Lonely Roads

  Local Road in Grant Co., Washington, Looking North Toward the Small Town of Hartline 

 
The highway, the open road.  Riding in -- later, driving -- a car has always been a core component of what I truly enjoy.  In my childhood we were rather limited in our travels.  But any trip was a fine thing.  I would hear occasional tales from a friend of mine of trips taken to places and states several hundred miles away; there was a burning and intense feeling of "wanting to do that" that would come over me.

Of course I couldn't then foresee a far-future adult time, a time when I would have my own car, and a time when I would have opportunities to take hundreds and hundreds of road trips -- trips that have led me to explore each state multiple times. 

The open road has intrigued thousands and thousands before me, and will continue to do so as long as we have civilization as we know it.  In these pages I focus on what has always intensely appealed to me  -- scenes outside major urban areas where there is no other highway traffic in view, and where there is a certain sense, a presence that grabs the observer's attention.  Or at least scenes that grabbed this observer once, once passing through.  Sometimes I only vaguely remember where the image is from.  Sometimes I know that that special feeling obtained was much more intense than on other occasions.

But each time I pass along the open road, my eyes open a bit wider than they ordinarily are, and something possesses me that is very, very good. 
 
 
Scrub West Grand Teton Shimmering Stillness
Road and River Valley Rainbow Around the Bend Vacancy at the Summit
Curve and Abandoned House Glenn Highway, Alaska New Mexico Landscape
Eastern Colorado Colorado, In the Shadow Again on Highway 40
A Distant Freight Nevada Clouds Seldom Traveled
One Lane Across the Salmon Clouds and the Road Southernmost Point
Climbing Steeply Arizona Ascent Four Lanes Empty
U.S, 66, Oklahoma Texas, Far North Silo and the Road Beyond
Southeast Oregon Distant Mountains, Desert To the Ocean
Northern Metropolis Highway 51, Mississippi Near Mt. Rainier
Canyon, Eastern Washington Morning Sky Interstate, Eastbound
Oregon, Descending Autumn, Bend in the Highway Arches National Park
Distances and Dryness Further on the Glenn Highway On Antelope Island
Brightness and Clouds Clouds Along the Mountains Nevada, Further South