Travels Across America

I have spent the past 10 days editing and updating a photo book I created almost 3 years ago. Anyone who knows me knows that my husband and I have enjoyed taking many road trips over the past dozen years or so - covering probably close to 50,000 miles overall. And, with each trip, my collection of images grows. And grows. And grows. I went through all of my files and determined that since we met, Ed and I have visited or have at least driven through 47 of the 50 states. And I've taken pictures in most of them. Unfortunately, our only visit to Hawaii was back in 2000, which was before I discovered my passion for photography - so I have no photos. Maybe one day we'll return. (If we win the lottery!) But since then, I've missed very few opportunities to take pictures wherever we go. And, in fact, most of our trips are planned around the photo ops we might encounter!

All to say, early in 2014 I put a book together, organized alphabetically by state, with a just a few of the many, many thousands of pictures that I've taken. Some states - like California and Missouri - have several pages devoted to them, while others have only a two-page spread - and in some cases, that was even stretching it.

The book - originally close to 200 pages, was created as a memory book of sorts, chronicling our road trips. But I also used it at various art exhibits as a "show and tell" piece. And oddly enough, I've had several people ask if they could buy it. Either because they had taken similar trips themselves - or because they planned to. So, I thought I might as well give it a little more commercial appeal by removing at least most of the pictures of Ed and myself. And I took the opportunity to add some new pictures taken after the original book was printed.

Since I tend to lean more toward nature photography, I have precious few "big city" pictures. Noticeably absent are New York and Chicago. I hope to get up to Chicago sometime in the next year or so because it's not really all that far - and I have always loved that city. New York - that might be a bigger challenge because it's considerably further from us. Below is a sampling of some of the several hundred images in the book.