For the Love of a Road Trip: Jennifer's Conspicuous Mountain

Just why do we love our road trips?

There's not a lot to wonder about why we crave the open road.  Freedom, open space, the sense of expectation that comes from visiting territory new to us, and the familiarity of finding that it holds so much that's similar to where we've just come from.

Fresh faces.
New vacation experiences. 

Having no where in particular to be and no appointments to keep lengthens our sense of time and seems to buy us a little more to work with.

The romance and draw of the American Road Trip is distilled down to its essence here in the words of writer/photographer Jennifer O'Keefe:

"In the spring of 2009, I bought a white cargo van to go on a two-month road trip that coming summer.  The previous owners had given it a name, "Conspicuous Mountain".

For some reason, the name haunted me on the trip.  On the one hand its meaning was obvious, redundant; on the other, it eluded me completely, like something so close you can feel its breath, but too large to understand the full shape of.

Perhaps that's why we go on journeys with a hope that some distance from the trappings
of our everyday lives will give us perspective, show us the greater shape of things.
Or perhaps, it's that feeling that you get on journeys, that the world is arranging itself for
you.  that there's some choreography to chance.


Whatever the case, it is a grand illusion."


- Jennifer O'Keefe

Photos of Jennifer's two month trip capture the wonder of someone looking at the very ordinary through fresh eyes.  Her scenes, bound by a journey, are frozen both in place and time. 

Enjoy your virtual road.

Photo credit:  Smilelonger on DeviantArt