The best part of participating in the AbsoluteWrite blogger chain is the excuse to spend so much time reading other people's blogs. I just read quidscribis's entry on her lovely blog. She talked about the Edmonton Oilers being in the Stanley Cup finals this year, and while I have nothing to say about hockey (except that I'm a huge fan of Disney's Mighty Ducks films), it made me think about oil.
Stay with me, this is going someplace fun.
Recently I have spent a lot of time thinking about a trip that my dad and I made across the country. From December 30 to January 5, 2001, we drove from Lewes, Delaware to Los Angeles, California. I had just been accepted to the Los Angeles Film Studies program, and would be spending my spring semester at that center, interning in the business, and taking classes in filmmaking and screenwriting.
As much as I adored my time in LaLa Land, I treasure that week I spent on the road with my dad. Along the way we visited Graceland, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, The Petrified National Forest, Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, and a California Ghost Town. We drove parallel to old Route 66, and even on it for a short stretch. We stopped in antique malls, trading posts, souvenir shops, and even a mall.
We discovered Bucket of Blood Street, which intersected with a railroad (go figure). I wore out my camera taking nine rolls of film (one whole roll for the petrified forest alone). I have two scrapbooks of the experience, including my time in L.A., and the drive home (that time we took a northern route across Colorado and Kansas).
So where's the oil? What does this have to do with anything?
I saw my very first oil rig on that trip. Just a few of them dotting the Oklahoma landscape, but it was a moment. I had not been further west than Ohio at that point in my life, and the oil rigs were the first truly new thing on that trip. Something I had never seen in person before. There would be many more things before the week was over (dry gulches and desert plants, the Painted Desert, Vegas), but those rigs were the first.
As a family, my dad has taken us fishing, crabbing, to the mountains and ocean, to theme parks and water parks, antiquing and caving. But that trip is a special memory. Something just the two of us shared, and an experience I will never forget.
And I now pass the baton to Wendelynn.
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12 comments:
What a great memory! These are the kinds of things that really must be written down...
Yes, definitely a great memory to cherish.
Bucket of Blood Street? A petrified story? Man, I wish I were there to see it...
Thanks for sharing. :)
Thank you for your great link in the AWChain Blogosphere Event!
Thanks for the comments, guys! I kept a journal of the entire trip. Rereading it is what gave me the idea for this entry.
Now I just need to do something with that journal... :)
Um, I actually meant a petrified forest up there, not a petrified story... Although, you know, I do write scifi and that little slip might be giving me some ideas... Of course, it runs into something that dh is writing right now, so maybe I'll give him the idea instead... *poof!*
ROTFL!! Laurie, you are precious. :)
Haha. That's awesome. Good post.
Sounds like a great trip and a special memory of your dad!
Haha!
Hi, Chaostitan! Kind of funny how the road trip theme seemed to resurface a couple times in this chain!
I've got to see the Petrfied Forest sometime myself.
Hi Matt! I admit to reading the chain backwards (*blushes*) so I didn't realize others had done the same. But they were all great to read.
And I highly recommend the Petrified Forest to anyone near the AZ/NM border. We spent hours there. One day I'll put all my negatives on disk and post some pix...
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