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Our favorite actor/musician/photographer Adam Goldberg recently took to the road with his lovely muse – illustrator/designer Roxanne Daner, heading for their home on the west coast after spending several months in NYC. He must have been a boy scout, because Adam was photographically well-equipped when he and his lady fair set out across America. What follows is a record of his travels, which he refers to as his Ana-log…

“The trip began in earnest and trepidation in the afternoon of December 29, 2011 in Brooklyn, NY and concluded in Los Angeles, CA on 5 January, 2012. We obviously crossed some sort of space-time continuum. Or some sort of New Year transition took place. We travelled in a Prius stuffed to the gills but somehow still functional as a road vehicle with:
myself;
my ladyfriend Roxanne Daner;
a suitcase filled with far more over-the-counter pharmaceutical items and toiletries (largely mine on both counts) than with clothes;
a Toyo 45a (200mm lens);
Mamiya Universal Press (100/2.8 + 50mm lenses, 2 Pola backs);
Mamiya 7ii (43mm and 150 mm lenses);
Bessa III;
Leica M6;
2 Spectras;
1 SLR 680;
1 SX-70;
a huge bag of 120 film, Polaroid film, Impossible film;
an Olympus Pen 3 that I impulsively purchased on the way out of town, my ambivalence regarding documented extensively on our travel blog;
2 Brinno time lapse cameras mounted on the dash, one facing in, one facing out;
a baby Martin guitar;
and 3 dogs—Simone, The Sheriff, & Ludlow—ranging in size from 9 – 95 lbs.

We took what is generally known as the Southern route. With little time for deviation, what we saw, what I shot and what we ate was left largely to gas stops and the happenstance of 6 hour driving intervals. Roxanne would have preferred to drive more than 6 hour days but between my penchant for motion sickness, staying up much too late shooting, scanning and blogging, and very late starts each day that were entirely my doing, I had to draw the line at 6 hours.

Day/Night 1: Drove to Harrisonburg, VA, stayed the night at a particularly photogenic Village Inn after a rather disturbing dinner at a formerly 24-hour truck stop replete with blinding overhead lights and Fox news blaring from several televisions to which at least one angry trucker spoke back something about Obama taking all his money. Photogenic though.
Day/Night 2: Drove to Asheville, NC, where fortuitously, a dear old friend of mine and his family now reside. We stayed with them and had lunch in town, very lovely.
Day/Night 3: Beautiful drive through Tennessee, land in Nashville that night, just in time for a momentous new year’s celebration—first at the only hotel with a vacancy, a Sheraton on the outskirts of town, where we ordered and promptly discarded the worst food I’ve maybe ever eaten anywhere ever, then topped off at the only open restaurant within fainting-from-hunger distance at nearly empty Ruby Tuesday, where my blood sugar had dropped so low I could barely manage to make my way through the chicken breast I ordered.
Day/Night 4: Get into Little Rock, AR, at night. Almost ghost-townish. Felt like we owned the place. So much so I’m still waiting for the tea I ordered at the Peabody Hotel, where we spent the night and took some of my favorite photos.
Day/Night 5: Make it to Oklahoma City, OK, where I have some buddies in the rock and roll outfit: The Flaming Lips. We have dinner with Wayne, his wife Michelle, Michael, and others, then see and photograph their gallery “The Womb” and then hang out at their psychedelic digs. Next morning, visit pal Steven on the other side of town in a sort of stopped-in-the-‘70s neighborhood with a decidedly retired Republican bent, but great ’60s/‘70s ranch style houses and some fantastic trees.
Day/Night 6: Extraordinary drive chasing sun in vast flat Oklahoma. Eternal sunset. Beautiful. Amazing roadside Shell station where I shoot with nearly every camera I have. Then land in the place where I may retire, Tucumcari, New Mexico—a stopped-in-time half ghost town/half functional old route 66 Edward Hopper painting/Sam Shepard play/Wim Wenders movie. I stay up late shooting, scanning, shooting, uploading, blogging, grogging.
Day/Night 7: After taking more photos in Tucumcari by far than any other stop, we set off to Flagstaff, AZ, stopping at the shooting ducks in a barrel photogenic El Rancho Hotel to eat in Gallup, New Mexico.
Day/Night 8:. The Radisson in Flagstaff is our last stop and though not particularly photogenic, we wake and realize a forest is essentially outside our window and we see snow—albeit 2 weeks old and effectively dirty ice by this point —for the first time this winter other than a brief snowfall in New York in October. This time we chase sun through the Mojave Desert, another stunning sunset, documented while at the wheel with my Spectra.

Then, sleep in our bed for the first time in 5 months.”

Adam used several types of Impossible film including PZ 600 Silver Shade, PZ 680 Color Shade, PX 70 Color Shade and the new PX 100 Silver Shade UV+. To see more of Adam’s extensive collection of amazing road tip images, please visit his own travel blog at http://adamgoldbergasunwittingkerouac.tumblr.com/