Landscape Photos

This artifact captures a landscape photo of the Cirque of the Towers in Wyoming with a caption expressing Mills's awe of the place.

Mills took this landscape photograph while hiking in the Wind River Range mountains. She captions it with a joke about Wyoming being "all desert" and "ugly" with the intent to actually highlight the beauty the western portion of the state has.

These landscape photography posts come from Jessica "Dixie" Mills Instagram account at @homemadewanderlust, and they serve to preserve her experience hiking the entire Continental Divide Trail. This extensive trail features many different wilderness areas and landscapes. These landscape-styled posts showcase the pristine areas on the trail while never including any people in the photos, making them "untouched" areas in a sense, to reflect the solitude of the American backcountry.

Mills often captions her photos with expressions of gratitude, enthusiasm, and awe for the natural areas she travels to. Having these high-resolution, magnificent photos enhances her message by illustrating the exact reasons she is in absolute awe on the trail. While she could have easily told about her feelings in text-based social media posts, she enhances her writing by including her own photography so her Instagram community can see the beauty she describes. Additionally, some posts have sarcastic captions, saying the area she is in is "ugly." Having the awe-inducing photo along with it alters the meaning by clarifying her sarcasm in those posts, hinting that her followers should try to experience the lands for themselves.