We had two digital cameras (a Fuji FinePix S5000 and a waterproof Pentax Optio WP) with over 2500 photos to start, before we trimmed them to 1400. We then organized them chronologically, and put them into albums by state.
We are using Google’s Picasa to sort, organize and view the photos. Click a link below – listed by state. The link will take you right to that particular album. Once you are in our photo gallery, scroll to the bottom, click “Show All”, and scroll to the bottom again. You’ll see all the albums listed in order from oldest (at the bottom) to the newest (at the top).
We did have our photos arranged chronologically within each album for our 2006 albums but when we moved them from one account to another, the order changed. We haven’t yet had the time to go back and rearrange them correctly. You’ll have to guess at the order until we have time to get things sorted again.
A few more notes – there are several challenges in taking photos on a ride like this. Sometimes some of the greatest photos are at times when we are totally unprepared to stop and take a picture, such as being passed by a huge logging truck with no shoulder, or crawling up a long slow mountain pass, or screaming down the other side of the pass – you get the idea. We found that it often took a lot of willpower to stop and take photos.
But, we had a secret weapon – our support team – Alex. He was wonderful about following up on our requests to take photos of areas that we had completely missed, and listened to our lists of what we wanted. You will therefore see a number of photos that were clearly taken from a car. We ourselves often wanted to take photos at the end of the day, especially when we saw areas that we wouldn’t be seeing by bicycle.
Another secret weapon we had was Chelsea, who actually figured out how to take photos while she was riding the bike! Some of them are hilarious – she took one that was a video – a full minute of my backside riding along ahead of her. Her camera was the Pentax Optio WP – which we discovered has really awful zoom features (those are the fuzzy ones) but has awesome underwater capabilities (like the ones of the fish in album #11).
There are so many photos that you likely won’t be able to view them all at once. What we do is to start at the beginning and scroll through an album or two at a time. They do have captions, and many of the captions are meant to be read in sequence. The best viewing is to put it into slideshow format, and then adjust how fast the slides change (use the plus and minus keys at the bottom). You’ll probably want it a little slower than 5 seconds to give you time to see the photo and read the caption.
Happy viewing!
Picasa Photo Albums
4. Mississippi (Southern)
6. Mississippi (Southwest to Northeast)