Just before the Thanksgiving holiday I had the opportunity to take a good ol’ American family road trip from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Seattle, Washington. The drive time to get there is 12 hours from my house, and since my wife and I have four young kids we decided to break it up into two days. We began our trip with a quick stop at Starbucks for coffee, which seemed like an appropriate thing to do considering our destination.

My dad was in the Navy, and as a kid I moved frequently. Perhaps this is why I have also moved around from place to place as an adult, living in Arizona, Texas, California and now Utah. The Puget Sound area of Washington was my home a few different times as a child, and I was 12-years-old the last time that I lived there.

I was eager to see the region again and to show my family where I spent time as a kid. The longest I ever lived in one house (as a child or adult) was there, and I wanted to see what had changed and what was still the same. I felt like it would be therapeutic in a way to return. This was going to be a good trip.

On the first day we made the long drive to Richland, Washington. This was supposed to be eight hours on the road, but it took us 11 hours to get there with the all stops we made. We saw a giant “potato” being pulled behind a big rig near Burley, Idaho, and the “Niagara of the west” in Twin Falls, Idaho (which is where my camera strap broke). We arrived at our hotel well after dark and in the pouring rain. It was good to sleep.

The next day began with beautiful sunny skies and a much shorter drive. It snowed on us a little crossing the Cascade mountain range. We made good time, only stopping for gas, and arrived in Seattle early in the afternoon. It was raining off-and-on in Seattle, which is typical weather for that area this time of year. Thankfully we came prepared with umbrellas.

After checking into our hotel and settling in, we headed out for a local beach while there was still some daylight. We combed the shore for seashells and interesting rocks. The kids walked along the driftwood that’s prevalent along the rocky Pacific Northwest beaches. I love the ocean and it felt good to breath in the salty air!

I used a Fujifilm X100F to capture our adventure. This camera is excellent for travel photography because it is small and lightweight, yet produces excellent images. I attached my wide angle conversion lens on the front of the camera for the first two days. These are all camera-made JPEGs, and I used my Acros Push-Process Film Simulation recipe for all the black-and-white exposures, and my Velvia Film Simulation recipe and my Classic Chrome Film Simulation recipe for the color images. I had a spare battery with me but didn’t use it as one fully-charged battery lasted both days.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6