When I set this site up, I had a vague notion of my goal. I needed an outlet to share my photos from road trips, day hikes and just general messing around with the camera. I could have used something like Instagram or Flickr, but didn’t.

I chose the name “A Mad Trip” because, at the time, I was living in DC and commuting back and forth to Texas in my trusty truck. Along the way (or often well off it) were places I wanted to stop and see. My latest small side trip at the time was a one month detour through Utah on my way home from Texas to DC.

That trip was almost 10k miles of driving and I didn’t bat an eyelash at it. I also did it for one reason: so I could make a few photographs of a few places I had never seen.

I often wonder what my life (and account balances) would look like if I devoted myself in that way to a “real” job; you know, sitting at a computer programming it to do something esoteric, economically valuable and totally uninteresting or fulfilling. Alas, that seems to be largely impossible for me.

Circle forward a few years and I’m more or less making the ends meet as a photographer (all be it with a little other income from my technical skills thrown in here and there). Do I still make mad trips? Of course.

I’ve been stymied by the overcast weather in central Texas since my move back. Everyone knows we need the rain after a hard multi-year drought, but could I please get just one or two new moon clear nights?!?! Pretty please?

Thanks to my work schedule it has been nearly impossible to break free for more than a half day, and certainly not long enough to drive 6 to 10 hours distant out from under the cloud cover. So when my schedule was clear for an entire Saturday afternoon and following Sunday, I jumped in the truck and made the seven hour drive to Caprock Canyon State Park.

I wrapped up photography around 3AM and grabbed a couple hours sleep before hitting the road at 6:30AM. The entire trip was 26 hours and 14 hours of it driving, and all for two or three photos.