We are back. It felt like we were gone a very long time, it felt like an eternity in some respects, but: it was only a week.

Jess, Gleason and I took off around 9 last Sunday.

We convened with Christina and Adan in Eads, Colorado a little after noon. From there we drove 287 South through Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle into the Texas Panhandle. Christina and Adan got pulled over before we made it out of Colorado, but got off with just a warning because of Christina’s friendly Canada plates. We stopped in Amarillo to visit the Cadillac Ranch. It was not as exciting as we had hoped. Mostly because it was crazy windy and we all got covered in flying grit. But still: kinda cool.

We continued West, stopping in Wichita Falls for the night. The drive was interesting, to say the least. Every small town in all three states seemed like partial ghost towns. Abandoned, crumbling buildings lined the highway, fading For Sale signs hanging askew.

The next morning, somewhat regretting our decision to have dinner at the Whataburger located next to the La Quinta Inn (“I saved the cheese for last!” – Jess, who ordered a salad), we continued on. I was almost immediately pulled over. The officer said I was speeding but never told me how fast I was going. The truth is: I was probably going about 5 over the limit to pass a slower moving vehicle, so not really much of a reason to pull me over. However: Jess pointed out that our Colorado plates are attractive to police in other states because of the legalization of marijuana. I guess he decided we didn’t look like drug traffickers and let me off with a warning. We pressed on through the ridiculously hellish Dallas road construction (seriously, TXDOT, you have outdone yourself there) and made our way to Kilgore, Texas, where we worked for a few days. Upon arrival, we went out for Mexican food with my parents. Then we went out to take a look at the properties we would be using for our shoot. We were immediately destroyed by mosquitos and chiggers. We decided we needed beer.

The shoot in Texas was a bit grueling, but a success. While Christina and Adan spent hours shooting landscapes, Jess, Gleason and I gathered materials for interiors. We shot in three different homes: my parents’ house, an empty rental house on my parents’ farm, and a farm house that’s been empty for decades that some relatives own. Here’s what some of it looked like:

There were lots of ghosts. Some familiar, some not.

We had a hard time finding a Confederate flag. We looked at the Walmart, but didn’t find one, and were afraid to ask. “Do you carry a confederate flag?” Awkward. We went to my Dad’s office to ask him if he had any ideas about where we could find one. “Down the hall,” he said. He took us down to David Stroud’s office. Stroud teaches American History, and has a specific interest in war and America’s involvement therein. He has a huge war memorabilia collection, including a ton of flags. He was kind enough to lend us his Confederate Battle Flag. We pulled it out of a filing cabinet.

While we were in Kilgore, I got to see some old friends. My friend Jamie, who is an awesome photographer, hung out for us for a chunk of our second day of shooting. I also got to see some friends from the Texas Shakespeare Festival, albeit briefly. It is Val’s 25th Season there – I can’t even believe it. That’s crazy.

Later, we tried to find a strip club to shoot, but were unsuccessful. Thanks for nothing, maps app. Christina and Adan were finally able to find some, along the same strip as the XXX porno drive-in movie theatre, the Apache.

Yes, this is a real thing. It’s set way back in the woods between Kilgore and Tyler and has been there since the late 70s. Christina and Adan wandered back but there was no movie showing and they said it was pretty creepy, so they booked it out of there.

The following day, we departed Kilgore for New Orleans. It’s only about 6 hours away, but felt like the longest drive of all time. I booked a “suite” at a hotel in the Garden District, which was clearly run by management who have a different definition of “suite” than I do.

I had a terrible headache.

We went out to a bar, but I left early and walked back to the hotel by myself because of my head.

The next day was the most grueling. We had breakfast and then went to the Layfayette Cemetery before heading down to the Lower 9th Ward to shoot some footage. Jess’s friend, who lives in New Orleans, was nice enough to show us around.

It was very, very hot and very, very humid. I honestly don’t know how people can live there.

After, Gleason, Christina, and Adan and I left for Waveland, Mississippi, which is about an hour West of New Orleans. Jess stayed behind to spend time with her friends.

Waveland was super, super weird. According to the Wikipedia oracle, “The city of Waveland, Mississippi was ‘ground zero’ of Hurricane Katrina‘s landfall on August 29, 2005. The city received massive damage and is still in the process of recovering and rebuilding. South of the CSX railroad, the area was almost completely destroyed. The rest of the city took heavy flooding. In a news report, state officials said Waveland took a harder hit from the wind and water than any other town along the Gulf Coast, and that the town was obliterated.” We saw evidence of that everywhere. There are lots of really new buildings, fewer older building, and lots of empty lots where buildings used to be. The beach – which features gorgeous white sand and warm water – was almost completely empty. What in the what?!?! The town felt very empty. We finished the traveling portion of our shoot there.

We ate dinner at a nice restaurant and then Christina and Adan headed back to New Orleans to spend more time in the city, and Gleason and I started making our way back home. It was late, so we only drove a couple of hours, staying for the night at the Best Western of Baton Rouge.

We got up the next morning and started our long trip home. We stopped off the interstate in Kilgore to have a late lunch with my parents and then kept going. We made it to Amarillo in really good time and stopped to find a hotel. All the hotels were full. So we drove to Dumas. Same story. And in Dalhart, and into New Mexico and Colorado. No available rooms. So we decided to just drive all the way back to Boulder. We made it in exactly 20 hours, with a lot of stopping. Gleason almost hit a coyote outside of Raton. There were moments of delirious laughing. We ate a lot of chips. We arrived back home at 5 a.m. to find that LA had put the chain on the door. We couldn’t get it off, so we had to ring the doorbell and wake her up. She was cool about it.

I took a shower and crawled into bed and slept most of the day. Just now: Gleason and I went out for pizza. She flies back out to LA on Tuesday.

This process has been difficult for me. It’s a lot of work and so far, is unfunded. Everyone is working for free right now, which I am grateful for. I know they’ll all get paid at some point, but I have anxiety about how much time and heart people are putting into it up front. I so want to be able to repay them, and well. It’s just unfathomable to me that four people would take a whole week out of their lives to go on an epic road trip with me to shoot video for a theatre project that is still at least a year out and has no budget. And that most of those same people have already dedicated so much time to the project, and will continue to do so. I am so grateful to them. I know it will be worth it, but man, sometimes the process is just so hard that I wonder why I keep doing it. But then: something small happens and I remember why I do. There was a lot of beauty on this trip.

And I came home to even more.