GoldKingMine-160Karen's shot of me at the Gold King Mine in Jerome, AZ.

While the bus was parked in the Sedona area this past week, I spent the first several days away from it. I flew to St. Louis and then Kansas City to present my "From Focus to Finished" seminar for Kelby Training. Karen stayed back at the bus exploring Sedona. Before I left for this trip, we did get to meet up with Rich Charpentier, who is a local photographer and fellow RVer (he has travelled a lot in an Airstream trailer). Karen was friends with him in the digital world and it was nice to finally meet! He also gave us some tips on where to shoot in the area. It was fun to see that his interests were similar to mine, especially in that he shoots a lot of Rt. 66 and abandoned America.

I flew back on Thursday and, before we left the area, we went to explore the town of Jerome. We had heard lots of great things about the place and it was easy to see why. The town was really unique, with lots of historic buildings, bed & breakfasts, art galleries and wineries (to Karen's delight!). We explored some galleries, tasted some wine and sought out the mine/museum we were told about. It's called the Gold King Mine and it's awesome. We arrived too late to shoot on Thursday but returned again on Friday and spent several hours there. The placed housed several old buildings and dozens of old vehicles. It was truly a photographer's playground.

Ben-JeromeHere is one of my shots from the King Gold Mine in Jerome, AZ.

Another thing worth mentioning about Jerome is the excellent Mexican place we ate lunch at. It was called Quince (15) and was excellent. We highly recommend it if you're ever in the area. And if you like margaritas, you're in luck. They had a whole menu of them. I'm not usually a margarita fan, but I ended up having TWO! (The Sangra-Rita)

Ben-Snowcap66Here's one of the images I captured while following Route 66. This one was taken in Seligman, AZ.

When we moved on from the Sedona area, we picked up Route 66 again and headed west. We made stops in Williams, where we spent a night, and then Seligman and Hackberry, before spending another night in Kingman.

We will most likely spend another morning shooting in the Kingman area and then head toward Las Vegas. That's where the bus will stay while Karen and I fly over to South Africa for a photo safari with Journeys Unforgettable! More to come…