PHOTO ESSAY: The Furthur side of America

Retired Charleston advertising executive Peter Wertimer pursued a dream that was about 50 years old when he stopped working in 2017 – to get on a bus and drive across America.

In the 1960s, the notion of getting on the bus, Wertimer freely admits, “became hippie code for a state of psychedelic enlightenment,” he writes in a new book of photographs titled Furthur. The independently published book is named for a bus of two generations ago – an old school bus that had a misspelled name (thanks to a sign painter “with more artistic than spelling talent) that carried author Ken Kesey and his hippie Merry Pranksters.

Wertimer writes that as he approached retirement, he decided to try out life in a more modern version of the Furthur school bus. He became a recreational vehicle acolyte “traveling among campgrounds for short stays here and there, to see if I could master the craft … and if I enjoyed it as much as I anticipated. I did!”

And so started several long road trips over five years in which he drove further and further in Furthur, putting about 70,000 miles on his Sprinter camper. Along the way, he took thousands of pictures, more than 200 of which are memorialized in a new book. Here are a few, graciously provided by the photographer:

Cold

El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, California. Credit: Peter Wertimer
Optical illusion in Alaska: “the foreground is the high ground and the braided glaciers flow down from there.”Form the airplane on the way back. Credit: Peter Wertimer
Crater Lake National Park, Oregon: “The deepest lake in the United States and a shade of blue I have never seen before or since.” Credit: Peter Wertimer

Dry

Arches National Park, Utah: Corona Arch — “one of the most beautiful arches of all.” Credit: Peter Wertimer
Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona: “Immense, really. It was hard to believe my eyes.” Credit: Peter Wertimer
Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona Credit: Peter Wertimer
Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona: Entrance.
Antelope Canyon, Arizona: “The Seahorse.” Credit: Peter Wertimer
White Sands National Park, New Mexico: “A Rio Grande cottonwood seemed to me to be climbing the dune, hoping to find water on the other side.” Credit: Peter Wertimer
Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona: “It’s hard to wrap one’s head around the concept of ‘two hundred million years.'”
Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona: “I hiked down the Kaibob Trail from the South Rim of this yawning gorge, all the way to Ooh Aah Point, then back down to Skeleton Point, THEN back up — seven miles total.” Credit: Peter Wertimer

Wet

Long Island, N.Y.: “The sunset as seen near the summer home of my brother … in Bridgehampton.” Credit: Peter Wertimer
Hyndsville, N.Y.: “A very beautiful place typical of the countryside in which I grew up.” Credit: Peter Wertimer
Acadia National Park, Maine: Dawn from Cadillac Mountain as the first rays of sunlight reach North America. Credit: Peter Wertimer
Big Bend National Park, Texas: Canoeing on the Rio Grande River. Credit: Peter Wertimer
Zion National Park, Utah: “I hiked The Narrows, most of which was in water from my ankles and, at times all the way up to my waist.” Credit: Peter Wertimer

Classics and tributes

Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas. Credit: Peter Wertimer
Beale Street, Memphis, Tenn., “home of the blues.” Credit: Peter Wertimer
The Indian Memorial at the battlefield the greasy grass, also known as the Little Bighorn.
Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona: Frank Lloyd Wright’s western headquarters. Credit: Peter Wertimer
Montgomery, Alabama: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. “At the so-called Lynching Memorial, the Equal Justice Initiative represented some 4,400 verified murders of Black Americans from the Civil War through 1950. Shocking. Shameful.” Credit: Peter Wertimer
Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum: The memorial at the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Credit: Peter Wertimer