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The Assignment

I did this assignment from the web category. The directions are as follows:

Use Google Maps to tell a story! It can be the story of a trip you took, a trip you would like to take, a strange occurrence, a war, anything you like! The only rules are that you have to use Google Maps proper in order to tell your story, and post it here.

The Process

This assignment documents my road trip from Colorado to Los Angeles in the summer of 2010.

I started by going to Google Maps to plot my course again. Then I took a printscreen of the map and opened it up in Photoshop.

I used Flickr advanced search to find CC liscenced photos of the unique places that I travelled on this trip. Then inserted them into the document, using line tools and paint bucket tools to make the pictures look more like photographs. The text I added was TW Cen Mt size 18-22.

The Story

This is the path I drove from my house in Colorado Springs, CO to visit my girlfriend living in Santa Monica, CA. It took my about 24 hours of driving by myself, and was one of my greatest experiences thus far in my life. The sights I saw on my drive, their beauty is inexplicable.

The twists and turns of the Rocky Moutnain Passes, The Colorado River, The sunset in the dusty mountains of Utah, The bright lights and desolate desserts of Nevada, and the crowded 6-lane highways of California. Each of these special places deserves a blog post on their own. All in all, it was a beautiful journey that left me with a lot of time to think about life, the universe, and everything else.

To help me in my journey, I had the musical companionship of Enya, Enigma, Tenacious D, “A Horse With No Name” (which I’ve come to associate with the desolate land of Nevada’s dessert) and even the politcal comedic genious of Stephen Colbert’s “I am America, and so can you!”

I learned a lot on my journey; I fell in love with cruise control, I spent the night in my car at a gas station on the Utah-Nevada border, ate countless Subway BMT sandwiches, cliff bars, and dried fruit and almonds. I really got a sense of appreciation of myself, and my country from this journey. A lesson which I feel everyone should undergo in their lives.

So, go forth readers. Take a challenge, go travel alone and get to really know yourself