Cringeworthy Overland: Life on the Road with Paul, Pt. 1
By Paul Nguyen
What do Bo Jackson, Leonardo da Vinci, and Maya Angelou all have in common? All were multi-talented interdisciplinarians who each became renowned for their expertise in several pursuits throughout their careers. BlueHour’s founder, Paul Nguyen, is not in that exclusive company. But at least he’s trying!
Greetings! Over the course of my 13 year career as a pro photographer and 10 years of co-managing this team of photo tour and workshop leaders that you’ve grown to know and love, we’ve become recognized throughout New England and beyond as premier image-makers and instructors by a wide and growing client base.
Unless you’ve known me personally or have followed my work via my email newsletter, you might not be aware that I uprooted myself from my native Massachusetts in 2022. I took my photo career to Flagstaff, AZ to immerse myself in the massive landscapes of the Southwest. And then, as of April 2024, I began a full-time adventure of indefinite duration on the highways, byways, backroads and off-roads of America with a Jeep, a trailer, and a cat.
Shortly after I set off, I began documenting my nomadic adventures through my YouTube Channel, Cringeworthy Overland, “Where serious adventure doesn’t have to be so serious”. Why did I feel the need to do this? Because there are stories to be told that I cannot tell through fine art photography. These are stories of daring backcountry explorations, hilarious mishaps, questionable food choices, and surprising revelations that are better delivered in video form. I have always said that “photos capture memories, but videos capture experiences.”
I consider my content on YouTube to sit comfortably at the crossroads of outdoor adventure, silly humor, fine art photography, Jeep obsession, and, for lack of a better word, cats. That's five roads coming into this crossroads, which in principle should bring in a lot of traffic, right? Come to think of it, my entire existence can pretty much be summed up in those five terms, so I guess you’d say my YouTube videos are a pretty authentic representation of me and my skill set.
There you have it: Paul Nguyen: Part photographer, part filmmaker, part outdoor adventurer, part cat person. All storyteller.
The Video Series: 2024 Highlights
The journey formally began in the Eastern Sierra of California, and this episode contains a rational explanation of why I decided to be nomadic (if you’ll allow “rational” and “nomadic” to appear in the same sentence just this once), an overview of my overland setup and daily practices, and Miso the Adventure Cat’s first appearance on video. And of course, it is all set against the magnificent backdrop of the snow capped peaks and flowing streams of the Eastern Sierra.
Throughout this new life change, I have continued to lead photo tours with BlueHour, and after flying to Ireland in May to lead a tour of Dingle, I returned to Flagstaff to get back in the rig, and promptly started my journey north, as Arizona was starting to really heat up for the year.
This episode finds me on the Kaibab Plateau just north of the Grand Canyon, one of the last cool spots in the state.
Part of the fun of running a photo tour business is scouting new tours for the future. The spot I was most excited to visit this year was the Palouse region of Eastern Washington and Western Idaho. Known for its endless vistas of rolling hills, fascinating patterns and geometry created by agricultural patchwork, and an unparalleled palette of colors, I suspected that the Palouse would be a paradise for landscape and abstract photographers. It turned out to be even better than anticipated, and the golden light raking across the hills and swales as seen from the tops of the highest buttes in the area is something I have continued to dream about in the months since my visit.
Compared to the massive distances I have grown accustomed to covering since my move to Arizona, the Palouse is relatively tiny. I arrived in the Palouse region in mid-June, drove through the entire region in one day, and naively thought that the scouting would be complete in 3 or 4 days tops.
I ended up staying for a whole month. The Palouse is one of those places where the more you see of it, the more you realize you haven’t seen nearly enough of it. I was joined partway through by Kris Simard, who helped me to scout locations and will be my co-leader on this tour in June 2025.
Watch this video, get yourself hopelessly lost in the amazing imagery, appreciate the quirky humor, and then register for my photo tour.
At this point in the summer, most of the U.S. was firmly in the grip of an unprecedented heat wave, and even the northernmost states like Washington and Idaho would not be spared. I decided to drive to the Washington coast to beat the heat, and ended up revisiting one of my favorite spots in the country, and one that will be a future photo tour: Mount Rainier.
Learn how to pronounce quirky Washington state placenames, and find out if I can actually catch a glimpse of the huge but elusive mountain.
Of course, there is more - but you’ll have to wait for Life on the Road with Paul, Part 2 (or, visit my Youtube Channel).
