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Epic Road Trip ~ the Full Time Lapse

direct youtube link

music links:

Finally had a chance to pull this together. It’s pretty cool to see the whole thing – 3000 miles and four days of driving compressed into about 21 minutes. Any faster and everything becomes a blur. Any slower and it starts to feel like doing the drive all over again. If your web connection will support it, you’ll definitely want to watch it large in HD. Go to the Youtube Link if you have to.

It’s a big country, with much to see. The camera rig and software used to record the trip preserved each frame as a full resolution photo on the iPhone – over 21,000 of them. Many, many individually are simply stunning. Those will fly by like the others, flashing on the screen for 1/12 of a second.

It’s amazing how sensitive memory is to vision. Almost four months later all but the most generic late night road images still bring back immediate recall of that part of the trip. Played at speed in sequence, some significant events go by so fast they are all but invisible – the train wreck, for instance. Others – the ground blizzard in Wyoming, the dust storm in Oregon with tumbleweeds darting across the road – are more prolonged, but far more brief and beautiful than treacherous. The smooth animation belies hours of white knuckle driving endured in real time.

I confess to cheating a bit. To have mercy on less engaged viewers, the long, grey, monotonous drive through winter-dismal Missouri has been accelerated by 400%. Trust me, this is a good thing. Sorry, Missouri. Most of the night driving has been sped up, as well. Otherwise, it’s all here.

Enjoy.

 

 

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Epic Road Trip ~ Hood River

 The Columbia River Gorge

 

Emily is up before dawn. The car, she’s relieved, is intact, but she’s out in the rain in pajamas feeding the parking meter. This so we don’t get ticketed or towed before breakfast. And we do want breakfast. And coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

One last leg, just a couple of hours driving, backtracking a bit up the Columbia to Hood River, will finish the trip. We’ve been in Oregon less than 24 hours, and by end of this day she needs to get moved in and somewhat settled, because at 1pm tomorrow she has a staff meeting for the new job.

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Epic Road Trip ~ Oregon Dust Storm Video

dust storm in eastern Oregon

 

direct youtube video link

Music by Matthew Mayfield – The Devil Within – The Fire EP

 

 

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Epic Road Trip ~ On to Portland

 into the Columbia River Valley

 

So, let’s review:

  • We left Virginia in warm sunshine.
  • Had snow in the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies.
  • Passed a toxic waste spill contaminating a river in West Virginia.
  • Polar Vortex deep freeze and broken pipes in St. Louis.
  • Snow storm in Missouri.
  • Winds near hurricane force and Ground Blizzard in Wyoming.
  • Train wreck in Utah.
  • Rainbows and more snow in Idaho.

If you’ve been following along for the past several months, and have been keeping count, you realize this all just in three days. We left at noon on the 8th. It’s now the afternoon of the 11th. By the end of this day we’ll be in Portland.

We still have a long way to go. We need to cross all of Oregon.

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Epic Road Trip ~ into Oregon

 Oregon, finally.

 

Suddenly we’re in Oregon.

It’s the high country, and there’s snow everywhere. The air smells like onions. No wonder. It’s the Ore-Ida plant. Ore-Ida (for Oregon and Idaho) is based at the border in the town of Ontario, and the largest producer of frozen potatoes and onions in the US at 600 million pounds a year.

We take a few selfies, send some promised texts and photos to friends and family, then we’re on the road again. We still have a full day of driving ahead of us.

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Epic Road Trip ~ Idaho Video

music is “Sheets” by Damien Jurado, here 

 direct video link

Leaving out of Boise, we head north with the wind, and follow the Snake River all the way to Oregon along the Oregon Trail.

Just before the state line, a double rainbow appears. It’s a natural mirror of the man-made one we saw back in St. Louis, this one a true gateway to the west. Emily takes it as a very good omen, the best welcome sign she could have. She is dancing in the driver’s seat.

 

 

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Epic Road Trip ~ Idaho

 

 

Even in the dark we can see this is a different landscape. (I say “we,” but Emily is sleeping.) Hills are rounded, not craggy like the mountains we just left. Valleys are broad pans, and the highway undulates through them. Everything bears the mark of those biblical floods pouring out of Utah. It’s an empty landscape, scoured bare of people, too, apparently. The one gas station we see in the distance – a single light glowing in a nimbus on the otherwise dark prairie – is closed. We need gas again, soon.

This is the approach to the Snake River Valley: a wide, flat, elbow shaped plain, the dominant feature of southern Idaho. Though a river runs through it, as did those those epic Old Testament scale floods, it is not just another alluvial valley shaped by water.

No, that’s not what made it. Massive terrain altering floods not good enough for you? Ok, how about this: Multiple super-volcano super-erruptions. BAM! ‘at’s what I’m talkin’ about.

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