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Steve Plattner | profile | all galleries >> Galleries >> Cross Country 9/2001: NYC to San Francisco by Car tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

Cross Country 9/2001: NYC to San Francisco by Car

Thirteen days after 9/11, I left New York City and drove alone to San Francisco, where my family and I were relocating. It was a great experience--sometimes grim, sometimes exhilarating. In about ten days, I covered more than 4000 miles. I started a block from the still-smoldering World Trade Center site, headed into my beloved New Jersey down 1-95 to Washington, D.C. I continued on to Gettysburg, PA, then across western Pennsylvania, southern Ohio (where I befriended a wonderful private pilot who agreed to take me up in his Cessna 140 to get a few photographs of Serpent Mound), central Kentucky, St. Louis, and Kansas City before slanting southwest to Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle, where I lived briefly in the mid-70's and revisited the infamous Cadillac Ranch and the Big Texan Steakhouse.

I then proceeded through northern New Mexico, on to Mesa Verde and the Four Corners, north to Canyonlands National Park, across Utah and westward across central Nevada. I spent the last two days crossing the Owens Valley of eastern California before winding through Yosemite and on to the Golden Gate Bridge. This trip was made three years before I would become a digital convert--I worked with a great Hasselblad XPan, shooting dozens of rolls of transparency film in towns, cities, and fields. I was always mindful of being in the right place at the right time, often driving at night and catnapping mid-day to try to get the best results.

It was a very tense and subdued time in America, and I was questioned almost daily by people and by policeman or security officers still shaken by the events of 9/11.

These are a handful of my favorite pictures of some of my favorite places in America.
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Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas.
Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas.
Painted Cadillac, Chimayo, New Mexico.
Painted Cadillac, Chimayo, New Mexico.
Aspens, northern New Mexico.
Aspens, northern New Mexico.
Sunset, New Mexico.
Sunset, New Mexico.
Mesa Verde, New Mexico.
Mesa Verde, New Mexico.
Canyonlands National Park, Utah.
Canyonlands National Park, Utah.
US6 heading west toward Tonopah, Nevada.
US6 heading west toward Tonopah, Nevada.
Manzanar Japanese internment camp, near Independence, California.
Manzanar Japanese internment camp, near Independence, California.
Bodie State Park, Bodie, Calfornia.
Bodie State Park, Bodie, Calfornia.
Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, California.
Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, California.
Mimes, San Francisco, California.
Mimes, San Francisco, California.
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California.
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California.
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