An Impromptu Wandering East: A Roadtrip Photostory

A couple weeks ago, I drove up to Bowling Green, Kentucky to meet up with my best friend, Michael Portugal. We had decided weeks ago to take our groovy pal, Sam, on a roadtrip to commemorate his half-birthday (life's too short to not celebrate the little things). We saddled up the ol’ conversion van & hit the road to Nashville the following morning. After stockpiling tortillas, peppers, kale, mushrooms, hummus & beans, we headed east with very little idea where east was actually going take us. 

The first night we stayed in Knoxville with a friend I had met through Instagram named Nate, along with his parents and close friends. We made dinner for everyone & stayed up late, hypothesising about politics, societal pressures, disengaging with material standards of success & re-engaging with the notion of success being found in the stories we leave behind. Day two we woke up, skateboarded the park & then hit the road for Asheville. Halfway there we stopped to make lunch & then noticed a bridge crossing the river next to us. We boosted ourselves up to the lowest part of the huge white arching columns & proceeded to traverse the rest of the way out to the center. It’s important to take time to do something that makes your inner-child dance.

Over the next three days we stayed with Josh, a glass-blowing, dark chocolate maker at his property in Asheville. We skated the DIY spots and made friends with some of the locals. From there we headed four hours east to stay in Raleigh, not without stopping for a hike out to Catawba Falls. We arrived at the falls just to in time to watch the setting sun give way to a deep purple, the bright stars peeking through the silhouetted trees. The dreamy colors made the frigid hike back a little warmer for some reason.

After our final stay in Raleigh with a group of guys who are all in a hardcore band called, “The Grandfather” we were headed home. Back in Nashville, we stayed at Sam’s mom’s house out in the country. Sam’s mom runs a preschool out of her home where there is a huge emphasis on interacting & learning about nature. There’s a giant garden, woods in the back yard & a shed with a long narrow slat to angle your binoculars out for bird watching. After a week of flying by the seat of our pants, it was nice to just romp around a place that was familiar and to use that time to talk about the people we’d gotten to know & the places that brought us to life. Until next time.

Words & Photos by Heno Head | henryohead.com | @hennythepooh