Actors, that’s what I’m calling us because looking at us, you wouldn’t believe our emotional turmoil when this photo was taken moments before saying bye until next Saturday. For months, we knew this day was coming; it’s not the first time we’ve been separated by travels that took one or the other of us somewhere away, but still, when the day arrives, when the hour creeps closer when the minutes wind down, there is no good way to hug and express our love adequately enough to allay the flood of emotions. Our tethers to one another grow shorter the older we become; romance is still our middle name.

And here I am, a little later, behind the camera, with New York on the horizon. Actually, this is the Verde River on the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. I’ve wanted to grab a photo of this sight for years, but traffic on this bridge can move fast, making this stop precarious. Today, I took the opportunity to pull over as traffic wasn’t too bad. After I snapped this image, I was looking for a photo of the desert and some saguaro cacti that would encapsulate the environment I’m leaving, but this being summer, the landscape never offered up a scene I felt worthy of stopping for, especially when considering I have four hundred miles of driving ahead of me.

The distance I’m driving today wouldn’t typically be an issue, but my commitment to avoiding all freeways means that not only will I have more opportunities to see the intimate side of America, but my pace will be slowed by the size of roads and more importantly, I get to stop for photos. That, though, is where problems arise. You see, taking photos in my mind only takes a few seconds, but in reality I can lose myself in the process, and I end up seriously delaying everything.

That is why I allocated eight days to drive out there, out across America. These very roads away from everything else draw me in, places where I can stand in the middle of the street on a busy Saturday, and people are polite enough to wait miles away for me to take a photo of a wide open space.

I emerged on the high desert approaching Winslow, Arizona, after passing through the cool forests of Payson, Pine, and Strawberry. I have no time for standing on the corner since I’ve been there and done that, as the saying goes. I’m feeling a bit anxious that I might be moving too slowly. It probably had something to do with leaving Phoenix later than planned, stopping at Starbucks and talking for a few minutes with regulars who wanted to hear about this trip, and then that u-turn I made to fetch some In & Out Burger that would be the last one I’d see for the next 8,000 miles (about 13,000km) I’ll be driving. Anyway, that’s the freeway out there crossing the Little Colorado River, and no, I’m not going to get on it to make up time. My commitment to this adventure of a backroads meander is holding fast.

I passed a Native American hitchhiker as I drove into the Navajo and Hopi Nations. While I have the space, I don’t have the headspace to want to talk with a passenger. I feel guilty for leaving that man at the side of the road, but I’m looking for my voice out here and to have the intrusion of someone else’s, well, that risks crowding out my own. Part of me thinks he might have lent me inspiration, but then I’d be writing his story, not mine.

It’s not that State Route 87 is too big a road; it is only two lanes, but this Indian Route 60 gets that much further out. There are no fences out here near Dilkon, and something about that makes the land feel infinitely more open.

After turning right on Indian Route 15, I was greeted by a torrential downpour that would have been great had it not been for all the signs warning that I was in a flashflood area. Getting photos of the deluge proved impossible, not that shooting through a windshield ever produces great results, and there was no stopping under that storm as all I wanted to do was get out of the flashflood zone and hope it wouldn’t start hailing. This is the otherside of Greasewood looking back at what I drove through.

Dreams of better weather to the west while directly overhead are reminders that rain isn’t far away.

The dark clouds of monsoon season stayed behind me or to the right, leaving me with the sense they were pushing me along. I’d stopped in Chinle to talk with Caroline on the phone, though we’d been chatting the entire morning into the afternoon as I worked my way northeast. A friendly rez dog approached and shared in my quick roadside dinner of a boiled egg and a lettuce roast beef wrap. This reminds me that we don’t have dog food in the car for these moments. I encountered this red rock on the road out of Lukachukai, which took me on a steep, twisty road up over some mountains and brought me closer to New Mexico.

Off in the distance is Shiprock, which calls New Mexico home.

I stopped at the Red Valley Trading Post as Caroline voiced a wish for a trinket of some sort, but sadly, this trading post doesn’t offer such things. They did have an incredibly friendly rez dog out front and this rainbow, so I didn’t leave empty-handed.

It’s growing late in the day, and while I should be reluctant to stop for even more photos, I can’t help myself. Plus, I need to remember that I planned this so I could go slow, stop frequently to see the world, consider things, maybe write a bit, and have the flexibility to take my time. Sometimes, it isn’t easy to let go of urgencies and the sense that we need to be somewhere.

While it never rained on me again after leaving the Greasewood area, the threat of wet weather was ever present and mostly acted as beautiful reminders of what monsoon season in the desert looks like.

I had been disappointed that Shiprock was in shadow as I approached from the southwest, but here I am on its eastern flank, and a dramatic sky frames it ever so nicely. It was well after 9:00 p.m. when I pulled into Farmington, New Mexico, and found a motel. I set the alarm for 5:30 to get out early before sunrise to set up in a Starbucks to write this post, as the photos were prepped before I went to sleep. It’s 7:15 in the morning when I finish this. The sun is up, and I’m ready to continue this meander east, hopefully without buckets of rain along the way.