I finally found the right circumstances to take a long summer trip with Heather. Thanks to the shaky economy I was able to pull away from work for a bit, Heather was naturally on summer break, and my boys were home to watch the dogs. As you already know from the title, this trip would be on the famous Route 66.
We traveled all 2,400 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica. Along the way we took over 1,000 photos and videos. No one wants to sit through a slide show that long, so I have distilled it down to 25 photos. With this collection I have tried to balance showcasing my favorite individual photos with giving an overall impression that matches the road trip.
The trip out took two weeks, and it took one week to get back. To keep our costs lower, we spent ⅓ of our time at motels, ⅓ of our time at KOA camper cabins, and ⅓ of our time sleeping in the Outback. And, like the Oakies described in “The Grapes of Wrath”, we carried everything we needed in our car. That meant I had to be reasonable with the amount of camera gear I brought. I packed all my gear, except for my tripod and film, into a single camera bag. Below is what I crammed into that bag along with my Soligor Spot Sensor-II, Gossen Digiflash 2, Nikon SB-27, and various filters.
And, yep, I used up some of my precious space to bring a digital camera. My reasoning was that I might want to take some photos for purely documentation purposes, to simply commemorate being at a place even if I couldn’t find a composition worthy of burning film on. And, I’d rather use a proper camera than my iPhone. None of those photos made it to the final 25 images shown here. It’s not the camera’s fault, rather it’s because of how I was using it and because I’m not sure that I am a fan of the 28mm focal length.
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