The Photographer and Her Driver

I’m a bit slow, so it took me halfway through the drive home from Alaska to figure out that my primary role on the trip was to be the driver’s photographer.

My sister and I both enjoy photography, but she’s much more of a shutterbug than I am. Where I enjoy taking pictures, she is passionate about it. Her specialty is taking phenomenal pictures of flowers, but she’s got a great eye, so everything she takes is spot on!

We obviously took turns doing the driving on our 5700 mile journey, but it seemed like I ended up doing a bit more than she did. After a short time with her behind the wheel would notice that her head was swiveling about as she was scanning the horizon for mountain shots or the road beds for wild flowers and animals.

“You would like to be taking pictures, wouldn’t you?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said, grinning sheepishly at me.

So we’d pull over and trade places again, and be on our way. I would continue driving and she would spend the next few minutes (or hours) hanging out the window or contorting herself to get a good shot out of the windshield that didn’t include the  bugs that were splattered all over it.

Here are some of the shots she took along the Alaska Highway between Watson Lake and Dawson Creek on Sunday while I was acting as her driver:

As you can see the Alaska Highway really is a gorgeous road.

Our trip came to an end at 6 pm on Wednesday, when we pulled into my mom’s driveway and were met by a welcoming committee of my mom (she had flown home last week), brother-in-law, and friends and neighbors. Of course my mom’s first words were “when can we go again?”

And here’s the photo of the happy photographer and her driver beside Big Red. Notice the thousands of dead Canadian bugs!