Four Corners Monument – In A Colorado Minute (Week 200) from Luci Westphal on Vimeo.
For the 200th week of my weekly 1-minute video series Moving Postcard (currently in its In A Colorado Minute
phase), I wanted to do and show you something extra special. So my
husband Scott, our dog Whiskey and I took a road trip down south to the
only place in the United States where four states meet: Four Corners Monument.
The
states are Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. But it should
definitely not be forgotten that this landmark is actually on Navajo
Nation land. So really it should be called “Four Corners in a Circle” or
something like that.
The featured song in this week’s video is “Wasted Time” by Four Dollar Wine (aka Timo Sander + Scott Solary). Admittedly, I speed it up a tiny bit. Check out the song the way it was intended here: http://fourdollarwine.com/track/wasted-time
By
the way, I just liked the song (especially because we listened to the
whole album while driving around the Four Corners area) and in no way
mean to imply that going to Four Corners is “wasted time.” While people
had warned us that Four Corners is underwhelming, I have to disagree.
Some
of my reasons: The landscape around there and on the drive from the
North East is so stunning and certainly different from the landscapes
I’m used to. I think that roadside attractions have a wonderful energy
from all the travelers who have crisscrossed the globe to all stand in
this one place. I guess, to me, American roadside attractions are the
temples of the people worshiping travel, especially car travel. Last but
not least, we had such fun hopping from state to state, taking goofy
pictures (unfortunately, pets aren’t allowed in the center site, so we
couldn’t get the desired picture of Whiskey with each of her paws in a
different state), collecting souvenirs, shooting this video, and having a
shot of Whiskey in each state.
By the way, me tossing the coin
onto the quadripoint and then pushing it into another state’s corner
with my foot is an homage to the scene in Breaking Bad (Season 4, Episode 6, “Cornered”)
when Skyler tosses a coin to let fate decide if she should run or
return to New Mexico and then moves the coin to a different quadrant.
Sometimes we need to take fate into our own hands; Skyler did and so did
I 😉
Our entire road trip during Week 200 was so amazing and
brought to reality the Hunter S. Thompson quote I’ve taken as an
inspiration ever since I first saw the illustration my friend Claire Webster
drew for it (a copy of which now hangs in our house): “Sleep late, have
fun, get wild, drink whiskey and drive fast on empty streets with
nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested.” Check out
the illustration on her “Clairikine. Transcultural comic & stuff” website: http://clairikine.blogspot.com
We
saw so many cool places in the south of Colorado I would like to share
with you that I have decided to change my approach to the weekly videos a
little bit. Instead of shooting, editing and publishing a current video
each week (the whole series started as a kind of journal for myself and
a moving postcard from the current week to friends and family around
the world), for the next few weeks and maybe longer I will sometimes
publish a video with footage I have shoot not in that week but during a
prior week or month. This way, I’ll be able to share videos shot during
the 200th week in other weeks to come.
A big THANK YOU to everyone
who has watched 1 or 200 of my weekly videos. You are what keeps me
going and inspires me to go out and explore every week. I’m so grateful
for your views, comments, shares and the bonds we have created.
Last but not least, a thank you to everyone who has provided free music for this series!
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| Four Corners Monument – where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico meet |