Fenbred right outside the Mallard Window. Xanterra spared no expense with our living situation. Only half the building was condemned and there were a hand full of rooms the mice hand’t gotten too. The mold in the walls probably killed them before they got too far. Thankfully one of the most beautiful places on earth was right outside our door and when we weren’t working, or stuck inside because of insane weather, we found ourselves out in the thick of it. 

http://soundcloud.com/fenbred

I highly recommend you follow this link to Ben’s soundcloud page and give his tunes a whirl. You can read an interview with Fenbred by English based Wonky Carton. Live drums, football and the city of no illusions. It’s pretty great to see someone giving this chap’s music a chance.

http://wonkycarton.tumblr.com/post/22791815208/live-drums-football-and-the-city-of-no-illusions

The employee parking lots was like a super sized bag of halloween candy. You could get a tootsie roll, some m&ms, an Oregon, some candy corn you’d never eat, a few Michigans and a couple burnt Arizonas.  

This is Telephone Point, a 15 to 20 drive depending on animal traffic and the only place within a reasonable distance to contact the outside world. Ben and I would make this drive every now and then to see if civilization still existed, no new terrorist attacks, no financial collapse and no zombie apocalypse. We were safe from all of that at the moment anyway but we had to return at some point.

As we would catch up with family and friends we had to describe the epic landscape that stood before us. It was impossible to give it justice and we’d often forget to include thermal features and bison that were all around us. Normal.  

Lodge poles! Everywhere you went in the park there were lodge pole pines standing tall or toppled over. There were even huge stretches that looked like burnt toothpicks, charred from the wildfires of 1988 that effected 36% of the park.  

Velero, AMPM, Sonoco, Hess, Shell, BP, Chevron, Mobil…whatever it is, they hold nothing to Flying J Truck Stops. Holy shit, everything you need from LED lights, to Wolf t-shirts, burritos, coffee, knives and even a shower if you’re lucky. After running on E for 30 min this place looks like an oasis in the desert. 

It’s like being stuck in a time warp with an infinite green and blue landscape that stretches to the horizon on either side of you. Flat for hours and hours until you cross another nameless river then, “wait! That must have been the Missouri, look at these fucking hills!” A little celebration then back at it for a tad longer until you enter the Cathedral like spires of Badlands and the tiny flat towns that surround it. 

We left the East Coast with the storms and middle America greeted us with the sun as we crossed the Mississippi. The Missouri was next, seven hours east with Interior and Badlands just a few hours past that. 

Mr Muuuuurty took us in for the night and showed us around the city the next day. Deep dish, records, buses, Calumet, and Columbia! 

At this point the bag we strapped to Ben’s car had caused major leakage/flooding all over ourselves and our possessions. We had cups set up to catch water as if a pipe broke in the kitchen and we were waiting for the plumber. 

We encountered a wild storm that was headed towards our past, an omen perhaps? I never really made that connection until now. Spirits were high, gas prices were dropping and it really felt like we were doing something. 

I had a couple rolls of Kodak EliteChrome developed recently and wham! there I was again driving out to Yellowstone with Ben. Through the rain to Chicago then across the vast flat lands of Iowa and South Dakota where I wasted about a dozen frames on the endless green fields and massive skies. We finally arrive at the park and begin our short stint in the ‘wilderness’ full of parking lots, meal plans, twisting roads, lodge pole pines, and dorm life. 

I’m guessing this is in Kansas. If that’s the case, we had been on the road since about 11am that day after waking up in my Civic under a comforter in a truckstop parking lot. We parked at 5am expecting to sleep for only a few hours before we hit the road again to catch up on time we lost but apparently our bodies had other plans. We woke up around lunch time to families and truckers walking past our car on a freezing, overcast afternoon. My comforter kept us warm, I think it was about 5 degrees that day. 

I haven’t been posting a lot but I hope to change that. Here is an image of Dave W getting tattooed by our friend, Matt Evans, out in Fort Collins, CO. I had flown home for the holidays to visit friends and family then drive my car out to California. Dave came with me on this trying journey and has a beastly memento to remember it by.

I had seen a lot of important people during my short visit home, but seeing Dave was different since we last saw each other 2 years ago. I lived with this fucker, we drank together, he taught me how to roll cigarettes, we raged out to music together, we talked about the future and stumbled home together. We inspired each other. After graduation we went our separate ways and then here we were with nothing to do but drive for hours, talk about the in-between times and figure out my car problems. Our reunion and departure wasn’t like the others I had seen. His life had only grown more interesting since 2009, moving to Brooklyn and working in TV/Film. More importantly there were no awkward goodbyes, only excitement for the times ahead. 

jpbags:

Last March I embarked on a cross country road trip in a Volkswagen Rabbit with my two best friends of all time. Our first stretch a 25 1/2 hour trek from Niagara Falls, NY to Leadville, CO. We each took five hour driving shifts which was just enough time to run the gas tank to E. This photo was taken around 10 am in our friend Kevin’s living room after Mat’s passed out and slammed his head on the bathtub. The combination of the highest altitude of a town in North America and the slanted angle of the living room made it an interesting nap.

My head hurts just seeing this post