Location Taken: on the road in New York
Time Taken: January 2011
One of the things you never think about when planning a road trip is how exhausting day after day of driving will be.
I mean, it’s just sitting around all day, with occasional stops to go look at pretty things or the like, how tough can it be.
Very tough, actually. Especially if it’s an extensive road trip with a deadline and seven hours of driving a day.
Sitting in a car is not that restful. Your body is trapped in a small range of positions, especially if you’re the one driving, and the muscles slowly build up aches from being unable to fully stretch. And the vibration of the car as it runs only encourages them to develop minor aches.
And mentally it’s not too great either. Sure, you’ve got all these great areas you’re stopping, and those are awesome, but there’s a lot of boring land between the interesting spots that you have to cross. And certain parts of the world have a LOT of boring areas. All the major interstates in the Great Plains region go through the simplest areas to put a road, which in that area means flat and farmed for a large part of it. And while farmland can be pretty and interesting, and what’s being farmed switches from crops to large grassy cattle farms as you head further west and the land dries out too much for crops – it still gets boring after the five hundredth farm or cattle field.
You have to go out of your way to find the interesting bits, often, which means you either need a good GPS, have great natural mapping skills (my choice), or get lost on winding country roads a lot.
By the way, the central part of Wyoming, the part skipped by both I-80 and I-90 in favor of some of the most boring land in the country? It’s full of canyons and hot springs and fascinating little towns. Although driving down 90 miles of country highway after dark constantly worrying about an elk appearing out of the darkness on the road ahead gets a little wearing…
Anyway, back to my point. Road trips are exhausting, both physically and mentally. And if you’re like me, you get to pay the bill the day after you get back and all the mental blocks you set up to keep you going for that one last mile to home finally lift.
In other words, ow.
So here, have a lovely sunset. Yes, I know I forgot to post an artwork on Sunday like I planned to, and instead shifted the whole schedule this week ahead a day. So here’s a random Random post to get things back on track.
