Last summer during the height of the pandemic I took an assignment to drive across the US from the southern to northern border in a travel trailer to document the challenges of travel in America at this unique moment. And unlike any other assignment I’d ever had, my wife and 2 young children went along for the ride. These are the images and travelogue from the trip.
Day 1: Leaving Texas. We haven’t even passed the city limits of Austin, Texas, our home town, before our three-year-old daughter announces, “I’m done with this trip, I want out of the car!” Fifteen minutes down, 70 hours to go. This seems daunting.
It’s our first road trip with our two young children, and we’ve decided to go big, driving from Texas to Mon- tana for two months in the middle of a global pandemic that has turned any type of travel into a risk. Our fam- ily and friends think it’s nutty. But since our kids were born, we’ve spent a chunk of each summer at a cabin in the mountains outside Missoula, Montana to escape city life and the oppressive Texas sun. Now it seems we are escaping the virus. And as a photographer, I’m ready to create a document of what is happening across America at this moment.
The first thing we see is that there are more RVs on the road than normal, but overall traffic is way down as we head across Texas. A rest stop outside Amarillo is eerily al- most empty. We try to put some distance behind us, but even a 500-mile day doesn’t get us out of the state. We stop at Palo Duro Canyon State Park, a beautiful place that impresses as you suddenly find yourself standing along its rim after driving for hours across the flat plains. We’ve tried our hardest to plan out our nightly stops at some- place beautiful and interesting for the kids, who discover cacti and a snake that is a little too close for comfort.
#pandemictravel #tatler #texastravel #rvlife #rvliving #traveltrailer #traveltrailerlife
