In past, I’ve grown to be weary of my sophomore roadtrip excursions – whether solo, family-focused, with friends, in-state or abroad – they always seem to be plagued with problems related to one-upism. I try to cram far too many experiences in too little time, have too many plans that falter because of weather, and try to make each adventure just a little longer milage-wise. On paper, they look exciting – in practice, they cause more stress and tend to make me feel like I never actually had a vacation. My childhood was filled with exciting roadtrips that necessitated them as an adult, and I’d like to think being as geographically isolated as I am in Alaska means I’m always seeking for a way to get out there into the broader universe. Unlike previous sophomore trips, however, I can’t say that this one was bad, a disappointment, or more work than it was pleasure; but it certainly was a different trip from the first.

• Building on the inspiration for last trip in Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, I also read William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways prior to leaving. A suggestion of a dear friend from Anchorage, I think my trip visually represented a nice mixture of the two literary expeditions while also being something completely different than both. I found myself crossing both Moon’s and Steinbeck’s trails in North Dakota and intentionally made a detour to St. Martinville in Louisiana because of Moon. I didn’t feel nearly as alone on this trip knowing that I was following their paths and that Moon was similarly inspired by Steinbeck. Because Cervantes had failed to keep my attention last summer, I also packed Don Quixote again, hoping to finish it along the way. Rocinante, my faithful steed on this trip, had a couple upgrades in the last year that made this trip easier, so starting a couple days earlier than last year, I headed toward the east coast.
• The 2024 trip was a rough mixture of sleeping inside Rocinante, my Toyota FJ Cruiser with a sleeping deck built into the rear across the rear row of seats, and days in motels/hotels, and a couple nights spent in a tent. The largest upgrade for 2025 was the purchase of a Tentbox Go for my roof rack. The FJ’s sleeping deck left a lot to be desired last year, between the awkward angle I had to sleep at to stretch out fully and the lack of padding, regardless of whatever improvements I made. Having now four options of places to stay (inside, Tentbox, ground tent & hotels) made it a lot easier to be on the road. The Tentbox was incredibly comfortable, required no additional padding, and provided more room than I could ever use. Why this particular model? Beggars (in this instance, Alaskans) can’t be choosers: it was literally the only rooftop tent that would ship to Alaska without being three to four thousand dollars. Build quality was spectacular and set-up / breakdown was a breeze. My only concern was that during the first couple nights sleeping in it, I struggled in the morning to get the cover over the tent singlehandedly because of the wind that was gusting up behind my vehicle; after getting used to it, I figured out how to fight against it!

  

• Sadly, time restraints and chosen destinations throughout the entire trip reduced the number of hot springs I visited – from seven in 2024 to one in ’25. I made it count, though: Liard Hot Springs is by far one of my favorite out there. Unofficially, I think that I substituted roadside attractions this year for all the fun I had at the hot springs the year prior. Without much planning other than looking for a cure to my boredom as I crossed the Canadian Plains, I stumbled upon five (!) “World’s Largest” items in two days. From Vegreville’s Largest Pysanka and the 23-foot Mountee Statue in Battleford, to the World’s Largest Curling Broom in Whitewood, the largest border markers in Lloydminster, and the largest coffee pot in Davidson, I had a blast photographing these with my Gameboy Camera for my series Road(Side)Trips. After that point, roadside attractions became a little more intentional, as Paul Bunyan Land, Lakenenland Sculpture Park, Dinosaur Kingdom II, and Pigeon Forge’s Hollywood Wax Museum crossed my path. Popular culture also became a bit of a trend influencing the direction my wheel turned, too. I couldn’t pass up visiting St. Olaf (Golden Girls), Evans City Cemetery (Night of the Living Dead), Monroeville Mall (Dawn of the Dead), Centralia (inspiration for Silent Hill), and the Quick Stop in Leonardo, New Jersey (Clerks). Most of these locations inspired some fun photography – whether via my Gameboy Camera or through Wigglegrams created with my Nimslo 3D.
• In 2024, I prided myself in not only taking an entire portable darkroom along with me but enough supplies to make lumen prints, cyanotypes and cyanolumens. I was determined to make up for the fact that I hadn’t made many alt-pro prints on the road in ’24, but I never found enough time during 2025’s trip to make more than a few half-hearted prints. While I’ve made quite a few prints before when camping in-state, after the lengthy time on the road each day, I just didn’t have the energy to want to do this. I’ve resigned myself to just make alt-pro work at home and not on these massive roadtrips. Sometimes you’ve got too much of a good thing; too many activities you feel have to define this particular excursion, so I’m looking forward to refining and honing in on what I do – and don’t – need to bring along with me.
• I both had fewer cameras with me and more cameras with me for this trip, depending on how you count. After recognizing how many (too many) choices I had in ’24, I cut back on Medium Format cameras – only bringing my Rollei T, Hasselblad 500C/M, and Mamiya 7.  My Rollei 3.5E stayed at home. As soon as I got on the trip, I regretted that decision because one of my two A12 backs for my Hasselblad stopped working, reducing me to three rolls I could shoot simultaneously. On top of that, before I even got to use my Mamiya, I realized in the middle of the weekend in Saskatchewan that my battery had died and I left my replacements in Fairbanks. Scouring local shops for the specialized battery was a failure (4LR44 isn’t common in Canada, I guess), so I improvised. Buying cat toys (that was my only source of LR44 batteries) and tin foil, I used packing tape to create a suitable battery that worked for the entire trip. My 35mm lineup only slightly altered, including a Rollei 35SE and a Nimslo 3D camera. The Nimslo is far superior in both size and functionality when compared to the Nishika that I had the year before – and it was portable enough that I actually used it.  My Gameboy Camera collection had increased since the last year, so I definitely brought more. I believe I packed six original Gameboy Cameras and an additional Camera Mini, a custom job my good friend had recently gifted me. My sole “real” digital camera remained my trusty Fujifilm xPro-3, though I do have to admit that I had an expensive lesson taught to me that’s got me reconsidering how I pack and carry my cameras. While I’m not a stranger to camera bags (in fact, like most photographers I imagine, I own far too many), I tend to shoot in quick, roadside bursts and rarely repack my bag. Generally, after about 2-3 days of travel, I had to spend 20 minutes reassembling my bag which was strewn across the entire vehicle. This functional chaos bit me when I found my 16-80mm Fuji lens and its front element heavily scratched. Cursing myself, my lack of organization, and everything else, I now realize this is the second time I’ve caused harm to this lens: I had to fix the lens mount after a drop sheered off a support inside the lens’ body. This is another reason why I want *less* in my roadtrip vehicle – space calms me down, allows me to make more prudent decisions, and it also provides me additional time (because I’m not trying to balance it between too many pursuits) to pack (and repack, and repack) appropriately.
• I shot approximately 20 rolls of film on my trip – an uptick from my ~13 rolls in 2024. I felt that this was an improvement, though it nearly feels like I was shooting at the same pace as before. I’m not worried about the pace, I’m more worried about the fact that I didn’t slow down enough on this trip to explore more. I made a HUGE increase in the miles I drove on this trip, but I felt like so many more days were merely travel days where I didn’t pick up my cameras. This is the one place that I really think that I failed to live up to the original roadtrip in ’24: I rushed it. I had a deadline to get across to the East Coast so I could pick up Aidan from Newark, but I knew that any place between Fairbanks and there might be the only time I get to that part of the country, so I rushed to every single place I wanted to see. I marked a lot off of my bucket list, but at a runner’s pace, practically; no real time to smell the roses. Once Aidan was picked up (who spent nearly a week with me and was an amazing traveling companion), I had to make Atlanta for his return flight. After that, deadlines shaved off trip expectations as I needed to make it to Austin for a concert, Vegas for a tattoo, Aspen for a workshop, and Denver to Seattle in five days with Deanna. Next time, I need to slow down and see more where the road takes me, like in the first trip.
• That said: I evened out the number of locations that I shot between ’24 and ’25 for my mordançage series, Western Consumption. I am so far behind in creating prints for this series that the upcoming winter break promises to be full of a lot of darkroom printing sessions. Of the 18 locations I shot in ’24, I’ve only printed two mordançages, but I have prints for another three printed and ready to be treated with chemistry. Similarly, I have negatives from 15 new locations from 2025 that I need to start making prints for.  A lot of work to do!

  

• 1400 digital images keeps me right in-line with the pace that I set forth with last year. Although I could complain about the weather that prevented me several days from shooting, overall I feel that I got just the right amount of work shot. No promising new series here, although I will certainly note that my blog from earlier this year about 10 years with Resilient and how I was likely hanging up my camera on that particular project… well, it definitely followed me on the trip.  From the Yukon to the shores of Lake Superior, and from the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way to the Gulf, I found exposures that were mainly influenced by my ten-plus years of work on Resilient. Since my roadtrip, I’ve similarly caught the bug and have started working on landscapes shot during the shoulder seasons when out-of-state photo friends visited two months back. I’ve been quick to note that this project has been a mental health project for several years for me, and due to some recent setbacks in that department, I’ve found additional comfort going back to a project that brought so much joy out of me. Furthermore, color has not just gently crept into this project, it has started to be prominently displayed. If that’s not a direct reflection of my current mental state, I don’t know what is.
• I also developed about the same amount of film on the road, but it felt much more like a task because I waited until far too late in the trip to develop film. So many days were full 12+ hour days of driving and shooting, and so I felt incredibly wiped out by the time I got to my hotel room that rarely developing actually happened.  In fact, so many things on the trip felt like a task that I didn’t do it: I didn’t write (something that this fall I’ve realized I’ve missed so much), rarely read (though I did finish a book or two) and rarely just relaxed. This was compounded by the fact that I was teaching two classes online and teaching them beyond the point of some of their first major projects while on the road, leaving me to spend 1-3 hours per day grading, participating in discussion forums, and watching presentations. I *love* the flexibility of teaching on the road, and fiscal realities require me to teach during the summer outside my normal contract partially just to fund the trip, but I struggled to balance this along with everything else. Again: slowing down, covering fewer miles, and having fewer activities available in my rig will make me feel less overwhelmed.

  

• It’s hard to define highlights of a trip that lasted ten weeks: that’s longer than I’ve ever been on the road. I had a major regret of 2024 that I made up for during the 2025 trip, which probably became my single most exciting experience. While I’m sure that this sounds odd to any southerner, I had lamented missing the ’24 cicada brood releases that promised to be record-setting, only briefly running into a couple in western Texas. This year, however, I ran into swarms of cicadas in Kentucky so thick that they produced 80 decibels of volume and created an audio shimmer-like effect as the clatter moved through the trees. I had several nights of falling asleep to cicadas, so many that I stopped using my white noise generator and managed to have some incredibly restful nights. Perhaps my favorite night was staying at a city park in Lafayette where they lulled me to sleep at 70+ decibels all night long. Similarly, I was as gleeful as a kid in a candy shop running into fireflies throughout the Lower 48. These outside experiences, beyond anything else, made the trip worthwhile.
• What were the favorite stops during my trip? My gosh, there were so many that stand out. Wanuskewin Indigenous Park was a destination set in stone before I even left because they have an indigenous-inspired kitchen attached to their cultural centre. It was amazing and I *finally* had Saskatoons in a dish rather than merely the jam and jellies we make at home. I checked off a couple bucket list items this trip, but one of the more exciting ones was going to the Pyramids of North Dakota, photographing them for Western Consumption, and then even touring one of the nuclear missile sites. I’ve never driven through Minnesota and Michigan on my own, and have never visited the Upper Peninsula, so photographing the various Coal Docks in Superior and Marquette was incredibly fun, but I think I most enjoyed going to Root Beer Falls (Tahquamenon Falls) and truly loved roaming through these northern forests and standing in awe at Lake Superior’s moodiness. Knowing what I do about the history of the Cuyahoga River, I was floored at the beauty of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, not only because the park is nestled inside a massive urban area but because of its pristine beauty. Niagara Falls was… disappointing. Not only was the weather terrible, but the site was under massive construction and it felt like one big paywall that I was trying to look around. Rochester, however, did not disappoint. I deeply enjoyed touring the George Eastman Museum and my visit was timely enough to share my wonder with my History of Photography students as I got to see in-person many of the works they were learning about on a weekly basis. A whirlwind trip from Newark to the mountains with Aidan meant that Reading Terminal Market defined Philadelphia, that a game store or two defined Delaware, and that Baltimore was little more than the National Aquarium. Seeing Aidan, who is 17 now, light up like a five year old at an aquarium for the first time was priceless (and regardless of what he tells you, we’ve brought him to probably half a dozen of these things in his life). Our brief trip down the Appalachian Mountains was obscured by fog, sideways rain, and wind – meaning that we didn’t see much of either Shenandoah National Park or the Blue Ridge Parkway, but we did enjoy time in Antietam, Pigeon Forge, and the Smoky Mountains. After dropping him off in Atlanta, I had a blast at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, visited Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, had a surprisingly educational time in Memphis at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, and sought out several historically significant places in Mississippi related to Emmett Till. I spent a lot of time trying out street photography in both Memphis and New Orleans, explored more of Louisiana’s Bayou country than I ever saw when I lived there, and even reconnected with a good friend in Texas from 30 years ago. Knowing how much Texas hates the idea of having national parks, I found Big Bend National Park a welcomed surprise and well worth the trip (unlike the unmentioned trip in 2024 to Guadalupe which was incredibly dull). I finally got to go to the Glenwood Catwalk after years of trying to go. I camped at 104 degrees inside Gila National Forest and then sought out the high ground north of Flagstaff to cool down the next night, where I woke up the next morning at 48 degrees. I spent some of the most treasured time with family on this trip, spending days with my Cousin and her kids in Vegas, where I got my second tattoo. After that, I spent about a week camping near Snowmass, Colorado to attend a workshop on Platinum-Palladium Printing on top of Layered Color at the Anderson Ranch Workshops. In retrospect, this week worth of 10-hour days of creating, discussing art, and spending time with amazing artists probably overwhelmed me because the rest of the trip was practically a blur. It was, however, an amazing experience – but my art and social battery was definitely drained afterward while my head was absolutely chalk-full of ideas of what to do next! The end of June found me in Denver picking up Deanna for a brief 5-6 day trip to Seattle, roaming through both Grand Teton National Park (my favorite, as indicated by my new tattoo and one that I’ve wanted to share with Deanna for 7 years) and Yellowstone. After dropping Deanna off in Seattle, I made Alaska in three days, exhausted and ready to stop moving.

  

• In 2024, I lamented about missing nearly the. entire Alaska Goldpanners baseball season because of my 7-week trip. My 10-week trip meant this year gave me no chance at all to see them before I got back, so I made up for it by going to two major league games, one to see the Pirates in Pittsburgh and the other with Aidan in Baltimore for the Orioles. While in Huntsville, I managed to also see a minor league game with the Rocket City Trash Pandas. This was a huge highlight of the summer!
• Favorite towns and cities? I had three – and all of them were pretty unexpected. Early on the trip, I spent a couple days resting in Fargo, North Dakota, falling in love with their local brewery, Drekker, and going to their vintage movie theater downtown. Huntsville was highly recommended by some local friends of ours and I loved finding a little blue dot among all the red in the south. I deeply enjoyed touring Lowe Mill, going to Campus 805, trying out a variety of breweries in the area, and camping at Monte Sano, an urban park with a peaceful Japanese garden. Finally, although Deanna had sung praises of Austin in the past, the 2-3 days I spent there to see Banks in concert at Austin City Limits, to peruse the breweries (including our namesake in Lazarus Brewery), and to sample a surprising amount of artisan crunchwraps (I’m not joking), I really enjoyed this part of Texas – and only this part.
• So. What did I cut from ’24 to ’25? Books. I initially brought along two textbooks for the classes I was teaching remotely and half a dozen books to read along the road. I got digital versions of the textbooks and decided to pick up most books along the way when I stopped at used bookstores. I replaced my bulky (and incredibly noisy) 2-burner Coleman with a single burner compact model: much, much more space inside because of that change.  An old Coleman “electric cooler” was replaced with a retro-style steel belt cooler that both held ice better and stored more food for the same amount of space. I also brought half a shoe box of retro video games that were practically never played in ’24 – for ’25, I cut down the systems to two (my Analogue Pocket and my Play Date) and brought less than a dozen video games.
• After 2025, what do I need to cut further? No expired photographic paper for lumens / cyanolumens, no chemistry for cyanotypes and toning cyanotypes – which also means I don’t need 11×14 trays for developing.  No additional books – while I did cut down how many I brought in ’25, I still had more than I needed. I think I’ll have to mail them home as I complete them. Clothing continues to be something that I think I can reduce, or at least condense, so finding an appropriate way to store all of it might be time well spent.

Closing in on 3700 words, I’m pretty sure I could easily continue to ramble about this trip and what I learned, what I experienced, and what I’ll change, but for the benefit of getting it out there, I think I’ll save some for later!