John & Anne Wiley

2011/08/31

Bay View

I often wish pix could really show what we see when flying, and our relatively low altitude flight along the San Francisco Bay is a prime example. To me this is a magnificent photo.

3307 Downtown SF

3307 Downtown SF

But the camera sees haze more than the eye, and to me that detracts considerably from how it actually looked that day. The angle of light affects pix a lot too, as you can see in this similar scene from the other side after we’d passed the city center.

3316 Past SF

3316 Past SF

Less than two minutes apart, but notably different in the light and color captured. Then keep in mind that we were basically seeing both of these scenes at the same time, plus the rest of a vast field of view. The end result is simply magnificent beyond the ability of pix or words to convey. Yet I keep trying, eh? 🙂

Moments later I snapped this view back across the Bay and the fog, at the city about to vanish behind the fluffy white blanket.

3335 Hidden City

3335 Hidden City

Sausalito was playing a similar game of hide and seed with the fickle fingers of fog, and we passed slowly to admire the many rows of houseboats.

3339 Sleepy Sausalito

3339 Sleepy Sausalito

Something about the fog and the fact we were looking at the houseboats more than on our few prior flights here, gave it all a sleepy look. As if the whole town were about to pull that blanket over itself for a deep slumber.

Advertisement

2011/08/29

Santa Cruz

The second day of our Smiley Adventure, we stopped for fuel in Watsonville after the short hop from San Jose. Since we have hundreds of great pix from this trip, I’m posting some different ones to my Edhat & Photo Pages (see links at the right). Even so, I’m going to break up the Day 2 batch. Here then are two from Santa Cruz area, starting with the Boardwalk where I once spent some play time as a kid.

3191 Santa Cruz Boardwalk

3191 Santa Cruz Boardwalk

If you click to see the largest version here, you can make out the water slide at right and what I think is the “Mad Mouse” ride. That ride was a mini-roller coaster in the ’60s, and a lot of fun. At the left end is what was the arcade, with a cotton candy booth outside. The rides and other attractions are probably quite different now, but the basic structure looks about the same. Among dozens of pix of everything from San Jose to almost Half Moon Bay, I’ve chosen a few favs for the other two sites but here’s one more for this blog. A few of the areas just past Santa Cruz with sea caves also have rocks like this. I didn’t notice until reviewing pix just now that there seems to be a gal posing for a photo after having climbed out to a cave in the rock.

3246 Precarious Pose

3246 Precarious Pose

You can click on this pic for more detail and look on the Photo Page for a larger pic with context. I wonder how their pix came out, and whether they took any of us flying past offshore. That mental game of looking at a scene from both ends (plane and cave) kinda takes me back to having roamed these spots when I was the age these kids seem to be. I can feel the Wheel Of Life turning…

Refly

We haven’t been outside yet today! Slept a lot (with remarkable dreams) and now we’re off to do some errands. First tho, I’ll post a few more pix from the first day of our Smiley Adventure to begin a “re-fly” of the trip now that we have time to add more words & pix. First is a long shot of the Hearst Castle, showing the crag beyond.

3067 Hearst Castle

3067 Hearst Castle

Next another snap of the Big Sur coast. This rock we never noticed during our many driving trips along that magnificent road, looks to me like the core of an ancient volcano. I like how it’s split into a sculpture shape by the forces of time.

3096 Rock Heart

3096 Rock Heart

As we neared Monterey the cloudy halo atop a hill caught fire in the sun.

0572 Fire Crown

0572 Fire Crown

2011/08/28

Stuff Is

Home is where your Stuff is, they say. Sure feels like home here, surrounded by all our stuff. Lots of it is currently piled by the door, fresh from the car after being unloaded from Tripp. She seemed quite happy to be back at temperate SBA after some of the sweaty places she’s visited lately. We saw a red sunset coming home from the San Francisco Bay Area, and as it got darker nearing home a shooting star crossed our path overhead causing us to think for a moment that it was another plane.  Good omen. 🙂

The only pix I have from today so far were all shot over the hills above San Jose. I’ll probably post more favs from this incredible Adventure in coming days, but for now here are some from this last Smiley day. These rolling hills are so Home to me I once wrote a poem about the song they sing to me. Dotted with oaks and lakes, their golden furry folds caress the eye.

5689 Blue & Gold

5689 Blue & Gold

A closer look caught that small boat making a turn as we cleared the hills and turned toward home.

5690 Change of Course

5690 Change of Course

I guess the large hole on a hill just above the lake in this next pic is a drain in case it ever gets too full?

5691 Flood Drain

5691 Flood Drain?

As I gazed at a winding waterway between the hills, it evoked a sense memory of this trip. Many twists and turns as our path bent one way and other influenced by weather or the availability of friends & family along our route. Points of interest and whims added to the wandering, as more unseen turns awaited in the distance. Will this be our last big Adventure in Tripp, or will we find funds to continue to unfold new pathways over the wonders of this continent?

5692 Into the Mystery

5692 Into the Mystery

2011/08/27

Pass

Imagine yourself in a boat on a river. After fun with family in Grants Pass we flew over the area and saw a boat on the river that summed up some of what people love about living there.

5633 River Boaters

5633 River Boaters

The people who live along the shore enjoy it too, building shaded areas to sit and watch the flow. We spotted the hillside home where we slept out under the stars last night.

5634 Starry Night

5634 Starry Night

In the clear skies I spotted five shooting stars and three satellites in an hour or two of gazing up into the quiet night. Flying out to the coast, we found the clouds thicker than yesterday so at Eureka we headed direct to San Jose. This river bluff is similar to, yet so different from the one we saw further North.

5661 River Bluff

5661 River Bluff

Further along I admired the rocky crest of this hill, awash in a sea of trees.

5668 Rocky Crest

5668 Rocky Crest

So now we sleep, to dream of flying adventures and wake to discover new vistas tomorrow.

Next Page »

Blog at WordPress.com.

%d bloggers like this: