Westward Ho the Winnebago

I’ve been getting daily updates from a friend of mine as she travels across the US in a motor home with her husband, her son, his wife, and their two grandchildren. We’ve known each other for over 25 years and I love her, I really do. She has so many great talents I don’t know where to start, but I have found out this week that photography and writing are not among them. She began the brief email history in beautiful West Virginia, and then moved on to beautiful Kentucky, then beautiful Indiana. She had no superlatives about Illinois, but she seemed to have remembered a new adjective when she got to the St Louis, “impressive”. Her exact words were,

“The BIG ARCH is impressive. We’re heading north to Iowa tomorrow and I should start adding pictures to my posts.”

After much fumbling and floundering with the technology of getting those darn pictures made, downloaded, and out on the net for all to see, I don’t think it occurred to her that she might also think about the quality of the photographs. She learned to use the camera somewhere between Iowa and South Dakota but by that time she had grown tired of beautiful and was using “interesting” as in, "Sioux City was interesting". The first picture I got was accompanied by the comment; “The highways are very empty,” and this picture of an empty highway.

I began to realize my friend might be suffering from highway psychosis, or perhaps she had gone back to the future if the dates on the picture are to be believed. The next day they left flat behind, and as they arrived in the Badlands she fell back on her old reliable, beautiful. There was a note at the bottom of the page that said “pictures of the badlands” then a blank space. The next day I got this shot and a few others with an apology for having left out the pictures.

I’m realizing by this time that my friend is trapped in a small metal can on wheels with 6 people and a digital camera and laptop she rarely uses. This is not the ideal set of circumstances to start journaling, and of course, if she always had excellent judgment she would have known better than to even try. I am forgiving because I failed to blog at all when I went on my trip, however as far as I know my friend does not drink and therefore should have more time. I began to hope that she would begin to improve over time, but alas the next day in my inbox was this picture of Wild Bill Hickok along with a snap of the tombstone of Calamity Jane.

Following that was this shot from Mt Rushmore, but I’m not sure if she’s cutting a crazy zigzag path across the great northwest or if she’s not exactly sending the pictures in chronological order.

Then it occured to me that twenty years ago my in laws went to UK and when they got back we had to watch a two hour narrated slide show of every flower box in England. I am counting my blessings that technology has advanced to the point that these things can be done a tiny bit at a time and in the privacy of my own home, thus easing the extreme pain of enduring them all at once as they are projected on a sheet in the living room.

I felt a brief stir of hope when she finally got the date accurate for poor decapitated Bill, and by the time they got to Mt Rushmore, the date was edited out entirely. I believe she's either learning or maybe she has finally given up and let the grandchildren operate the camera. Either way, I am eagerly awaiting my updates on beautiful Wyoming, the impressive Yellowstone, and the interesting Rocky Mountains. I'll keep you posted guys.