Writing this from… I don’t know. Some hotel’s breakfast area.
Florence? Newport? Somewhere on the Oregon coast in a town with the same name as somewhere in Kentucky. My laptop thinks Kentucky. I think Kentucky doesn’t have an ocean, so you can’t always trust the Google.
My phone keeps giving me directions to Sacramento, which I was never even close to on land.
I know we’re in Oregon.
I know I’m not exactly jet-lagged anymore, but I am travel-weary. Been an amazing road trip—first time we’ve ever done anything like this—and I’m overwhelmed with all we’ve seen and done in five. No… six. Wait. Seven. I think this is seven.
Disorientation is why I’m gonna keep this short. That, along with shoddy cell service, makes uploads challenging.
My current state makes writing words in the right order challenging, too. I’ve no idea if I’ll even make any sense.
We took off from Indianapolis, spent a couple days in San Francisco, and drove up the coast. We stop doing things before dark and crash before we crash. We don’t rush out anywhere in the mornings (except airport days), and we’ve still done all the doing things ‘n’ stuff.
I’m beat and flooded with information, sights, sounds, and sensations. My system doesn’t know how to file it all.
A significant source of joy on this journey has been the photos. Sure, we all get the ones where the object is front and center. Those are fun and important.
I like taking candids of the group. Those early morning “proof of doing things” shots. We’re up. We’re moving. We’re on an adventure. Are we happy yet? (No. Because we’re hangry for pancakes. Happy will happen later.)
Or perhaps these photos serve as “proof of life” for those back home: We’re up. We’re moving. Here’s our location, should bail money be required. (Not needed that yet, but the day is still young. Hotel Guy last night wondered if our gang should be housed in the same hallway.)
The photos help me slow down and enjoy the spaces we’re in. Purposeful observation.
My only regret on the photo front is that I do not possess the capacity to capture the beauty of the drive up Highway 101 and keep the rental car tires on Highway 101. (Or on Hwy 20 or on the road—if you can call it that—to Fern Canyon).
For these photos, I trust my passenger. The one in the front seat.
Photos give her something to take her mind off the whiplash of the drive: You’re in the woods, you’re about to fall off a cliff into the ocean. Forest. Ocean. Ocean. Forest. Hairpin, switchback. Ocean.
All in a matter of five to ten minutes. Rinse and gloriously repeat.
Sometimes I lose my photographer.
Sometimes I remind my photographer she’s the photographer. I spotted the Redwood Highway sign. I wasn’t sure how many we’d see—there were several—and she was missing every one. I was teasing her about it (but I really wanted that sign).
“Please don’t make me use stock photos. I want the sign we saw on this trip, not some rendering.”
“Oh, just crop it or something!” She snapped.
Just then, another green Redwood Highway sign pops up on the horizon. I nod toward it, not ready to give up.
She gets this look that lets me know I’ve crossed the line. She begins rage-clicking the shutter button on her phone. I’ve never witnessed this phenomenon, but it is quite something. When one aims the camera out the window while glaring at the driver and just… snap, snap, snap.
Perhaps snapping what was going on inside her with that ocean-forest-cliff-ocean-forest whiplash.
Rage-clicking did the trick though, and I have several shots of blurry nothingness, one shot of the sign, and one shot of half the sign. (And lots of other signs. She rage-clicked for a while. With that glare.)
Crop it.
Crop it in.
Crop it out.
Snip out the snappy. Trim up the untidy.
I reminded myself the other day that highlights make Facebook, bloopers make the blog, and cone of silence over the rest.
For public-facing content, crop out the bits as vital to the trip as Alcatraz, the Pacific Ocean, or the Redwoods, but can’t be explained, understood, or shared.
The parts that are raw and real and where growth and realizations happen and infinite “you had to be there” moments that make no sense unless you were physically present in that moment.
Those moments make the trip meaningful—maybe more so—than the group photo under the drive-through Redwood tree.
The Hotel Lady has just slid open the breakfast doors and called out, “Come and get it.”
Thank goodness, because I was waxing philosophical and my brain just can’t connect those dots right now.
After all, I have a biscuit to find.
I have a tiny jar of Oregon Yellow Raspberry jelly to taste. Likely eat the whole thing and call it fuel for the drive to Portland.
A drive I know will give my passengers whiplash: Ocean, forest, forest, cliff, ocean.
A drive where I’ll see something I want my own photo of.
I’ll remind my passenger she’s in charge of the photos.
She’ll glare at me, lay her whiplash-weary head on her window, leave her phone in her lap, and mutter, “Crop it.”
