After 16,265 Miles, I'm Finally Back!
Good evening everyone!
The last time I posted, I was leaving Alaska to begin the journey of my lifetime. I would be driving from Alaska to California, but instead of going the shortest route, taking only 3,400 miles, I decided to take a few detours, extending it to over 16K miles! In short, we drove from Alaska to Virginia and then back over to the west coast, arriving two months later in California.
Just to share some trip stats: Three of us, my friend Chase, my Fianceé, and I, packed over 400 lbs of supplies into my Honda Civic. We covered 27 states and 3 provinces/territories. Spent 50 days on the road. Burned 488 gallons of gas (ranging in price from $2.25/gal to over $8/gal!) over 16,265 miles. And went through three oil changes and a full set of new tires, plus I will definitely need to replace my shattered windshield at some point!
Anyways, to tell you the truth, I had always wanted to do a cross-country trip like this, but I could not have anticipated even half of what we encountered. Instead of just crossing from one coast to the other, we spanned our nation twice. We ran into traffic jams and stretches of road where we were the only souls for hundreds of miles. We drove on gravel, dirt roads, and even across streams, just as well as paved streets alike. We saw every inch of some small towns, while only seeing a single street of major cities. We traveled by foot, kayak, my car, trains, and buses. There were different animals and people everywhere. We met friends, family, and strangers. We saw tourist sites and secret spots too. It was such an expansive trip, not just of miles, but of experiences as well. I'd definitely do it again, but next time I'll definitely leave out the Yukon! I'll talk about that more in detail in another post for sure.
As for now though, I've just settled into my new home in Malibu, California. My fianceé has gone back home to San Diego and Chase flew back to Alaska. School and getting life sorted out in a new place has kept me quite busy. I'll be sharing more about our trip in the coming weeks as I catch up on edits and find time to balance school and life outside of that. In the meantime, please enjoy the following photos. These are just a few of my favorites from what I have edited thus far. It was certainly a wild ride:
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Delta Lake in Grand Teton National Park
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Schafer Road in Canyonlands National Park
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Wizard Island in Crater Lake National Park
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The International Speedway at the Bonneville Saltflats
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Horseshoe Bend in Page, AZ
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Great Sand Dunes National Park
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Horseshoe Bend in Page, AZ
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The Grand Tetons
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Milky Way along the Oregon Coast
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Bow Lake in Banff National Park
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Ruby Beach
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A field in Washington
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Lake Louise in Alberta
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Moraine Lake in Alberta
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Kluane Lake in the Yukon Territory
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Crater Lake National Park
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Redwood National and State Park
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Bryce Canyon National Park
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The Icefields Parkway in Alberta
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Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park
I know I kind of just dumped these photos in here and didn't give you the story behind any of them, but that shall come in due time. For now, I was just excited to get these out there and share them with you all. This was the most incredible journey I have ever made and some of my favorite photographs that I've ever taken. I learned a lot from this experience and will always cherish the time I got to spend on the road with some great people, exploring some great places. I have many, many photos from almost every day we were out there. So I hope you enjoyed these and that you will look forward to seeing more. Until then, thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
Dimitri
Absolute amazing everything the idea to do that trip and starting from far north. I can imagine how you felt the change of weather. 50 days in total sounds not so many but considering how much emotions and impressions you have had may be that is the trip of your life.
I love your photographs, absolutely astonishing and they would be fitting very well into those calendars with beautiful nature. I love that park: Redwood National and State Park that reminds me Jurassic Park. Thank you for sharing, unique experience!
They actually did film part of the Jurassic Park movies in that park! I took photos in Fern Canyon, which was one of the set locations from the original movies. I absolutely loved that park. There was so much to explore and I had so little time to dedicate there. I'll definitely be going back for more.
Those are some unbelievable pictures. I like to take pictures everywhere I go and I have over 35,000 of my own kids though the years and they are 13 and 14. I only use my camera built into my phone though.
These photos could never be taken with just a phone. I imagine that you have a decent camera and a good eye for what makes a good picture. That Milky Way picture is awesome and is exactly the sort of thing that a camera phone would make look like a bunch of grainy specks with white mixed in it.
I would love to learn how to take pictures like these. It looks like you had quite an adventure too. 14K miles? I've done about 800 miles in a single day, but that was without stopping to take a look around. You looked around and got some great pictures in the process, in addition to any of the fun you had or the experience of the people you met.
Yes, we definitely were fortunate enough to have the time to take our time. We were able to take each day for what it was and explore our surroundings. And thankfully, I do have a pretty good camera and I've been practicing for years now, which gave me the ability to capture these images. Phones have come quite far these days and can be quite impressive, but I'd like to think there is still some magic in owning a dedicated camera and harnessing the skill to use it well.
Agreed that the phones have come a long way, but real cameras still take the best pictures. The whole control of light is so difficult with a phone camera that even taking a picture of the night sky gets completely screwed up by simple moonlight or other light pollution in some areas.
Yup, and controlling the light is enarly everything!
That is what makes or breaks things. This whole auto-iris stuff on digital cameras just make people look like shadows when there is a light background or can make a dark sky full of stars look like a grainy bunch of white blobs. I've been somewhat successful by playing with light settings in order to get a half decent picture of the moon. Otherwise, it would look like I am taking picture of a light bulb that I am staring at.
National Park is so cool. We dont have those cool mountain and park in HK
They are quite awesome. Where I grew up, there was only one park, but it wasn't very grand and the mountains were more like hills. So I was quite excited to be able to see all of these.
Amazing photos. Seems like heaven is right here :-p
Dear Dimitri,
Since Foxes were a tiny furry balls, we had a similar dream to your - to take a trip around the United States and Canada. We really envy you this fantastic trip across the magnificent landscapes. Your photos are very professional and you are receiving a upvote and follow from us. We are hungry for more stories and photos from this trip !
Peace And Love
Thank you so much. Your words are very kind and appreciated. This trip was special to me. To share it and have others enjoy it, only makes it better.
Stunning photos, Dimitri! Definitely waiting to see more of your monster road trip :)
Thank you! I'll be sure to post more soon!!!
Wow! This looks like the trip of your life! I'm so looking forward to you posts and detailed description of the trip! :) How does it feel to be back in 'normal' life? After such an experience, I can imagine it is very different and not easy.
Your photos are brilliant and beautifully edited, the landscape is amazing. Thank you for sharing and hurry up with the next post! :)
Normal life is good, haha. I certainly do miss the freedoms of the road, but having a warm place to sleep every night and a space to call my own is quite nice. Thank you for reading!!
That is so amazing dude! I can imagine how awesome it was and experince you got. I so want to do something like this myself one day. Looking forward to your future posts!
Thank you! Yeah, I told myself for years and years that I would do it. As soon as I found an opportunity, I hopped on it. No way I could let it pass me by!
Killer trip! Much luck and throwing you a vote!
Keep it up man!
Thank you very much!
Of course man! Loved your pictures!
Great pictures of what seems like a great trip!!!!😉
Posted using Partiko iOS
Thank you! It sure was. Might I ask you what Partiko is? I see it says that your comment was posted from that application. Is it a Steemit viewer of some sort?
Of course you may ask! ;-)
Is it a steemit viewer? Well, kind of, but it needs some more explanation:
Steemit itself is only a frontend, a dapp on the Steem blockchain. There are several different (and often more userfriendly, depending on what you like) tools or dapps to access the same Steem blockchain. For instance, you can use busy.org or steempeak.com as a frontend instead of steemit.
There are also a multitude of other "social media" on the Steem ecosystem, such as musing.io, a quora-like app, or BeScouted, some 500px-ish app, or steemstem.io, which is more on article-writing (I have only just found out about that one myself ;-) ), or if you want to earn steem through moving, you should look into Actifit!
As for Partiko, it is a mobile dapp to work on the Steem blockchain. And since I am often on the train and such, I use it pretty often. It works very well too, and is available for both Android and iPhone.
Thank you very much for sharing! I had no idea that there were so many different options/applications. I'll be looking into a few of those for sure!
You're welcome! And maybe we will meet on the other applications too ;-)