Welcome to the series of Posts from Your Archives, where bloggers put their trust in me. In this series, I dive into a blogger’s archives and select four posts to share here to my audience. This is the final post from Marsi, who with her husband Robert, embarked on a four month journey west. I will be sharing posts from their trip in addition to other posts in their archives. This post only has one photograph, but I thought it would make an amazing prompt for a bit of fiction…..
Prologue
The past year and a half had been difficult for us. Within the span of this time, we lost my father to a lengthy, painful illness, two beloved geriatric dogs, and both of our office jobs came to an end for reasons beyond our control. We sold our house in Tennessee, put our belongings into storage, and headed west with everything we need for four months of traveling & camping stuffed into our Subaru Outback. Our journey is not just a long vacation, but a plan for healing.
35mm Film Photography – One Hit Wonders: Tumbleweeds in Thompson Springs, Utah by Marsi
As much as I love to immerse myself in dramatic landscapes, I am generally underwhelmed by my nature photography. So it’s good that I am fascinated by the roadside oddities, quiet city streets, and man-made structures that have begun their return to the earth.
Film seems an appropriate medium for capturing these less-than-perfect subjects. There is beauty in decay.
©Westwardwewander 2018
About Marsi
Hi there! I’m Marsi – Traveler, Designer & Home Renovator, Vintage dealer, Amateur film photographer, and Administrative Ninja.
After a year of researching and loosely planning an itinerary for an epic western U.S. road trip, my husband Robert and I sold our house in Tennessee and embarked on a grand adventure.
Our 2018 travels included thirteen national parks + several dozen state parks, national monuments, national forests, national historic areas, BLM sites, big cities, tiny towns, and everything in between. (You can check out our list of parks visited here. ) Instead of a making a set schedule, we had a very long list of destinations in mind, allowing ourselves the freedom to wander rather than have a fixed itinerary.
I created this blog to chronicle our 2018 western road trip. From time to time we’ll flash back to prior vacay and adventure spots we’ve enjoyed over the years, with some “what we’re doing now” posts thrown in too.
I also post some of my favorite film photos. If you would like to see more of my film photography, please check out my Instagram
Connect to Marsi
Website: https://westwardwewander.com/about/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WestwardWeWander/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/westward_we_wander/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.ie/westwardwewander/
My thanks to Marsi for permitting me to share these wonderful travel posts with you…Thank you for joining us to day and your feedback is always welcome. I hope you will visit Marsi and Robert and explore their travels further.. thanks Sally.
Smorgasbord Blog Magazine 
Amazing. I love the image with the green seats and the straw. 😉 Michael
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I agree Michael.. brilliant..
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Thanks Sally!
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Thank you, Michael! My favorite subject is abandoned structures. This motel in Thompson Springs, Utah was a dream to prowl around. The shot was taken while (carefully) leaning in through a broken window.
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Very interesting Marsi. Thank you very much for your efforts, and have a great day! Michael
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Thanks Michael..hugsx
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Thank you for providing the context for the photograph. I was going to ask!
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder ❤
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It is..♥
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I’ve always liked the saying, “One person’s junk is another’s treasure.”
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Absolutely love that one too.
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Quite.. and we have a fair bit of that around the place…x
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True, true!
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What an amazing photo!
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Our living room gets a bit like that if we have not had visitors for a while and a blitz…xx
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Ha ha! I’m going to have to have a blitz in our house before the Canadian cousins arrive. The DH has been very good at cooking dinner while I’m working at the museum and occasionally hoovers the stair carpet but … I fear the kitchen is becoming close to being a health hazard.
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Delighted your Canadian cousins are coming over, it must be a year or two since the big birthday party. I hope the weather behaves itself..hugsxx
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Too funny, Sally! I used to have “tumbleweeds” of dog hair that would quickly accumulate in dark corners. One low-shedding dog is much easier!
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Rough collies are touch to keep groomed.. enough to knit a jumper.. xx
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Thanks so much, Mary!
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Film photography has a special kind of ambience, presumably something to do with the dyes they use. I have a lot of old colour slides on different makes of film, and can always tell just by looking whether its Kodak, Agfa or Fuji because of their slighty different colourings.
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Interesting thank you for sharing that … we have thousands of negatives from the good old days. It seem like science fiction to plug in a memory card and have instant photos to print off on your own machine. Now I am sounding like my mother did at 95.. ‘In my lifetime…’
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Sally, I think it’s a good thing that we wonder at our current technology. I cannot wrap my mind around the cloning of animals. I mean, sometimes in my car I still think about how spoiled we are with power windows. I think pop culture’s return to analog (as a hobby, not for daily use, haha) is because it comforts us.
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to be honest when I read about Barbra Streisand and her cloned dogs I was horrified. Each dog has its own character and Sam was his own man and it would be a mockery to bring him back as a clone. I want the original.. the one who became who he was over the years.. see what you have done.. got me started…xx
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I feel the same way about Babs’ cloned dogs! A dog’s being is much more than just its genes and making a copy is disrespectful of that special creature’s memory. And cloning a pet also just plain creepy!
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and the next step…….even creepier.x
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I do so love film, and recently fell back in love with Kodak Gold for its warm tones. Funny, I was so set on Fujii 200 for cheap film and Kodak Portra or Ektar for splurge film, and only bought Gold because everything was out of stock before my long road trip last year. After shooting a few rolls, all I want to shoot right now is Gold – the film of my childhood. Those warm tones make me feel so nostalgic. I shoot some slide film but not much due to the higher cost for both film and development. My verdict is still out on the Ektachrome reboot, which for me resulted in a few amazing images and a lot of terrible ones. Though the unexpected results are part of the fun. Thanks for your comment!
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I enjoyed the comments as well as the photo!
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Just what I like to hear Liz..x
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🙂
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