We are Wiissa, a film and photography duo from Miami and based in NYC. Traveling has always been a huge part of both of our lives since we have roots all over and call many places home. Wilson’s French and Vanessa’s American-Brazilian. We love going on road trips together and exploring just by taking endless joyrides. Although we have both traveled around the USA a bit, we had never done a cross-country road trip. Here’s the story of our adventures across America and our newfound love for the wild west.

Two summers ago, Wilson and I and our friend, Cristina, drove across the USA. We’re all originally from Miami and were going to school in New York. We were all kind of in the stage of thinking about dropping out and totally sick of going to school, so we decided our best bet was playing hooky from college, and drive out to LA to live and work there for a bit.

We stayed in New York for Governors Ball (a music festival that had The Strokes, Outkast, Jack White, Phoenix, and many other amazing bands playing that year), and headed out the day it was over. We started from NYC, made our way down southwest to Texas and then shot out straight west ‘til we hit California. Lots of pitstops, live World Cup soccer games on our phones, and a soundtrack as eclectic as Die Antwoord, William Onyeabor and The Rolling Stones keeping us busy along the way.

Our favorite parts of the trip were from west Texas on. We’re all east-coasters and come from tropical places, so the desert was like another planet to us. Before we hit “the west”, we stopped by American carnivals and waterfalls in Virginia, ate breakfast with a man we all believed to be God in Knoxville, Tennessee (he was a cool young pastor with tattoos who predicted that day’s World Cup match score), and visited a cool UFO house in Texas.

We sped through the east and decided to slow down once our surroundings began to feel stranger and stranger. A speeding ticket from a classic sheriff with a twangy Texan accent slowed us down a bit, but by the time we made it to Marfa, Texas, we knew we were completely out of our element. The two lane roads stretched far and etched into the mountains. Coyotes, roadrunners and tumbleweed scurried across the roads. It felt just like the desert from the cartoons we grew up watching.

We sat on our car’s roof and watched the eerie Marfa lights at night. These unexplainable lights dance and twinkle different colors on the horizon every night, and have been there for hundreds of years. The lights have been explained as campfires from the Apache tribe in the distance, UFOs or the ghosts of conquistadors looking for gold.

Before leaving Texas, we flattened some coins on the railroad tracks and hit up a huge warehouse store full of beautiful turquoise jewelry, leather boots, belts, and saddles, and southwestern blankets. We ran through the two acre store for a few hours, picked up a couple souvenirs and hit the road again.

While driving through New Mexico, we stopped along the way at the famous house from Breaking Bad but we had one true destination in mind: White Sands. We reached the magical pure white dunes right before sunset. The sand was cool, full of beetles and scurrying white lizards. It reflected the purple and pink sunset, and was sheltered by the surrounding blue mountains. We were totally alone, laughing and running down the hills together.

We had already been on the road for twelve days, and Arizona was our last stop before reaching the almighty California. By this point in the trip, waking up at the crack of dawn and driving for the day became our routine. We always looked forward to what the road would bring us, but food-wise, we weren’t doing too well; running on only fast food, Redbulls and Rice Krispy Treats must do some real damage to the human body. We were getting pretty nauseous by this point, and out of desperation, hit up the closest fresh market we could find for fruits and vegetables. For future trips, pro tip: definitely plan ahead and look into some good food spots before hitting the road.

As we continued driving, the scenery would only become more and more epic; huge red Mars-like plateaus surrounded us. As we passed through a Native American reserve, an Albino horse walked up to our car and soon after his friend followed. The red plateaus were warming us up for the Grand Canyon, which we were planning to visit the next day.

The Grand Canyon is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life. My brain kept trying to convince me that it was some painted backdrop. Try as we might to live in the moment and not go straight for our cameras, at times like this it’s nearly impossible. The Grand Canyon already looked like a photo postcard, it had no bad angles and we had to shoot away!

The last stop we made before making it to California was the Saguaro Cactus Forest in Tucson, Arizona. Between the Grand Canyon and the Saguaro Cactus Forest, Arizona had us constantly checking our eyes because the scenery was so surreal.

Some of these cacti were over 50 feet tall and over 150 years old. It felt like we had Wonka Vision as we’d walk through the rows of giant trees. Red fruit sprouted from a few of the cacti that are used to make cacti candy, which we bought and ate from the gift shop.

As we had been for most of our stops in the trip, we were entirely alone in the desert. The only sounds other than our voices were a few rattle snakes slithering in the distance. We stayed until a burnt sunset light enveloped all of the cacti—it was the best goodbye to the road life.

After being on the road for two weeks, we were ready to finally get settled in LA. We drove through the night and made it to our new home for the next six months. LA would be a whole separate adventure in itself, where we worked with some of our idols and made a few music videos before returning to the east coast.

Words by Vanessa, images and video by WIISSA