John & Anne Wiley

We’re settled into our hotel in the Big Easy, and got this special clearance from ATC to fly past the city to Lakefront Airport (the runway sticks out into the lake in the distance, just right of center).

0247 N’Orleans

We often fly low and slow, but today was sort of low, fast and slow. Low in order to avoid the stronger quartering headwinds just above our minimum altitude of 1200 feet or so. Fast (100kt., faster than usual for us) trying to compensate for our relatively slow progress across the ground, and of course slow (actually our preferred pace of 80kt.) ground speed due to that same wind. Pretty smooth, and a little longer than we’d have most liked for this leg. But among the advantages was closer looks at things like this.

0223 Whazzat?

A small lake in a vast marsh was dotted with dozens of these things. Duck blinds? Fishing platforms? Gator traps? You tell me. As we climbed a little approaching the busy New Orleans airspace I told ATC I’d like to fly near roads because I’m unfamiliar with open marsh lands and didn’t want to be a gator snack. He didn’t laugh, nor could I detect even a smirk as he came back with, “Fly 090 degrees at 3,000 feet.”  In other words, shut up and do what I say. I did. 🙂

But I’ve jumped ahead. We woke to this beautiful scene in Galveston.

0023 Galveston Beach

Christian and Danica at the airport had not only set us up with a nice hotel (Great, if it only had free wifi like every other place – even Starbucks!). They also loaned us a nice van this morning for a drive around town. So we got to see some of the old buildings that have survived hurricanes that all but wiped this low spit of land clean. Like the old Opera House, which I liked this painted back view of better than the front.

0067 Galveston Opera

Anne liked the fanciful buildings and touches like this arch, and the nearby cruise port district.

0043 Playful Arch

Anyway, on our low, fast, slow flight we also saw the massive refinery complex at Port Charles. This tiny portion somehow reminds me of milk. Certainly not the color, I’m talking about when I was a kid and thought milk came from cartons and then got grossed out when I leaned it’s actually the steaming exudation of a smelly animal.

0153 Black Milk

Since I loved milk, especially with fresh-baked cookies, I soon forgot my distaste for the origins and then got curious about the whole dairy process. Even helped a farmer milk his cows before dawn once and tasted the incomparable sensory experience of really fresh milk. So this pool of hideous black goo is part of the process that makes the “milk” Tripp likes best. Still, I’ll be glad when the aviation biofuel production process is finally ramped up, and even happier when most small planes are electric or at least hybrid powered.

0182 Rice? Fish? Shrimp?

Nearby are large tracts of flooded farm land like this, that I suppose are for farming fish, rice, or shrimp. Which of course got me thinking of how this mixes with the black goo in hurricanes. Remarkable how powerful the forces of nature are, both for mixing these things up and for repairing the damage with new life.

Another discovery today was several places like this. Want to know my guess as to what it is?

0210 Double Parking

I think oil workers drive here, park their cars, walk to one of those helipads, and are flown out into the Gulf for a shift working on a rig.

Well, we’re off to explore the French Quarter…

Well, it took me a long time to take care of other stuff and then sort out the pix. We both shot a lot of pix at Big Bend, and the file numbers overlapped so I had to manually sort everything from two cellphones and three cameras. When I was a kid our family had one camera, and my sister hoarded it. Now most people have several, and photophiles like us have even more. Here’s why. 🙂

5216 LC View

We woke to the majestic mountains of Las Cruces, thanks to Becky who gave us this view room at a bargain rate. We got a clearer look later, but farther away due to hustling to make up for time lost preparing charts at the airport preventing my intended detour for a closeup.

5219 LC Departure

Fili, the wonderful man who drove us in the hotel shuttle back to Tripp said something he loves about living in Las Cruces is going to orchards in the green belt along the river on hot days. Here’s an overhead view I like of a home nestled among the bare trees.

5226 Green Belt

Later at Big Bend, Anne told me to snap this landscape because it was on my side of the plane and she really likes the combination of colors and textures.

5300 Devil’s Playground

Heavenly places like this get a bad rap in their Anglo names sometimes it seems to me. When there’s time I want to look up the native and Spanish names for this. When we took a very refreshing stretch break thanks to Marty, I learned something after she and Marcos graciously posed for this lively pic.

5315 M&M with A&T

I love how M&M are both holding onto Tripp. They’re both excellent pilots and part of their excellent airplane collection is in the open hangar behind them. Well what I learned is that the spot Anne loved so much in the pic above, is the absolute fav of both M&M and several other local pilots. Wish we’d had time to descend and get a better look! But a sudden storm was brewing and we wanted to see more of Big Bend before dark. So glad we did!

5350 Into Mexico

Not long after leaving their private airport (3TE8) and warm Texas hospitality I got this view into Mexico with a shaft of light through the clouds gracing a river that joins the Rio Grande. By far my fav pic of the delightful day. Later as we neared Terrell Airport (6R6) for our turn direct to San Antonio, the sunset gave me one last memory of this amazing day.

5430 Farewell 3/19/13