The Brightside

I'll be honest, there are many cool things I enjoy when visiting my in-laws in the Northwest Louisiana corner town of Cotton Valley, LA. It's a very small community, maybe one store, been around forever. I spend about 80% of my time there asleep or eating home-cooked meals. I begin to crave fast-food by the time we're headed back to West Monroe.

Life slows down about three Wynonna gears and it's a great change of pace. No internet, and not so great cell phone service. There are animals there too, horses, chickens, rabbits, things I generally have no interest in whatsoever. My kids love it, every daylight minute is spent outside playing in the free world of the country.

The trip we're making there this weekend will be a little different this time. The 3-year old Motorola Razr's won't be making the journey. They've been replaced by iPhone 4's, quite a few steps forward in technology. So there will be internet, there will be cell service, Twitter, Facebook, everything that I enjoy taking a small break from will be right there at my fingertips.

But that's not what I'm most excited about combining the CV trip with the iPhone's. It's going to be all the photography opportunities there that you can't easily find in a small city like West Monroe. Barns, gates, tractors, sheds, old cars, tire swings, endless shots will be there at my fingertips, and I'm going to try to take advantage of all of them using all 60 photo apps I've now acquired.

This time maybe it's 20% sleep/eat and they'll have to drag me in from outside. My wife and in-laws are going to think I went crazy in a whole new way!