Are We There Yet?

Art10web
Originally uploaded by lisablaschke

There was a time -- probably about 1997 BC (before children) that I spent a lot of time driving around looking for stuff to shoot. I'd be road tripping cross Texas and see something cool -- an old church, a graveyard, a building falling down and becoming one with the earth -- and I would actually stop the car and shoot it. Babies came along eventually and driving became simply a means of getting from one place to the next as quickly as possible to get away from the squabbling in the back seat, the "are we there yet"s and the stench of smelly socks.

I kept telling myself, "some day I'm going to pull over and shoot that interesting old building." That some day was today. It was the 4th of July and not much was going on in our lives. We had been invited to the family barbecue at my uncle's house but we had to decline because today we had to road trip to a Girl Scout camp near Utopia to drop my oldest daughter off for her annual horse camp. We put a lot of hours into cookie selling during the entire month of February and I ate an awful lot of Thin Mints for her to earn enough cookie credit to go to this camp. This time I grabbed my camera before hitting the road. I'd heard about a cool old abandoned church near D'Hanis and I was on a mission to find it.

We dropped the girl off at camp in record time and then took our time getting home. I sat in the passenger seat to scout out cool scenery. There's a nice river bed let's stop. There's a cool old general store, let's stop. There's a Dairy Queen, let's stop -- I got hungry. The ride home took twice as long as the ride over there but I got some really nice images of old buildings and scenery along the way. I didn't find that church, but I got home and did an exhaustive Internet search and I think I know where to find it when I go pick her up later this week.

The ride wasn't perfect. My middle child complained "how much further" most of the time and my darling boy sang "The stars at night are big and bright" and insisted I finish it with clap clap clap clap "deep in the heart of Texas" pretty much the entire way. But I didn't mind. I'm learning to rediscover the fun of taking my time getting there. And shooting the flowers along the way.