Road Trip

I encountered a palette of dramatic hues and wide open vistas last month when I embarked on a road trip across the Western states. The vast, sparsely populated land, pockmarked by rock outcroppings and scrub brush, filled me with a sense of expansiveness and made me wonder what life might be like in these remote places.

The road trip kicked off from Austin early on a December morning, and the landscape began to transform once we left the city behind.

The sheer rock walls along the highway in Western Texas were interspersed with small-town storefronts and broad, uninterrupted views. The world seemed wide open here.

Upon entering El Paso, we were met by a sky filled with fanfare.

We set out again the next morning under a vibrant sunrise, with ribbons of pink, orange and red criss-crossing the sky.

As we passed through New Mexico and entered Arizona, rock outcroppings and buttes emerged in the distance.

The outcroppings grew into bluffs and low mountains as we continued into Arizona, and the colors began to brighten into pink and red hues.

In Scottsdale, the setting sun cast a warm, red glow over the rocks.

The majestic forms of the red rocks smoothed as we drove into California, where stark mountains rose at the edge of scrub-dotted land.

Near Palm Springs, huge windmills rotated in the crisp blue sky, like otherworldly creatures standing sentinel on the hillside.

A feast of colors and life met us in Manhattan Beach, our final destination. After the empty expanse of roads, plains and hills, the liveliness and activity here felt decadent.

The grand Pacific Ocean offered an expansiveness of its own, and the rhythmic crashing of the waves made it feel as if we’d entered a different world altogether.

My takeaway? Seeing parts of the country I might never otherwise have visited provided stunning and intriguing visual input to digest, and the open vistas made anything seem possible.

Thanks to my daughter and her recent move for this dose of fun-spiration!