarely needed because we end up staying with so many people on the road.  If we don’t need a big camper, we don’t need a big truck.  Besides,  the time and stress that goes into finding veggie oil and maintaining the system is exhausting.  Less time worrying about getting places leads to actually being places, which in turn leads to more time for shooting.

So friends, herein begins another break for The American Festivals Project.  It’s a break to rest, plan, and prepare to continue documenting the best that America has to offer.  We’ll keep the website active.  Stop by often, leave comments, and suggest events to photograph this summer.  It’s going to be a good one.

Here are some pictures from the past week:

The open road at 80mph.

Ross gathering some stock material at America’s smallest church (there are actually thirteen churches that claim to be the smallest in the U.S.)

Andrew was so excited to hit the beach in Florida that he forgot to lotion up those sexy legs.

SAVANNAH, GA:

In Savannah, we were joined by fellow road warriors.  Chelsea and Ruth are making music and making friends.

————————————————————————————————————

We stayed with Katrina in Madison, WI.  She makes the best oatmeal in the world and probably has the raddest sunglasses in the entire state. Thanks katrina!

The smokies!

Nothing works better for torrential rains than a giant ziploc bag.

What we try to do on this blog is show you all the great aspects of American festivals and events, highlight some of the interesting people we meet, and share the light-hearted stories along the way. But perhaps what we don’t do enough of, is share the day to day events and challenges that make up the majority of the project. A lot of our friends comment on our project through the blog or over the phone. The common perception that most have is, ‘That looks like so much fun”, or “It’s like you’re on vacation”, or “I wish I could just drive around and look at cool stuff.” These are all comments that we expect, because given the general nature of the project, this is a trip of a lifetime, and it is lots of fun.

One of the reasons for not posting on a daily basis and providing more day-to-day updates, is that we are limited to wireless connection and we are almost constantly busy with driving, researching new places to go, editing images and video, and creating the ‘long’ blog posts that you typically see. It feels like any time we have away from driving is spent on the computer–and even then, the person not driving is usually on a laptop! I’ve wondered what it would be like to just drive across America for the sole purpose of ‘the experience’. No plans, no set destinations, no cameras (well, maybe one camera), and certainly no vegetable oil. But by imagining that care-free style of travel, I suppose I am forgetting about inevitable problems that always occur on a road trip.

This project has for the most part been free of major problems. However, there are those moments when the world seems to be against us. This week in particular has been plagued with automobile problems, although mostly related to running veggie oil. Since last Wednesday in Sweetwater, Texas, we’ve driven close to 2,500 miles on the ol’ dodge lodge, dished out $1,200 of our hard-earned cash on repairs, and spent countless hours tweaking the vegetable oil system for it to function properly. Besides the two wonderful events we photographed (the mardi gras Indians and cheerleaders), the week has been an exhausting kick to the stomach. There are those moments, when you’re going on three hours of sleep and pumping veggie oil at 3am from a nasty garbage area in a dark alleyway, that you wonder just how important this project is to you.

We had a funny experience last week when gathering some veggie oil in Texas. Now, I must preface this story by saying that we almost always ask permission for veggie oil before we pump it. But on this certain occasion, we were in a rush to get to a dinner appointment, and we thought this Asian restaurant was a chain, which meant the employees would probably know nothing about their waste oil, nor care if we took some. So we pulled the big dodge lodge up to the barrels of veggie, hooked up our pump, and helped ourselves. We were quietly going about our business when from out of nowhere a small Vietnamese man came storming out the back door of the restaurant screaming in pigeon english, “Give me ten dollars, give me ten dollars! I call the 911!” Due to the volume of his voice and wildly gesturing arms, we knew this guy meant business. Andrew and I tried to explain what we were doing, and that really, we were doing him a favor by taking away his oil. But the angry man did not want to have a conversation, and we guessed that he owned this restaurant and was already getting paid for his waste oil. Unfortunately, neither of us had any cash so Andrew explained that he was going to walk over to Walmart and withdraw cash. While Andrew was gone, I felt like the ransomed child, guarded by a raging Vietnamese who continued to stand guard while muttering English (and Vietnamese) swear words under his breath. After a few minutes though, I figured that since we had to pay the $10, we might as well get our money worth and pump the rest of the oil. The man complied. I smiled and asked him if China Express was his restaurant. He didn’t smile. Needless to say, we made it out of there alive, and even made our dinner appointment.

There are countless stories like this from the road, but sadly we run out of time to properly share them. As we embrace the problems along the way, we always remind ourselves that we are seeing the unique life of America, and it truly is an honor. We’ll do our best to write more from the road and hopefully you can respond with your comments. Farther up and further in!

It’s just about 10pm when Ross and I pull off Hwy 70 and nose up to a cattle gate entrance to the Double Heart ranch not far from Sweetwater, Texas.  We’re waiting for a woman we’ve never met.  It’s dark, of course.  But it’s also raining ice and the wind is blowing in gusts.  All we can see around us are hundreds of flickering red lights blinking like summer fireflies.  What are they coming from?…we’re not really sure.  We heard this is wind country so our best guess is the lights are from massive turbines.  Feeling guilty, we are two hours late after crossing into a new time zone and having lost an hour in Las Cruces to replace the rotors on our wheels.  As the headlights of our Texas host appear, I jump out of the cab, shake hands through the heavy-guage fence, and run back to the truck to grab a hammer and knock the ice off the frozen lock.  This is hardly the Texas arrival we expected.  But it’s just a short drive up to the house and all the warmth of a Texas summer is waiting for us inside.

So begins our stay with Nita Oatman at her historic family ranch.  We can’t keep her out of the kitchen feeding us meal after meal. The next few days with “Ms. Nita” are full of outstanding stories, black and white photos from the old ranch, shooting shotguns, and walking through fields full of wind turbines.  The only way to put it is “Ms. Nita” puts the ‘sweet’ in Sweetwater.  She even came to rescue us when the Dodge Lodge broke down.

‘Babygirl’, our newest friend in Texas.

If there’s anything we learned from the rodeo, it’s that the cowboy life is hard on the body.   If you want to be in top form for the next weekend, you better find a way to rest and restore those aching muscles.   We figured the AFP better follow the lead of our bronc riding buddies and get in a good soak to work out the knots from those long drives and long days of shooting.  So we finished up our stay with the young and talented Beus Bros. at the Funk Shack (our friends via Couch Surfing) and headed for some desert hot springs on the Colorado river where Arizona meets Nevada and civil engineering meets its toughest challenge.

The Beus Bros. gettin’ their groove on at the Funk Shack.

Ross lights the sky on fire with his sick longboarding skills in front of the Phoenix Mormon temple.

We also couldn’t help stopping along the the way in Sedona, Arizona where it’s purported the male and female energies of the universe converge to create a vortex of healing energy.  To get more clarity on this phenomenon, we sought out the wisdom of a Sedona fixture and modern-day shaman, Kenny the Cowboy.  He shared with us some wild stories, some background on the history of the universe, and let us snap a photo of him with his walking stick.  Kenny suggested we take pyschedelics to fully experience the vortex but we opted to get high instead by climbing to the tallest point we could find.

Some dam tourists.

Kenny the Cowboy.

The AFP hearts cacti.

The secret ladder to the hot springs.

Actually, we had more than hot springs to motivate us towards the Hoover Dam and Las Vegas.  The AFP had a special weekend visitor to pick up at the airport in the City of Lost Wages…Andrew’s girlfriend, Jenna.  At first light (in a city that’s bright all night long), the Dodge Lodge set out for the most renown of all American landmarks, the Grand Canyon.  Neither Ross nor Andrew had been and Jenna was only twelve when she last stood at Mather Point outlook.  Before we get any further talking about our incredible journey in the canyon, we should mention that there were NO festivals this past weekend.  We searched and searched and couldn’t dig up anything.  It was actually pretty lucky that we had a free weekend while we were in Arizona because it’s hard to fathom completing a project of this nature without spending the necessary time to photograph one of the world’s most incredible visual gifts.  For photographers it’s near impossible to pass up the chance to shoot in the Grand Canyon, especially when a full moon is nigh!

When we arrived to the Canyon, it was just about sunset and the temperature was cool.  But come morning, the weather had sharply turned.  Waking up early with the hope to photograph the sunrise, we discovered not the open sky of the night before but total white obscurity from thick layers of clouds pumping out snow in all directions.  We waited for the storm to pass but after an hour it was still a blanket of white.

So we headed to the Backcountry Camping office and by some miraculous stroke of luck received the LAST camping permit for the weekend.  And as we left the office and drove to the trailhead that morning, the clouds began to break, the snowfall ceased, and a giant white veil lifted to expose the beautiful face of “Kaibab” (the word for the Canyon used by the native Paiute Indians which translates into “mountain turned upside down”).  It was a stunning sight as a bright blue sky poured in above and the rocks and trees stood dusted in snow.

The rest of the day was spent descending the steep terrain of the South Kaibab trail and shedding layers of clothing as we entered warmer and warmer pockets of air the further down we walked.  It quickly became apparent that there is no truly feasible way to comprehend the size and majesty of the Grand Canyon without walking down into it.  As beautiful as the views are from up top, it takes sore muscles, good old fashioned sweat, some nimble pack-mule avoidance, and an icy dip into the Colorado to feel like you’ve really taken it all in.  With some yoga on the beach and delicious food hot off the camp stove, we prepared our bodies for the hardest part…hiking out.

The most dangerous hike in the Grand Canyon is the one where people try to make it to the river and back in one day.  We weren’t about to do this.  But we did do what is probably the second most dangerous hike…the one that begins at 9pm.   With the moon at 95% full and Jenna with an early flight back East on Monday morning, we mustered the motivation and energy to make our final ascent of 3 miles (and 3,000 ft of altitude) back to the Dodge Lodge.  With exhausted legs, freezing temperatures, low blood-sugar levels, and a steely resolve we avoided hypothermia and overcame physical limits to emerge before midnight with the moon still up and the pavement of the South Rim under our feet.

The Colorado River by moonlight from Plateau Point

From our auspicious beginning to the final moonlit ascent back to civilization, it was an adventure to rival all the rest.  We are so grateful for Jenna’s company, humor, and unassailable grit.  We all learned something new about ourselves in this grandest of American landscapes.  Oh, and the pictures–they turned out pretty well too.

The AFP has finally made its way West, and what a long, flat journey it was.  The Dodge Lodge served us well and the veggie oil ran a’plenty, like oil oozing from the ground.  We’ve made it from northern Louisiana all the way to Arizona without spending a penny on diesel.  Let the good times roll (free)!

The great West, and the state of Arizona taunted us with big skies, good-smelling flowers, and a rodeo that stands apart from the rest of em’.  While we can’t wait to share those images with you, we’re a little backed up due to our large amounts of putting the pedal to the metal.  So for now, some images and video from the last week.

New Mexico.  Late night food that we thought would be authentic, but left our tummies rumbling.

Twilight near Apache Junction, AZ.

It feels like everything is bigger out here, including the food options.  At ‘The Heart Attack Cafe’, Andrew had his fill of greasy delights and needed assistance to the Dodge Lodge.  But don’t worry Moms, he stayed away from the non-filtered cigarettes.

Going from freezing temperatures to the most gorgeous weather one can imagine is a little hard on the senses.  Imagine the double take we had when the house we were staying at had grapefruit and orange trees growing out its ears.  Andrew ate 19 dozen oranges in two days–I promise.

arriving in the West.. from Ross McDermott on Vimeo.

Matt Brennan, artist extraordinaire, and host extraordinaire.

Drew Morrison, illustrator, furniture maker, hammer head lover.

Chinese New Year parade.

The last moments of the Chinatown Parade off Canal Street

T