I started playing around today with Picasa and it’s really just what I’m looking for in most regards.  I’ve got SO many pictures to go through, and the more I can do with them all in one tool the better.  In this case I can store, organize, tag, and caption all of my photos, plus embed them in my blog and post them to Facebook and a bunch of other stuff, and it saves bandwidth load on my server. What you’ll see is something like this: It has very basic controls that, when not obvious, will be easily explained by a couple of clicks:  the little person floats a link to the al... [More]

In spite of realizing at the moment it happened that it was wholly irrational, I found myself surprised to not just go directly to mountain vistas the minute I crossed the state line from Kansas into Colorado on I-70. This is where the road dog in me started drooling...I'd never seen REAL mountains in my memory. I went out to Colorado with my family when I was like two years old, but I have zero memory of the trip (although my earliest memories can't be much later than that).  All my life I’ve enjoyed making pencil sketches of landscapes with mountains and cliffs and trees.  I fee... [More]

As I’ve been going through these photos and preparing them for web publication, I realize that most of my stills weren’t taken until I hit the mountains.  Falls Lake is a large man-made lake on the Neuse river north of Raleigh and Durham.  The photo here was taken from the bridge on I-85, which is between Oxford and Durham.  From here I proceeded west across the state via I-85 and then I-40, which carried me out of North Carolina “for good.”  West out of North Carolina, I stayed on I-40 through Knoxville, TN to Nashville, where I cut northwest via I-24, and I was offi... [More]

This is the same intersection as the previous photo, but looking to the right (northwest) rather than the left.  This direction leads you to Old NC Highway 75, which is one route to Durham, NC.  US-15 also runs along this street for a bit; in this direction a few blocks away, a veer to the south will put you on 15 proper bound for Creedmoor and Durham, NC and, eventually Sanford, Southern Pines, and with a turn or two, Cameron, where I used to hang out with some old friends of mine.  US158, which I described running east in the previous post, does also run west, but not from t... [More]

This is facing southeast down North Broad street at West in Oxford, NC.  The main stretch of “downtown” is a couple of blocks south and to the left (see below).  The city auditorium, where I performed or worked several times as a technician and/or technical director for Granville Little Theatre and The Road Less Traveled Theatre is two blocks south and about eight blocks east.  The large home on the left was just restored, which seems to be an ongoing pastime in Oxford along with hanging out at Wal-Mart and leaving town. This particular area of North Carolina actually looks a... [More]

I’ve got a few thousand photos and vid stills to dig through, but here’s an early taste.  The first batch of these will be posted across several blog entries, with a couple of photos for each entry with descriptions and captions and all that nonsense. I’ll be sort of narrating my trip along with the pictures, which will be in sequence.  Let’s get right into it with a few pictures from good ol’ Oxford, NC. I left around six in the evening on May 18th, 2009.  You can find a nice overview of my route and trip plan using the Page links in the left-hand menu here. First, we have... [More]