My Cross Country Trip to New England
As many of you already know, I have re-located from sunny Southern California to snowy New England to be with the love of my life, Bobbi Lane! This past November we embarked on a grand adventure driving across country in my Technopod RV, now dubbed “Priscilla,” taking all my belongings to Bridgewater, MA, just south of Boston. Along the way we stopped and visited with my family and our friends. So… in this, my first blog post of the year, I tell the story of our travels:
Farewell to LA –
I have had a lot of mixed feelings about leaving Los Angeles, my home for all of my adult life! I had been telling myself for years that I really wanted to “get out of Dodge,” leave the traffic, and general congestion behind. However, Los Angeles was literally the place I grew up, had a career, and it is the place where most of my friends and family live. I had several “going away” parties, and I was sad to see so many friends who would no longer be available at a moments notice, once I had moved. I had even grown found of recent acquaintances at the RV park where I spent most of the last year in preparation for my move.
The Balboa RV park in Van Nuys wjere I spent the last several months before moving.
The last photo I took in Los Angeles was with my iPhone when I went downtown to have a farewell dinner with Julia Dean and Brandon Gannon of the Los Angeles Center of Photography – I walked around the neighborhood and snapped this shot of the Los Angeles Theater:
Sometimes though, you can discover a whole world by looking down – this satellite-like image was taken on a walk along the river:
A Drive Through Arizona on the way to visit my Family in Colorado
Our next stop would be in Durango Colorado to visit with my sister and step-mom for Thanksgiving, this was a long drive through very scenic country, and as I was doing all the driving, I didn’t get many photographs. We did stop just outside of Page Arizona to get a few shots from the bridge over the river south of Lake Powel:
My sister Yvonne, and her music partner Cook, performed a little concert for us after Thanksgiving dinner:
New Mexico and Santa Fe
Our next stop was in Santa Fe, where we stayed with David Michael Kennedy, just outside of town. David is a long time friend of Bobbi’s, a famous photographer who often teaches at the Santa Fe Workshops.
We had lost a day in Fort Stockton, so unfortunately, we only spent one night with our great hosts. The original plan was to attempt to make it to Dallas to visit with Tony Corbell, but we got a surprising text video message from Tony:
… showing 3 inches of solid, white ice covering his front yard and street. Apparently most of the off-ramps into Dallas were closed due to the ice on the roads! The RV is not the easiest vehicle to drive on the best of days, but we were not about to tempt fate on icy roads. So we headed south towards the gulf in an attempt to find a warmer climate!
Louisiana & New Orleans
After a brief overnight stay in Lake Charles, we made it to Lafayette, where we stopped to visit with Debbie Caffery, another famous photographer friend of Bobbi’s. We had a great little visit with Debbie and Bobbi shot some great portraits of her.
We had a lot of fun visiting art galleries and gift shops, mostly window shopping, but occasionally finding something irresistible – always something to photograph…
When it was finally time to say good bye to New Orleans, we mad a mad dash to Jacksonville, Florida
Florida
We really didn’t spend much time in Florida, nor did we get out to see Jacksonville at all, but we did have a great time with our hosts Deb & Rick Ferro – AND… it was warm! This was the only place on our trip that was warm, and it was quite a relief I must tell you!
Lee’s apple pie
We had a great time with Lee and I got to spend a little time making music during our visit:
Just outside Theresa’s house, see here in the background
We were now in a kind of mad dash to get home to the Boston area, and so off we went with one more stop in…
Connecticut
Racing against more snow we made it to Fairfield, where we met by our last host on our trip, Kate Eisemann, her Husband Bruce Mandelbaum, and son Will. One more, cosy night, great breakfast, and great conversation, and we were on our way to Boston. Bobbi shot this quick portrait of Kate & family, just before we left!
